Fall of the House of Usher
Essay title: Fall of the House of Usher
The silent film that I’m writing about is The Fall Of The House Of Usher. Written as a short horror story, the silent film runs approximately thirteen minutes in black and white. Filmed in the United States, it was based on the story from Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, which has been manipulated several times in many different versions. Said to be a “low-budget thriller,” it was one of the first independent experimental films made in the United States. Made in 1928, The Fall of the House of Usher was said to be the “last great film in the last great year of silent films.“
Directed by James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber, with writing credits going to Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall Of The House Of Usher has a complete credited cast starting with Herbert Stern, who plays one of the best roles of Roderick Usher. His wife, Madeline Usher, is played by Hildegarde Watson who wasn’t very noticed in her day until she acted in this movie. She was very successful in her acting. In addition to directing, Melville Webber plays a traveler in The Fall Of The House Of Usher, and he wasn’t very noticed in this movie. In his acting, he didn’t really stand out as his role as a traveler, but he still played an excellent role. The screen play was also done by the directors, James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber. Another important screen writer was EE Cummings, who was a friend of both of the directors.
Most directors and writers like to act in their own films because they like to stand out when they do their films. James Sibley Watson directed and photographed the film, while Melville Webber wrote and designed it at the same time. The film in total only has three characters and the traveler played by the director Webber is hardly seen and he is sometimes hard to see you really must pay attention to notice him sometimes
James Sibley and Melville Webber were very involved with Poe’s writing. Both were very impressed with his work; they liked it so much they started studying his writing in more depth. They admired Poe’s work so greatly they had German-style backgrounds which were imported just for this short film. It really sets the style of the film when they use detailed backgrounds and mirror trick shots in this film like they did. There weren’t very many people that worked on this film, most of the editing and camera work was all done by the same directors of the film.
This film is a classic all the way just because the way it was shot and all the time they spent individually on it. They used the style from the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari filmed by Robert Weine in 1919 to 1920, and it shows a lot of influences from that film on this film. They used the same German-style cinema to film this movie because they found that German cinema was way more liked than any other style of film.
The significance of this film was to show how they told the story, compared to Poe’s version. In the film, Watson and Webber use the house to tell the story compared to Poe’s story, who uses the traveler to tell his story. By doing this, they tell the story by portraying shots of the houses, walls, and staircases. I believe the directors used a sense of borrowing from earlier directors which can be seen when they show film shots of the house and how they try to tell you the story. They did this to try to make this film have a sense of spooky or scary scenes by showing pictures of walls and mirror shots instead of regular film style. They used what they would call German montage style, which wasn’t really created yet but showed the style in this film. They use lots of camera tricks to “create a magic and surreal world.” After watching this film a few times, every time I’ve watched it I can notice new details which I didn’t notice the first time. Every time I notice something new, either with a new camera angle or a different type of background. The Fall Of The House Of Usher has been redone over a dozen times by a number of different directors and cast members. Another version of this film was done in 1928 by Jean Epstein and her assistant, Luis Buuels. It was also filmed in 13 minutes as a short silent horror film.
The director, James Sibley Watson was born August 10, 1894 in New York. Melville Webber was born in July of 1871 in Massachusetts. Webber was much older than his partner, Watson. Both were college professors from Rochester, New York and were good friends. As professors, they both studied film together while teaching in New York. James Sibley Watson died March 31, 1982, making him 97 years old and Melville Webber died in 1947 at 76 years old. Melville directed Rhythm in Light in 1934, and it was another one of Melville’s great films. Along with The Fall of the House of Usher, a great film that they both directed was Lot in Sodom in 1933 and was black and white and 14 minutes in length.
The film was never rated in the box office