goatdogblog: Silent Sunday: <i>La Chute de la maison Usher</i> (1928)

About Me

I write reviews for Goatdog's Movies; edit and/or proofread circuit court decisions, advertising copy, and the occasional book; run the projector at and help program films for a revival house in Chicago; help make documentaries at an indie film studio; and, recently, make artistamps.

Recent Reviews

There Will Be Blood (2007) 4.5 goats
Juno (2007) 3.5 goats
The Golden Compass (2007) 2 goats

Recent Music

The Soft Boys, 1976-1981. While punk was exploding messily (not that there's anything wrong with that), the Soft Boys were quietly and quirkily inventing "alternative" music.

What I'm listening to now

Recent Books

The USA Trilogy by John Dos Passos. I'm on volume 2, 1919. Parts of it are the best thing I've ever read, and parts of it make my eyes glaze over.

Movies on Trial: The Legal System on the Silver Screen by Anthony Chase. A really well-crafted film history that necessarily delves into the history of the legal system. Pretty enlightening stuff.

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May 25, 2008

Silent Sunday: La Chute de la maison Usher (1928)

I watched this surrealist masterpiece late at night, in the dark, by myself. It's among the scariest movies I've ever watched, and is surely the most effective at dragging you into its nightmare. I couldn't sleep that night, and Jean Debucourt's haunted, blank stare and a wispy white lace dragging through the water cropped up in my dreams on several subsequent nights.

But the real nightmare is that this appears to be the only Jean Epstein film available on DVD in the United States.

Read the full review.

(I'm using the French title to distinguish this from James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber's version of Poe's story, which was also released in 1928 and which, according to Nick, is the 24th best film of all time.)

Posted by mike, May 25, 2008 2:23 PM

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