Prologue to Epstein's Chute de la maison Usher

A prologue is not a review. It is to be read before watching in order to provide the tools for understanding the film.

I. Jean Epstein

Epstein originally studied to be a doctor, taking biophysics and medicine at the University of Lyons. Passionate about the arts, he turned his attention to literature and literary criticism, writing a treatise on theory of art. He included only a single chapter on cinema.

Shortly after, he turned his whole attention to cinema, publishing Bonjour Cinema (1921), his contribution to film theory when it was yet in its infancy. His theory of cinema developed throughout his career, but remained influenced by the writings of Louis Delluc.

Delluc was a disciple of Lumiere, a theorist in his own right, and worthy of some note as being perhaps the first filmmaker to treat film as a medium for art. Epstein worked with Delluc for some time before going on to make his own films, beginning with Pasteur, a biopic of Louis Pasteur.

It was after this first biopic that Epstein attempted to put his theories into practice, starting with Coeur Fidele, which showed influence primarily of Delluc and Abel Gance. Working with Luis Bunuel, he soon began adapting two Poe stories, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Oval Portrait" as Chute de la maison Usher. Bunuel left production early, however, being unable to agree on how faithful to remain to Poe. Bunuel stated in an interview that Usher is all Epstein's.

II. Situation and Impressionism

Epstein's fidelity was not to the narrative of Poe's story, but to the themes and motifs. In the story, Roderick and Madeline are brother and sister; in the film, they are husband and wife. In the story, the narrator character is Roderick's age; in the film, it is a decrepit old man.

Epstein's disregard of Poe's narrative was motivated by his distaste for narrative in general. His theory of cinema was derived in part from Delluc's theory of the photogenic. Where Delluc believed that even the most atrocious film could be salvaged by a photogenic object, especially a pretty face, Epstein's view of the photogenic is more complex. For Epstein, the photogenic is the essence of cinema itself and narrative is just getting in the way. "I want films in which not so much nothing as nothing very much happens," he wrote. He wants situations rather than stories. Situations where the photogenic can be captured by the camera.

For Epstein, the photogenic is "any aspect of things, beings, or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic reproduction." And the only aspects of things, beings, or souls whose moral value can be increased by cinema are mobile and personal.

By mobile, Epstein means that the object is undergoing variations in space-time, that is, both space and time. Cinema has a fourth dimension that is time and any film that is not 'drawing' in the fourth dimension is a failure.

By personal, Epstein means that the object, whether a person or a thing, has significance transcending the surface, a spirit as it were; and this is a significance earned by its past and predictable future. Epstein gives the example of a close-up of a revolver, which is not just a revolver when so selected by the camera, but is revolver-character insofar as it is itself the impulse to crime, to self-defense, or to remorse for crime. Everything so selected (in a good film) by the camera is made a character thus. Or some possession with sentimental value: it has sentimental value by its history, the memories and emotions attached to it--that is its personality.

While it is only the camera lens that has the power to reveal the photogenic, according to Epstein, the camera requires a director behind it with true personality--an artist, in short. And this artist lends personality to the photogenic discoveries made with the camera. What results is that, "matter is molded and set into relief by personality; all nature, all things appear as a man has dreamed them; that world is created as you think it is... Time hurries on or retreats, or stops and waits for you. A new reality is revealed, a reality for a special occasion, which is untrue to everyday reality..."

Cinema is thus a dreamworld, for Epstein. A machine-produced dream, made up of situations. And these situations of the morally enhanced (deified, archetyped) aspects of mobile, personal reality. A film is thus like a Symbolist poem for Epstein, made up of images endowed with layers of meanings to embody absolute truths and personality; and like a Surrealist painting, magnifying the unseen, unconscious aspects of things in the image.

III. "Based on themes by Edgar Allen Poe"

Poe was an important figure to the Symbolist poets and painters, for the reason that he gave pre-eminence to the inner life of his characters much as the Symbolists sought to render reality representative of the inner. Poe's philosophy of composition involved choosing objects and situations in the real world that reflected the inner life of his characters, hence the raven in "The Raven" and the beating heart in "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Given Epstein's theories of cinema, he and Poe are a perfect match. Epstein engages not Poe's narratives, but his world of symbols, the objects that are invested with the photogenic: the oval portrait with the soul of the woman it depicts trapped inside is here Roderick Usher's obession; the pendulum of the grandfather clock is Poe's pendulum from the pit; Madeline Usher is buried in the tomb of Ligeia, and so on to much of the apparently insignificant details.

The framework of the tale, "The Fall of the House of Usher," provides the grand situation Epstein has to focus on. Enveloped in this situation are all the objects--people and things--to express a surreal dream of Gothic tropes. It is the minds of Poe, his protagonists, and of Epstein, that become the spirit of the images; for which reason did Epstein claim his film is "Based on the themes of Edgar Allen Poe." Whatever infidelities to the narrative(s) Poe constructed are balanced by the fidelity to Poe's themes and vision.

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Watch the film here: http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=9172687785667332165
Enjoy.