Edgar allan poe movie biography marilyn

Director: Jean Epstein

The stark black-and-white photography of this French film, based on Poe’s short story, emphasises the ghostliness of the desolate mansion in which it’s set, a contrast to the ornate richness of Roger Corman’s version released 32 years later.

Abuse of the cat gradually escalates to abuse of his girlfriend. The Bloodhound has no major jolts, just a steady sense of foreboding. Shot like an episode ripped straight out of a soap opera, it follows a woman (Adrienne Barbeau) attempting to steal her ailing husband’s (Bingo O’Malley) fortune with the help of her former boyfriend (Ramy Zada). Director Patrick Picard updates ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ for contemporary times – gone is the mansion, replaced by a luxury modern home, but both residences are but gilded cages for their residents.

As the unnamed protagonist fixates on plotting to kill an old man living in his building, the medium allows for visual markers of his madness – the film cuts to a smashed white jug, the same colour as the old man’s clouded-over eye that had been tormenting his thoughts moments ago, a neat encapsulation of his rage’s cause and effect.

By the time the stillness gives way to a murderous frenzy, it’s impossible to look away.

Director: Patrick Picard

A masked man slithers out of a lake, crawls into a house and conceals himself inside a closet. Instead of being trapped in prison, as in Poe’s story, the protagonist finds himself mired in a troubled family history.

His use of slow-motion gives the film a trancelike effect.

As the screen cuts to solid black for one sequence, moments stretch out into an eternity. A man (John Kerr) arrives at the castle of his recently deceased sister (Barbara Steele) and finds that her husband (Vincent Price), though shaken, is unable to provide any satisfactory answers about the illness that killed her.

The camera dizzyingly swirls around a winding staircase, mimicking the drunk Fortunato’s impaired balance as he descends it. Painting his protagonist as a Satanist also allows him to imbue the text with theological questions designed to prod at the paradoxes of faith.

For all its elaborate, theatrical staging and grand declarations, however, the film doesn’t lean into camp despite lines such as, “This is your day of deliverance, remember?” The result is more akin to that of Shakespearean tragedy.

Griffith’s silent film isn’t coy about its inspirations – its protagonist (Henry B. Walthall) finds a reflection of his besotted feelings for a young woman (Blanche Sweet) in Poe’s poem ‘Annabel Lee’ and later, denied his uncle’s (Spottiswoode Aitken) permission to marry her, draws murderous inspiration from Poe’s short story ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’.

Poe’s BereniceShortStory2013UnderShortStory “The Tell-Tale Heart”2013LigeiaShortStory2014CaskShortStory “The Cask of Amontillado”2014NevermoreShortPoem “The Raven”2015Cask of Amontillado, TheShortStory2015BereniceShortStory2016Raven, The (by Edgar Allan Poe)ShortPoem2017Cask of Amontillado, TheShortStory2017Oval Portrait, TheShortStory2017AmontilladoShortBased on the Story2018Lady in the WallShortBased on a Story2018Darkest Hour, TheShortBased on the Poem “The Raven”2020-IRaven, TheShortPoem2020Masque of the Red Death, TheShortStory2020-IIRaven, TheShortPoem2021LenoreShortBased on the Poem “The Raven”