Wonderfully offbeat film!

recommended

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A traveler arrives at the Usher mansion to find that the sibling inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline Usher, are living under a mysterious family curse: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline has become nearly catatonic. As the visitor's stay at the mansion continues, the effects of the curse reach their terrifying climax. This is a very odd film, and one that can quite correctly be called "Avant garde" or "experimental". Some rudimentary special effects were tested here, all of which had to be done in-camera. The camera itself is often off-kilter, giving a disorienting effect. We also have plenty of double exposures and what looks like kaleidoscope vision. The words "beat", "crack" and "scream" take on a life of their own.Roderick is particularly creepy, and one wonders what influence -- if any -- this had on later versions of the Usher story. Today, the best known one is likely the Roger Corman and Vincent Price picture, but to compare that to this film would be difficult... even the most basic plot elements here are mysterious.This film is also not to be confused with another film that came out the same year with the same name, starring Charles Lamy and Jean Debucourt. This other version had Luis Buñuel as Assistant Director, and is probably the better of the two.

Watson's and Webber's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is not necessarily a film meant to be consumed as that particular form and medium, but actually a showcase of their technological experiments. At heart, it is a straight-forward German Expressionist film: stage quality is emphasized, enormous love of chiaroscuro, and both set design and costume is marked by sharp black and white contrast. The two add to the effect by dislocating the viewer through the use of split-screens, prisms, and elliptical editing, effects that were popular among experimentalists of the silent era, but which unfortunately did not find popular response enough to turn into a normal mode of representation today--which is unfortunate because it does fit well into the Gothic style of horror Edgar Allen Poe is most famous for, and because Watson and Webber were both involved with poetry and were basically making a quite poetic cinematic form. The best I can tell, cinepoems died soon after the coming of sound, once dialog helped reinforce the desire in most audiences to really understand characters and narrative plots and stylistic explorations became special effects. However, the fascination with the fragmentation of reality (even Gothicly or Romantically) persisted in underground film-making, eventually leading the way to the likes of Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage. And of course, it's still fascinating to watch today.--PolarisDiB

I just saw this extremely short movie by pure chance, and I did not even know that it had been made.Its aesthetics are completely surrealist and the film is a strange combination of dancing, theatrics and a very modern approach to stage decor. It reminded me a little of Metropolis by Fritz Lang. I believe it is a jewel and viewers who enjoy art should definitely see it. I do not think that you have to consider this film in terms of the original story, because Poe's story just inspired this art piece. It should be seen as an avantgarde experiment. It is difficult to believe it was made in 1928! It would certainly be interesting to get to see other films by this director.

This unusual and memorable movie version of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" has some creative details, and although it is one of the more obscure versions of the story, it offers a distinctive look at a couple of its many interesting aspects. The style is deliberately murky, and it has not so much as an inter-title, so that you do need to know at least the basic plot in order to understand what is happening.The original story is psychologically provocative and often uncomfortable, even by Poe's usual standards, and this adaptation is pretty successful in using symbolism and visual images to bring out various aspects of the mental disorientation and dread that the characters struggle with. You can watch it a couple of times and still notice new details that the film-makers inserted at various points. It focuses particularly on the peculiarly complex relationship between Roderick and Madeline, with the narrator of the original story much less prominent here.Poe's fascinating short story has been the source for many different movie versions, and Jean Epstein made a particularly good one in the same year as this feature. This Watson/Webber version, with its short length and its avant-garde approach, is hard to compare with the full-length versions. For what it tries to do, though, it works pretty well.