The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Let me be honest with you: I wanted to like this one. Jean Epstein's 1928 adaptation of Poe's gothic masterpiece should, on paper, be right up my street. Poe's source material is soaked in dread. Silent cinema at its best can conjure atmosphere that sound films sometimes struggle to match. And the cinematography here, those swirling mists, the distorted mirrors, the expressionistic pools of shadow and light, is genuinely striking in moments. But striking moments do not make a satisfying film, and sitting through this was, if I'm being straight with you, a bit of a chore.

The images are the thing people point to, and fair enough. There's craft in these compositions, a dreamlike quality that you can tell influenced filmmakers for decades after. Epstein clearly understood what a camera could do, how it could tilt and blur and linger to unsettling effect. I'll give him that without hesitation. But a film isn't a gallery exhibition. You need something to connect those images, some emotional or narrative thread to follow, and this is where The Fall of the House of Usher loses me completely.

Whatever story exists here drowns beneath wave after wave of trembling hands, billowing curtains, and characters staring off into the middle distance with expressions that are presumably meant to suggest inner torment. After the fourth or fifth bout of meaningful gazing, I started to feel less haunted and more just... bored. The pacing is so glacial, so committed to its own avant-garde abstraction, that it seems almost actively hostile to the idea of telling a coherent story. I don't think that's a bold artistic choice so much as it is a failure to engage.

And I'll say this about silent films in general: they do ask something of you. Patience, a willingness to read body language and intertitles rather than dialogue, a different gear of attention. I'm fine with that. I've genuinely loved other films from this era, and I reviewed The Docks of New York (1928) not long ago, which came out the same year as this and crackles with life and feeling by comparison. Sternberg managed atmosphere and emotion simultaneously. Epstein seems to have decided they're incompatible.

The version I watched came with English narration delivered in a French accent, which was a peculiar experience in itself. It added a layer of distance that the film honestly didn't need, because it was already keeping me at arm's length with everything else it was doing. The performances, stylised in the way of the era and I'll allow for that, come across as stiff rather than haunting. There's a difference between otherworldly and simply inexpressive, and this crosses that line repeatedly.

The runtime is around sixty minutes, which should be perfectly manageable. It felt twice that. I kept waiting for something to grip me, some moment where the abstraction clicked into genuine feeling, and it never quite arrived. I can appreciate isolated frames from this film the way you might appreciate a photograph on a wall. Actually sitting and watching it as a continuous experience is another matter entirely.

I'm not dismissing its place in film history. It clearly matters as an artefact of French avant-garde cinema, and people who study the period will find things worth examining. But I'm not here to write about what a film means to scholars. I'm here to tell you whether it's worth your evening, and this one, for my money, isn't. Visually interesting in patches, emotionally inert throughout, and a slog from beginning to end.

One star.

Rating: ★  | Year: 1928  | Watched: 2026-03-26

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from France: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
More from the 1920s: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928) · A Throw of Dice (1929)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)