Thanks so much for your comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's very encouraging to know my work has connected with people. BTW, I really liked your 312025-1311911. Very kinetic and engaging!
watched this for halloween last year and was absolutely blown away. after seeing others critique the music of the version they watched i'm really grateful this upload was my first exposure to this film. cheers!
Thank you very much. The film is also one of my favorites & working on the music was a labor of love. The project carried me through the Covid epidemic when the days dragged by so slowly.
Thank you. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. It is an inspiring film that, to me, captures the spirit and atmosphere of Poe's story. And the cinematography, setting and actors are superb. It really should have a solid blu-ray restoration and release.
@@floydpientkaholy cow! I am all fan boy! It was your sound design and music that brought this to creepy life! I was going to buy the limited blu ray dvd but I saw it didn’t have your music… I’m spoiled now. Great work really!!
You can download the original file from my Google Drive if you wish. It's only DVD quality, but the audio may be better. I'll keep this link active for a week for your access. I'm very happy you enjoyed it, and your comments about my score are very encouraging (this was my first film project). The link: drive.google.com/file/d/1CWIDbvVCNq39R5BTSO4CWhgKHLdMLgwz/view?usp=drive_link
Thank you for your kind words. It is an amazing film which should be better known, I think. I wish it was available in a hi-res bluray edition. A very inspiring work of art to score musically.
The music was as haunting as the picture and the intertitles look splendid-- easy to follow..----great looking print..... I am reading Poe's short story now for a book discussion and the film visually clarified the plot. In Poe's short story though - the woman is his twin sister and not his wife and the ending is different - will say no more about that. This story was an adaption of an earlier short story by Poe also about a painter...Well done-
Thanks for your comment. Yes, it's true that Jean Epstein freely added and subtracted from Poe's story. It may have been a concession to the "taste of the time" (removing the suggestion of an incestuous relationship between Roderick & Madeleine). Or maybe he just wasn't interested in that aspect of the story. He also added themes from Poe's "The Oval Portrait," in which a painter siphons the life-spirit of his subject into the portrait he is creating. Admittedly, it subverts Poe's narrative. But it also transforms it into a meditation of life, death and art. I still think he evokes the atmosphere of The House of Usher in a powerful, dream-like way.
@@floydpientka Enjoyed reading your very thoughtful comments. I wondered whether Usher consciously buried his sister alive or not. He says to his friend we buried her alive but he never made any effort to rescue her. Strange....Madeline seeks revenge against her brother in Poe's story at the end. True? But in this movie all three of the major characters escape from the House before it is destroyed. Guess that is nice but not in tune with Poe's narrative.....A lot of critics talks about the presence of evil in the Usher family- current and past descendants as well as in the house itself...But I don't know what to make of all that... The brother and sister certainly should have moved out of the house long ago.....LOL!!! The house is like a character itself like in -...S. Jackson's " The Haunting of Hill House".....I have heard about Corman's movie of "The Fall of The House of Usher " from 1960 with Vincent Price but I never have seen it. I hear Corman mixes and matches there with different Poe stories....
You raise a number of key points! Premature burial ("living inhumation" in Poe's words) was a subject which seemed to obsess Poe and society in general at the time he wrote. He commented that the boundaries between life and death were shadowy at best. Did Roderick know of Madeleine's catalepsy? - Yes. Does he believe the Usher line is doomed? - Yes. He realizes the mansion is decaying and that it has profound effects on him. He writes the poem "The Haunted Palace," which emphasizes the idea. And the story is full of mirroring -- the reflection of the house in the tarn, the story of Ethelred coinciding with Madeleine's escape from the tomb, etc. Even Madeleine serves as Roderick's doppelganger; her doctors find her malady "inexplicable" and her brief appearance in the story fills the narrator with dread. (In the original published version of the story Poe wrote, "Her figure, her air, her features -- all, in their very minutest development were those -- were identically...those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me.") Roderick's morbid descent into madness is hastened by Madeleine's entombment, and his inability to mention his certainty of her living internment could be accounted for by his words, early in the story, "I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." For myself, I don't think Madeleine is seeking revenge. I interpret her "reunion" with her brother as a resolution of the doppelganger duality -- as the narrator notes that as she embraces Roderick she, in her "violent, and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." Completing the mirroring, the House crashes down over them ending the tale. 1-2-3: Roderick decays into madness - his feminine counterpart Madeleine precedes (and leads) him into death - and the House collapses, "ushering" them into the Great Beyond. Of course, Epstein compromises and complicates all this with his changes --- but that's another discussion...
I adored EVERYTHING in this film apart from the bewildering change to the ending (spoilers): ....the Ushers survive???? There is no fall??? Utterly baffled.
Incredible score
Thank you. I'm very glad you enjoyed it.
Beautiful poetic film enhanced by a fabulous soundtrack
Your comment is deeply appreciated. This exquisite film captures the feeling, the atmosphere, of Poe like no other. Thank you for watching.
