The Fall Of The House Of Usher (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #27 extract: The Fall Of The House Of Usher (1928)

A stunning masterpiece of silent cinema, one that feels very much so like Murnau's expressionist Nosferatu and Dreyer's abstract, sometimes surreal, Vampyr thanks to its gothic story structure (adapted from a short story of Edgar Allen Poe's) and general experimental aesthetics. Added to this, this film seemingly preempts those of Jean Cocteau as you can feel temporal elements of Blood Of The Poet within this. Much more strikingly, however, is the influence that this must have had on his grand masterpiece: Beauty and the Beast. The use of slow-motion, the concentration on emotions and the inner psyches of characters in a highly complex story (that is essentially a tragedy that reverses Sleeping Beauty) constructs a fantastical veil to be entirely lost in, despite this have very little plot in contrast to a film such as Beauty and the Beast. 

A masterpiece in regards to experience and aesthetics, The Fall of the House of Usher is plainly awe-inspiring. Not all will be able to immerse themselves into this, but those who can will be blown away.