Presented by the Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI
The Fall of the House of Usher
La chute de la maison Usher
One of the most imaginative and entrancing horror movies of the silent era.
Called “the cinematic equivalent of Debussy” by Henri Langlois, this eerie and disquieting adaptation of several Poe stories deploys a visionary combination of camera techniques and set design.
With assistance from Luis Buñuel, Jean Epstein creates an ethereal, hybrid movie full of discombobulating spaces and startling images. Called the “ultimate expression” of and “justification” for French Impressionist cinema by Langlois, it was the first film collected for what was to become La Cinémathèque Française.
– Adrian Danks, Melbourne Cinémathèque co-curator
Further reading
On Some Motifs in Poe: Jean Epstein’s La Chute de la maison Usher
Darragh O’Donoghue, Senses of Cinema, February 2004.
