The Fall of the House of Usher

Based on one of the best-known horror short stories by the great American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, this short film is – quite rightly – considered an iconic work of American independent cinema. With its fragmented and hazy narrative drive, similar to that employed by the unconscious to direct our dreams, The Fall of the House of Usher watches on as a traveler arrives at the Usher family mansion where the twins Roderick and Madeline reside as if embalmed alive. In the space of just 13 minutes, this film by Watson and Webber (who decided to adapt the short story for the screen without having read it in years, drawing instead on its essence as this inhabited – or rather haunted – their memories) wholly captures the atmosphere of morbidity and death, of cursed beauty and Gothic grandeur that makes the work of Poe so deathless.

Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Melville Webber, J.S. Watson, Jr

Script: Based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe

Cinematography: Melville Webber, J.S. Watson, Jr

Actors: Herbert Stern, Hildegarde Watson, Melville Webber

Format: HD

Color: B/W

Production Country: USA

Production Year: 1928

Duration: 12'

Contact: Light Cone

Melville Webber

Melville Webber pursued parallel careers in art history, archeology, poetry, art, and motion pictures. He is primarily known for collaborating on films with James Sibley Watson but also assisted Mary Ellen Bute with Rhythm in Light (1934). Soon after, his fortunes shifted, and he suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never recovered (Bruce Posner).

Filmography

1928 The Fall of the House of Usher (short, co-direction)
1930 Tomatoes Another Day (short)
1931 The Eyes of Science (short)
1933 Lot in Sodom (short, co-direction)

J.S. Watson, Jr

Born to wealth, Watson (1894–1982) was considered by many a Renaissance man in each of his chosen fields: medical doctor and researcher, man of letters, preservationist, philanthropist, and filmmaker. After graduating medical school, Watson bought and published The Dial between 1920-29, a literary journal founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1840. By the mid-1920s, he became fascinated with motion pictures and produced a striking series of films, The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Tomatoes Another Day (1930), and The Eyes of Science (1931) among others.