Jean Epstein | La Chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) / 1928

painting his wife into her grave

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jean Epstein (screenwriter and director, based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe) La Chute de la maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) / 1928

 

Born in 1897 in Warsaw, then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire, to a French-Jewish father and a Polish mother, Jean Epstein moved with his mother to Switzerland after the death of his father in 1908 where he began studies in medicine at the University of Lyon in France. In Lyon he worked as secretary and translator for Auguste Lumière, who with his brother Louis, were the often-described as the “inventors” of cinema.

    In 1922 he started directing his own films, the first with Louis Pasteur, but soon working in a manner associated with “French Impressionism” or what is described as the “first cinematic avant-garde” which also included figures such as Louis Delluc, Germaine Dulac, Marcel L’Herbier, and Abel Gance, the latter of whose wife appears as Madeline in La Chute de la maison Usher.

     Before Usher Epstein made 15 films, most of which had long been forgotten but many of which have since become available on DVD.

      Epstein was also a noted film theorist which can already be evidenced in his early 1923 movie Cœur fidèle in which he sought to film a simple tale of love and violence in a manner “to win the confidence of those, still so numerous, who believe that only the lowest of melodrama can interest the public.” Epstein hoped to create “a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy.”

     Epstein’s major theoretical concepts were centered on his rather complex notion of photogénie which, on one level, spoke of film as a medium that transcends its photochemical/mechanical essence, which, in the right hands becomes art. Rather than being simply a cultural representation of events and characters, he sought through expression—the close-up (his particular emphasis), movement, temporality, rhythm, and other augmentation of senses such as musical accompaniment and sound (even before he worked in that medium), etc—to transform a narrative representation of events into art.

       Recognizing that some filmmakers would not and could not abandon naturalistic representation and purely photographical aspects of cinema, he also perceived that some audiences would not be able to recognize aspects of photogénie, separating his viewers into those who could see and comprehend the cinematic augmentations to the basic narrative and those who could not.

       This is truly a quite brilliant distinction, which does not necessarily demean those who cannot see what he is attempting to reveal to them, but establishes a differentiation of viewers which ultimately explains why filmmakers would later be able to create devices of coding that could mean somethings to certain audience members that left others in the dark. I am not sure that  Epstein even realized the ramifications of his distinctions, but he proved to be absolutely correct in his assessment about those for whom he was making his films, a realization which would become of special importance for LGBTQ viewers in the near future when, in the US in particular, the Hays censors begin to look for obvious references to sexuality, and in particular, homosexuality.

        For Epstein, moreover, photogénie was not just something that existed in the film. It included an approach or a way of thinking about film. Indeed, it does not literally exist in the film except metaphorically as a way designed to encourage us to take a more active part in the cinematic experience resulting in a deeper gaze into the screen.

        As I recently explained it to a friend: I prefer films that seem to be slightly askew, which are not easily assimilable. Sometimes what later become my favorite films are ones about which I first feel frustrated, at times even angry about for not doing what most other films do or even quite accomplishing what they first set out to achieve. They move off into inexplicable directions, change lanes in the midst of where one thinks the narrative might be driving them. Yet still they’re ravishingly beautiful, revelatory, the camera sometimes taking me into new corners of a frame where I have never before been. Generally, to come to “understand” such films, I have to watch again.  And again. Have to ask myself and the film questions. And then see it all over once more.

       In fact, not all films are able to incorporate photogénie. particularly if they were highly driven by plot. Cinema, he argued, was not screened theater, and the film, if possible, should strip away narrative and story to get to the heart of the medium. It was not that he was determined to dismiss human drama and emotion, but rather seek out from a minimal narrative the same emotions. And in this sense he was attempting to create a film that was neither like mainstream directors such as Louis Feuillade or the advocates of pure cinema such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, or Fernand Léger.

     As Robert Farmer in his 2010 essay on Epstein in Senses of Cinema—many of whose ideas are those I have expressed in my comments above—summarizes, quoting Epstein: “There are no stories, there never have been stories. There are only situations, having neither head nor tail; without beginning, middle or end,” which are not close to not even having stories since nothing very much happens.

     But, of course, a great deal does happen in a work such as Epstein’s La Chute de la maison Usher—just not to whom you have expected and how you might have imagined things might happen. Working with Luis Buñuel as his assistant editor, Epstein combined surrealist concepts with expressionistic elements to create one of his most important works, and the one for which he is still most remembered.

     First of all, Epstein tosses out certain aspects of Poe’s story and incorporates a few elements from his “The Oval Portrait.” In his film Roderick Usher (Jean Debucourt) is married to Madeline (Marguerite Gance) and she is no longer his twin sister, thus eradicating any need to for him to pursue the issues of incest. If this tactic appears to solidify Usher’s heterosexuality, Epstein also confuses the issue by introducing yet another element that seems to come from Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray—itself a somewhat sexually ambiguous story since the obviously gay hero seems primarily to be exploring liaisons with women throughout the fiction, while obviously, simultaneously destroying their reputations and ending their lives. In this case Roderick spends much of the film painting a portrait of his wife, an activity evidently demanded of each Usher heir before the death of their wives, another odd Usher tribal tradition. In this case, however, it seems to be his very act of painting that is the cause of Madeline’s catalepsy; the more he paints her, the sicker she becomes. It is as if he is drawing the essence out of her in order to turn her into a work of art—which, if you recall, is what Dorian’s artist friend Basil Hallwood accomplished by painting the young hero, drawing his soul out of his body and entombing it within the painting.

