#marguerite gance

[anatomicalmartyr]

Marguerite Gance in The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

[weirdlookindog]

Marguerite Gance in La chute de la maison Usher (1928)

[silentagecinema]

1920s ladies: marguerite gance as madeline usher in the fall of the house of usher (1928)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[thewarmestplacetohide]

Dread by the Decade: La chute de la maison Usher

👻 My Kofi ❤️

Source Material: The Fall of the House of Usher and The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe Year: 1928 Genre: Gothic, Supernatural Horror Rating: UR (Suggested: PG) Country of Origin: France Language: Silent Runtime: 1 hour 1 minute

Director: Jean Epstein Cinematographer: Georges Lucas, Jean Lucas Writers: Luis Buñuel, Jean Epstein Cast: Jean Debucourt, Marguerite Gance, Abel Gance, Charles Lamy

Plot: A man grows obsessed with having his ailing wife's portrait painted, unaware that it's draining her life.

Review: Though its story lacks the edge of its source materials, the film is more than saved by surreal visuals and a laudable lead.

Overall Rating: 4/5

Story: 3/5 - Interesting, though Epstein sadly removed the source materials' darker elements to make it more palatable.

Performances: 4.5/5 - Debucourt shines as Roderick Usher, expertly capturing his descent into desperation and madness.

Cinematography: 4.5/5 - Gorgeous, expressionistic framing, close-ups, and tracking shots.

Editing: 4/5 - Purposefully and effectively disjointed to make the film feel dream-like.

Music: 2.5/5 - Sometimes at odds with what's on screen.

Effects: 4/5 - Interesting early use of slow motion. Superimposition is employed well to simulate Madeline's life being drained.

Sets: 3.5/5 - The exterior of the decayed manor looks wonderful. Interiors vary in quality, with some being obvious sets.

Costumes & Make-Up: 4/5

[marbleindex1]

Marguerite Gance in The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

[byneddiedingo]

Ivy Close and Séverin-Mars in La Roue (Abel Gance, 1923)

Cast: Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close, Gabriel de Gravone, Pierre Magnier, Georges Térof, Gil Clary, Max Maxudian. Screenplay: Abel Gance. Cinematography: Gaston Brun, Mac Bujard, Léonce-Henri Burel, Maurice Duverger. Art direction: Robert Boudrioz. Film editing: Marguerite Beaujé, Abel Gance. Music: Arthur Honegger.

The plot is operatic, the technique is novelistic, and the aim is tragic. Abel Gance's La Roue (aka The Wheel) never satisfies on any of those counts, but it's not without a lot of effort on his part as well as his actors and technicians. At its premiere, it ran for somewhere between seven-and-a-half and nine hours (depending on which source you trust), spread over three days, and was a success, earning praise from Jean Cocteau among others. Gance then produced a cut that ran for two and a half hours, which was the version most people saw for many years until film historians set about to reproduce the original. That restoration is the one I sat through for sevenish hours spread over four nights on the Criterion Channel. I have seen seven-hour movies (and some that seemed like it) before, most notably Bela Tarr's Sátántangó (1994). The urge I usually have afterward is to try to justify the expenditure of time, typically by categorizing it as an "immersive experience." That approach works with films like Tarr's, which has a grounded reality to it that provides a look into a human existence other than my own, which is the aim of all narrative art. It's less easily justified when the film is as preposterous as Gance's is in many ways. I said it was operatic in its plotting, and here it's useful to think of the melodramatic excesses of works like Verdi's Il Trovatore, based on a florid Spanish play that involves foundlings, mistaken identities, and people torn between passion and duty. La Roue has a foundling, survivor of a train wreck, rescued by a railroad engineer who raises her along with his own son, allowing both of them to believe they are siblings, which works until she blossoms into a young woman and first the father and then the son realize they're in love with her. The treatment of this story evokes, as others have noted, the novels of Victor Hugo and Émile Zola, but it also reminds me of Thomas Hardy's works, in which fate (which Hardy calls "hap," or the blind workings of chance) forestalls any efforts by the protagonists to chart their own course. And since the story involves a kind of incestuous passion, the legend of Oedipus comes to mind, and sure enough Gance quotes Sophocles in one of the intertitles. But of course it's a movie, and that necessitates a good deal of spectacle, starting with the train wreck that sets the plot in motion. La Roue is never dull, and it's sometimes emotionally affecting, but it's not an opera (although Arthur Honegger's score suggests its potential in that regard) and it's not a novel or a tragedy. It's a movie, and one with a great deal to watch if you're willing to commit seven hours to it, but I think you have to be devoted to learning about the craft of movie-making to profit much from it.   

[aultimagarotadofilme]

Marguerite Gance — (20/06/1894 — 12/04/1986)

Local de Nascimento: Neuilly-sur-Seine (França)

Atriz

Filmes:

A Queda da Casa de Usher (La Chute De La Maison Usher /1928)

[draculasdaughter]

La chute de la maison Usher (1928) dir. Jean Epstein

[lairreparablefugadeltiempo]

La chute de la maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)

[frankendavis]

...these are a few of my favorite “things”.

A montage I made and digitally painted several years ago.

[anatomicalmartyr]

some of the Looks of all time

[weirdlookindog]

Marguerite Gance in La chute de la maison Usher (1928)

[genevieveetguy]

The Fall of the House of Usher (La chute de la maison Usher), Jean Epstein (1928)

[moviessilently]

Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) A Silent Film Review

Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) A Silent Film Review

Dark and stormy nights, people buried alive in vaults… Why yes, this is another Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, this time from the French Impressionists and featuring some very grim material indeed.

(more…)

[fourorfivemovements]

Films Watched in 2019:

82.  La Chute de la Maison Usher/The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) - Dir. Jean Epstein