The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Directed by

James Sibley Watson

Genre

silent film, horror film

Country

United States

Runtime

13 min

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 57 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A brother and sister live under a family curse in their decaying mansion. The film uses prism shots and distorted visuals to show their doom unfolding. There is no dialogue, only images and onscreen text.

avant-gardedreamlikegothicunsettlingbleakexperimentalclaustrophobicvisually distortedmelancholic

What happens

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is a short silent horror film adaptation of the 1839 short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. The movie was co-directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, and starred Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, and Melville Webber (who also wrote the screenplay). It tells the story of a brother and sister who live under a family curse. An avant-garde experimental film running only 13 minutes, the visual element predominates, including shots through prisms to create optical distortion. There is no dialogue in the film, though one sequence features letters written in the air moving across the screen. A music score was written in 1959 for the film by the directors' friend, composer Alec Wilder. His 1959 score was his second attempt (after the score for winds, brass and percussion which he did for them originally in 1929), and he composed it for a recording of the New York Woodwind Quintet and a percussionist, conducted by Leon Barzin. The film and the 1959 score were later synched together by James Sibley Watson, and this was the version that was placed in the National Film Registry in 2000. Various new scores have been composed to accompany the film, including one by new wave musician Tom Verlaine and guitarist Jimmy Rip, and another by American composer Jean Hasse's version (2010) for the UK ensemble Counterpoise (violin, trumpet, saxophone, piano), this version available to view on YouTube. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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