The Fall of the House of Usher

La Chute de la maison Usher

Jean Epstein transforms Edgar Allen Poe’s tale into a haunting reverie. It’s accompanied by a collection of equally transcendent shorts.

  • Director

    Jean Epstein

  • With

    Marguerite Gance, Jean Debucourt, Charles Lamy

  • France 1928. 65min. Total running time 95min

  • Digital (restoration)

  • English subtitles

  • Silent with live piano accompaniment by Stephen Horne

Epstein created stunning dreamlike sequences in his film based on Edgar Alan Poe’s story, in which a stranger visits his friend in the decaying castle of Usher. Epstein utilises optically distorted photography, slow motion and ethereally gliding camera movement to transpose Poe’s mysterious atmosphere into mesmeric moving images. Screening alongside is an American take on Poe’s story released the same year, and a landmark of American Avant-garde cinema.

+ The Fall of the House of Usher

USA 1928. Directors James Sibley Watson Jr., Melville Webber. 16min. 35mm. A BFI National Archive print

+ The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra

USA 1928. Directors Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich. 14min. 35mm

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