This 1928 silent black and white film was directed by Jean Epstein and Luis Bunuel. Bunuel adapted it from Poe's short story of the same name changing a few things.
The film's terrifying black and white images create a parallel but different story than the one written by Poe. Particularly, it surrealistic images evoke an unreflected emotional response. Subtle almost subliminal images evoke a wordless, nameless dread. At the same time it omits some of Poe's most disturbing themes. Omitted are the subtle references to incest. Because it is a silent film the verbal comparison of the house as the head of Roderick is diminished. There are fewer reference to fear of madness.
Roderick Usher has written to his only childhood friend called in this film Alan. Worried about his friend's mental state Alan comes to the Usher estate. Place is really the main character in this film and we see it first: a bleak landscape with its dead trees and tarn. Alan arrives on foot, bags in hand and inquires at the local inn. The customers seem fearful of the name Usher. A woman looks out a window seemingly terrified. No suspenseful music accompanies the arrival as we have become accustomed to in film. Instead, the score is deeply melancholic and recognizably medieval evocative of extreme sadness and suffering.
Alan is dropped off unceremoniously by a man afraid to come too near the Usher house. Gothic and atmospheric, it menaces through the fog. The first thing we see about Roderick is his hands, first open then clenched suggesting potential violence. His eyes gleam with maniacal brilliance. Madeline Usher is glimpsed from far across the room her long velvet dress enclosing her.
Here is a departure from Poe. Madeline is made Roderick's wife not twin sister and he is obsessed with painting her. His actions have a spiritually vampiric quality as he seems to drain the life from her to paint her portrait of which he says when he finishes "it is there that she lives" ( one of the few English language voiceovers translating the French prose which appears). Her portrait appears enthroned in an ivory frame.
When the portrait is completed, Madeline collapses. She is taken to her bed and surrounded by garlands. She wears white and a lengthy bridal veil. Above her bed on the wall is a frenetic painting and a crucifix. Her bed is surrounded by heavy chains as is the stairway. The stairway contains a number of dead trees with all the branches hacked down to stumps. There are many of these surrealistic visual elements in the film. The image of the trees may echo Poe's story where he says the Ushers are all of a direct line of descent with no family branches (Poe's veiled hint of inbreeding). They row her body across a lake and take it underground to a crypt. At first, Roderick does not want Madeline's coffin nailed shut and he voices the idea that she may still be alive but when the doctor nails it shut anyway he does not stop it.
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