lasttimeisaw A screening in this year's Shanghai International Film Festival, prior to Epstein's feature, it is a riveting experience to watch Buñuel and Dalí's 21-minute juvenilia UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) on the silver screen, an archetypal surrealist disjecta membra takes its ideological and visual flights to an insuperable height, the incontrovertible forefather of experimental cinema, unprecedentedly deconstructing the subconscious undertow of human psyche. Its quixotic montages can still bowl audience over no matter how many times you are primed for its iconic razor-cutting scene in the prologue. In THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's famed short story, a young Buñuel is credited as a co-screenwriter, but Epstein's aesthetic trademark as a master of atmospherics holds court here, an expressionist corpse bride horror, is panned out in its excruciatingly glacial pace (at least for a modern-day viewer), but graced by a hauntingly emotive score and Epstein's cracking legerdemain pertaining to the cinematic mobility of "les meubles", inside the titular unheimlich mansion, where resides Sir Roderick Usher (Debucourt) and his dying wife Madeleine (a gaunt Marguerite Gance) (in the novel they are siblings), Allan (Lamy), a friend of Roderick, nominally takes the position as the interloper, is involuntarily thrust into a paranormal revelation when a soul transmigrates, mortality subverted, and perdition betides upon the house of Usher, albeit its inevitably archaic special effects when the crunch hits. Configuring its simplistic story with an extraordinary sense of visual and logic fluidity, Epstein basks in the narrative's eerie ambient building, rendering it with mind-bending superimposition, and burrowing deep into Roderick's stream of consciousness on the strength of Debucourt's perfervid impression, all mentioned above is vividly presented in its monochromatic flair with original fidelity, speaks volumes of Epstein and co.'s avant-garde artistic progression and undimmed cinematic prowess.

Cristi_Ciopron One of the visionary masterpieces of the silent For the fact that the visionary gist is perfectly conveyed by the silent films testimonies also the fact that we can not envisage them as bettered or modified for the better by the mechanical addition of the sound. The silent, in what is most interesting for me, was an art of the visionary and the ghostly –hence, the note of eeriness, enhanced by the non—realist nature of the representations. BERLING, ARNE, USHER, NOSFERATU were mere music, poetry—while CALIGARI is an anecdote, an overstretched and uneconomical sketch that sorely needs dialogs, lacks precision and brio—and seems VERY talkative. The silent was fit like any other medium for eerie, disturbing, chilling subjects. Its means served these flawlessly and wholly, completely. How fine, how kind, how good is for the mind this art. How compact is the poetry, the poetic nature of these movies! (I know, though perhaps not better than you do, that the silent meant also comedy, slapstick, farce, western, silly melodramas, etc.—but the are wholly irrelevant aesthetically, and collateral. The silent built primarily an art of the eerie, chilling, unusual and visionary—of high, hallucinatory romanticism . The later visionary and eerie achievements of Hitchcock and Clouzot, in the '50s, will mean an entirely different approach and aim.) This USHER, movie of a rich and resplendent melodiousness, towering art of the time and of gradual modulations, is one of the best,say,30 movies ever created. This beauty, eerie and weird, is tangible—it does not consist of ,say, effects—in the sense of aiming at fooling the audiences with a senseless bravado; it is an art clean, sincere, good-natured and intense. As a form of art, the silent is kindred with the sound movies, yet essentially distinct and autonomous. Aesthetically, it was much honest—lacking the tempting chance of offering surrogates of realism by way of talkative footage. It could not be gross the way a talking film—say, a Scorsese film—is gross and inert, lifeless.In a sense, the sound only polluted and impoverished the film, deprived it of its core of magic and of 3—D eeriness—again, see BERLING, USHER, NOSFERATU and ARNE.(As a historical note, that adds substantially nothing to what I have already written, let us remind Epstein's bitter and acid remark that the talking cinema has become the talkative cinema. Epstein continued to shoot movies throughout the sound era, the '30s and '40s—but I do not know any of them ,so cannot comment upon. The man also wrote several first—class cinema books, one of them is available for free on the net. He was one of the great grammarians of the cinema—and one of its inspired visionaries, in his unbridled creation, as well ….)

Snow Leopard This memorable adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is particularly impressive in its use of visuals and in the macabre, disorienting atmosphere that it creates, which fits in well with the story. Jean Epstein made some rather significant changes to the story, but as a movie it all works very well.The story changes the central relationship between Roderick and Madeline, and in so doing discards some of Poe's themes, but adds some new ones of its own. Likewise there are other differences as the story unfolds, but Epstein had his own consistent conception of the possibilities in the story, so that it's neither better nor worse than Poe's idea, just different - they are both creative and fascinating conceptions in their own way.The settings and visual effects are very effective in establishing the atmosphere, and in setting off some of the themes of the story. Some of them, such as the enormous array of flickering candles by which Roderick works, are used as recurring images, with surprisingly haunting results. The pace with which the images come at the viewer is also used as part of the effect. It's quite a distinctive accomplishment, and it's a movie that you won't forget for a while.

kilorilee **minor spoilers**In my room right now is a paperback collection of Poe's stories, which contains the Fall of the House of Usher. From that, and the summaries I've read, the text is more darker and more sinister than this movie, which says a lot.The movie does a good job of capturing the mood of the text with scant words, translating an entire short story into little more than twenty or so inter-title screens. Surprisingly eerie shots of Roderick's face, billowing curtains, a haunting soundtrack and Madeline's degenerating form create a sense of dread and macabre. Certain scenes involving cats and toads highlight the dread and unnatural nature of the Usher state in a comical way. And what can only be described as a weird cross between a getting' crunk hip hop video and a Satanic ritual works surprisingly well to highlight the plodding nature of time and arduous task at hand, as well as being unique for the sake of being unique. However, besides the Usher's creepiness and the amicability of the narrator/Allan (a true friend till the end), I didn't know what to think or make of the characters until the end.The slightly more optimistic twist of the original story brings everything together and creates sympathy for the weird characters by demonizing the house even more. It's a prison driving them mad, not the Usher's parasitic relationship. See this if you want a relatively happy variation of Poe's stories that works well. I think this film is incredibly accessible, a lot more than the text anyway.Goods: the dread and spookiness, close up shots of the objects in the house, a positive spin on things, "hip-hop" coffin Bads: the first third... and the general direction less aim of the characters may put you off a bit at first, but the movie is only an hour long