       Since Epstein has no need of a storyteller, Roderick’s visitor (Charles Lamy) is pushed off into the sidelines as a mere token of the role which the director’s camera will replace and we, the audience, are the ones whom it is attempting to engage. The friend, once he has been summoned, seems suddenly to be an intrusion in Roderick’s life, and despite serving him a dinner Usher refuses to join him in dining and soon sends him off on a walk around the grounds for his health. During the period after Madeline’s burial Roderick hardly bothers to see or talk to his friend, and when the storm rises, Usher sends him into his own room to read so that he will not need to witness the scene of Madeline’s resurrection since it may disturb him too much.

       Roderick is not only obsessed by his painting—and not, we realize with the painting’s subject—but is almost irritated by the presence of the invited guest. But then, why shouldn’t he want to be alone since he is quite literally through that activity killing off his wife. No longer suffering the immediate hypersensitivity of Poe’s Roderick, this Usher seems quite aware of the effects of his actions, enjoying himself in the process.

       Yet something is terribly amiss as the curtains wave in and out; other people such as the doctor he abhors, gather round him in an attempt to deter him or explain his actions, and the winds wind around the vast spaces of the almost empty mansion as if to remind us that the entire house, like its master, is possessed. As film critic Richard Scheib describes it: “The interior of the House of Usher is all vast, empty sets—like a soundstage with giant high walls and random pieces of furniture placed in the middle of the bare space around which the action occurs.”

      When Madeline does appear at brief intervals it is nearly always when the guest is not present, and she is so very frail and white that at certain moments she fades in and out of frame as if she is a disappearing woman, which of course is presumably what Roderick desires. Scheib notes the fact that “Madeleine is killed when Roderick obsessively transfers too much of her lifeforce into the picture.”

     If in Poe’s telling we had first to ask what Madeline represents in relationship Roderick—his other hidden self—in this case he are forced to inquire why does he wish to get rid of his “other,” particularly since she represents his other half, not precisely his “double.” The question seems to boil down to whether he’s attempting to rid himself of his heterosexuality or a homosexuality of which he’s ashamed. Has he invited his friend in order to be able to fully return the many hugs and touches the other awards to Roderick?

     In any event, he soon finishes the portrait and declares his wife dead. In this case, however, the worry is not some vague fear that her body might be stolen by graverobbers, but that Madeline is not yet truly dead, that his artifice is not as totally effective as he has imagined it is. And the friend seems to be equally aware of that possibility. As the doctor insistently proceeds to nail up the coffin, Roderick forbids it. And as in the fiction, Roderick determines to bury her in the family crypt, which, in this instance, does not truly appear to be within the house but across the lake on an island a ways from the mansion itself.

    In one of the film’s most surreal scenes Madeline’s funeral cortege is witnessed as the four pallbearers carry her down a row of wind-ridden trees, the image superimposed with candles, while remnants of her burial gown, which looks more like a wedding dress, trail in the wind behind.

 

     Even more terrifying are the images once they have laid her coffin in the crypt of Roderick’s hammer-happy doctor beginning the process of nailing the cover to the bottom of the coffin, while his friend holds him back, hugging and caressing him deeply to calm him from attempting to stop the necessary process. Here we actually do see an expression of deep physical love played out on the screen that goes on for several restless seconds. And suddenly it does appear that Roderick might be able to engage in a true relationship with his “friend.”

      But guilt now blocks their apparent love for one another, as Usher finally begins to show signs of the hypersensitivity he felt from the beginning in Poe’s version, the title card reading “The slightest sound exacerbated him.”

     As the storm rises, he joins his friend momentarily in his bedroom, and again they seem to hold one another by the window, perhaps more in fear that in love, but nonetheless joining in bodily communication. Yet Usher soon retreats, knowing what is about to happen, demanding, as I said above, that his friend read so as to not to have to encounter the specter he is about to.

      After a nearly interminable period with the pages of books flapping through air, objects skittering down the hallways, and the return again and again of images of the ticking clockwork alternating with close-ups of an almost smiling Roderick, opening accepting the inevitable, Madeline finally does appear, Usher shouting out that he knew what he and his friend had done, “We have buried her alive!”

     At this point in a clear and purposely crude mockup of the Usher mansion, fire breaks out, walls begin to collapse. We see the friend retreating, but we also witness images of Roderick lifting up Madeline as if attempting to escape the cataclysm. We vaguely see them on what appears to be outside the estate, but we can’t be certain. Yet, it seems that possibly they have escaped. The fact doesn’t truly matter, however, since he has not been able to escape his doom. He has not been able to further embrace his friend and is tied to the living-dead woman in his arms forever.

     Accordingly, it appears that Epstein has shifted Poe’s tale of a being locked within the closet of his own confused sexuality into a story about a man attempting unsuccessfully to escape just such an entombment. The ending may appear to be the same, but at least Epstein’s Roderick Usher tried desperately to become a man freed by his own artistry, to re-engage with the world outside of his closed off existence, refusing to passively embrace the terrible oppression of marriage and family duties.

 

Los Angeles, September 4, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2021).