EC: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

(LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER)

Epstein deploys slow-motion, intricate lighting, and stylized sets to create an atmosphere of doom in this famous avant-garde expressionist Poe adaptation (combining both the eponymous tale and another Poe story, “The Oval Portrait”). Starring Marguerite Gance, wife of French director Abel Gance, it was also made with the participation of a young Luis Buñuel, who served as Epstein’s second assistant.

“Since the French Impressionist school has always considered the cinema to be like a visual symphony, we might call this film by Epstein the cinematic equivalent of Debussy’s works.” –Henri Langlois

Preceded by: Jean Epstein THE THREE-SIDED MIRROR / LA GLACE à TROIS FACES (1927, 38 min, 35mm. French intertitles with English voiceover.) “[Epstein’s] dependence on the close-up, his obsession with the totemic power of the object, his freewheeling mastery of cutting, variation of camera speed, and trust in the interpretive abilities of the audience, all come to a head with THE THREE-SIDED MIRROR. The fractured narrative follows the relations of three separate women…with a handsome, stylish, affluent young man. In the course of the film, he breaks an engagement with each of them in turn, tooling off in a sports car to his eventual demise.” –Brad Weismann, SENSES OF CINEMA

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