The Fall of the House of Usher
About The Fall of the House of Usher
A traveler reaches the Usher house. Roderick's hearing and nerves are painfully sharp. His sister Madeline is weakening under a family curse. She seems to die. Roderick has her put in the vault. She is catatonic, not dead. She wakes in the coffin, gets out, and comes for him. The film has no spoken lines. Letters move across the screen in one passage. Prisms break the image.
Cast & crew
More about The Fall of the House of Usher
James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber co-directed. Webber wrote the screenplay from Poe's 1839 story and shared the camera with Watson. Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, and Webber play the roles. It runs 13 minutes. This is the American short, not Jean Epstein's French feature of the same year.
Themes
Look
Watson and Webber shoot through prisms so walls and faces split and bend. One sequence sends written letters across the frame.
Music
No score was recorded with the 1928 picture. Alec Wilder's 1959 woodwind score is the one synced for the National Film Registry copy.
Preservation
The short survives. The version with Alec Wilder's 1959 score was placed on the National Film Registry in 2000.
Notes
- Madeline is Roderick's sister, not his wife.
- Alec Wilder wrote a score in 1929 for winds, brass, and percussion, then a second in 1959 for the New York Woodwind Quintet and a percussionist, conducted by Leon Barzin.
- Watson later synced the 1959 score to the picture. That pairing entered the National Film Registry in 2000.
- Later scores include one by Tom Verlaine and Jimmy Rip, and Jean Hasse's 2010 score for Counterpoise.
- A copy is on the Internet Archive as FallOfTheHouseOfUsher1928short.
Awards
- National Film Registry (2000)
Scenes
- Madeline wakes in the vault and comes back into the room.
- Letters travel across the screen with no intertitle voice.
Influenced by
- Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)
Also available
- Internet Archive (FallOfTheHouseOfUsher1928short)