The music in this is absolutely beautiful
Thanks so much for your comment. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's very encouraging to know my work has connected with people. BTW, I really liked your 312025-1311911. Very kinetic and engaging!
watched this for halloween last year and was absolutely blown away. after seeing others critique the music of the version they watched i'm really grateful this upload was my first exposure to this film. cheers!
Thank you for your very kind words. I'm glad you discovered this film. It's my favorite Poe film, and, I think, a sorely neglected masterpiece.
Congrats on a very sensitive presentation of this poetic film, which is one of my favourites from the silent era.
Thank you very much. The film is also one of my favorites & working on the music was a labor of love. The project carried me through the Covid epidemic when the days dragged by so slowly.
Stunning!!
Thank you. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. It is an inspiring film that, to me, captures the spirit and atmosphere of Poe's story. And the cinematography, setting and actors are superb. It really should have a solid blu-ray restoration and release.
@@floydpientkaholy cow! I am all fan boy! It was your sound design and music that brought this to creepy life! I was going to buy the limited blu ray dvd but I saw it didn’t have your music… I’m spoiled now. Great work really!!
You can download the original file from my Google Drive if you wish. It's only DVD quality, but the audio may be better. I'll keep this link active for a week for your access. I'm very happy you enjoyed it, and your comments about my score are very encouraging (this was my first film project). The link:
drive.google.com/file/d/1CWIDbvVCNq39R5BTSO4CWhgKHLdMLgwz/view?usp=drive_link
Fantastic film!
Many thanks! The first time I saw it, I was astounded.
your music is beautiful!
and of course the film too
Thank you for your kind words. It is an amazing film which should be better known, I think. I wish it was available in a hi-res bluray edition. A very inspiring work of art to score musically.
The music was as haunting as the picture and the intertitles look splendid-- easy to follow..----great looking print..... I am reading Poe's short story now for a book discussion and the film visually clarified the plot. In Poe's short story though - the woman is his twin sister and not his wife and the ending is different - will say no more about that. This story was an adaption of an earlier short story by Poe also about a painter...Well done-
Thanks for your comment. Yes, it's true that Jean Epstein freely added and subtracted from Poe's story. It may have been a concession to the "taste of the time" (removing the suggestion of an incestuous relationship between Roderick & Madeleine). Or maybe he just wasn't interested in that aspect of the story. He also added themes from Poe's "The Oval Portrait," in which a painter siphons the life-spirit of his subject into the portrait he is creating. Admittedly, it subverts Poe's narrative. But it also transforms it into a meditation of life, death and art. I still think he evokes the atmosphere of The House of Usher in a powerful, dream-like way.
@@floydpientka Enjoyed reading your very thoughtful comments. I wondered whether Usher consciously buried his sister alive or not. He says to his friend we buried her alive but he never made any effort to rescue her. Strange....Madeline seeks revenge against her brother in Poe's story at the end. True? But in this movie all three of the major characters escape from the House before it is destroyed. Guess that is nice but not in tune with Poe's narrative.....A lot of critics talks about the presence of evil in the Usher family- current and past descendants as well as in the house itself...But I don't know what to make of all that... The brother and sister certainly should have moved out of the house long ago.....LOL!!! The house is like a character itself like in -...S. Jackson's " The Haunting of Hill House".....I have heard about Corman's movie of "The Fall of The House of Usher " from 1960 with Vincent Price but I never have seen it. I hear Corman mixes and matches there with different Poe stories....
You raise a number of key points! Premature burial ("living inhumation" in Poe's words) was a subject which seemed to obsess Poe and society in general at the time he wrote. He commented that the boundaries between life and death were shadowy at best. Did Roderick know of Madeleine's catalepsy? - Yes. Does he believe the Usher line is doomed? - Yes. He realizes the mansion is decaying and that it has profound effects on him. He writes the poem "The Haunted Palace," which emphasizes the idea. And the story is full of mirroring -- the reflection of the house in the tarn, the story of Ethelred coinciding with Madeleine's escape from the tomb, etc. Even Madeleine serves as Roderick's doppelganger; her doctors find her malady "inexplicable" and her brief appearance in the story fills the narrator with dread. (In the original published version of the story Poe wrote, "Her figure, her air, her features -- all, in their very minutest development were those -- were identically...those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me.") Roderick's morbid descent into madness is hastened by Madeleine's entombment, and his inability to mention his certainty of her living internment could be accounted for by his words, early in the story, "I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." For myself, I don't think Madeleine is seeking revenge. I interpret her "reunion" with her brother as a resolution of the doppelganger duality -- as the narrator notes that as she embraces Roderick she, in her "violent, and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, a victim to the terrors he had anticipated." Completing the mirroring, the House crashes down over them ending the tale. 1-2-3: Roderick decays into madness - his feminine counterpart Madeleine precedes (and leads) him into death - and the House collapses, "ushering" them into the Great Beyond. Of course, Epstein compromises and complicates all this with his changes --- but that's another discussion...
I adored EVERYTHING in this film apart from the bewildering change to the ending (spoilers):
....the Ushers survive???? There is no fall??? Utterly baffled.
Yes, it is strange that the director Jean Epstein chose to modify Poe's tale at the end. As far as I can tell, no one knows why...