Extended Short Subject Remake of Poe's HOUSE OF USHER -Worth seeking out
gortx
Curtis Harrington, who made an amateur short subject of Poe's THE HOUSE OF USHER, returns to the subject in his mature years. A touching and well-done extended…
Curtis Harrington, who made an amateur short subject of Poe's THE HOUSE OF USHER, returns to the subject in his mature years. A touching and well-done extended short subject. Shot as early as 2000, and still making the rounds at film festivals (it is scheduled for Spain's Sitges Film Festival in the fall), USHER was recently screened at an intimate setting in Venice's Sponto Gallery with Director Harrington and Cinematographer Gary Graver in attendance.A young writer comes to seek wisdom from an aging poet (played by Harrington in makeup VERY reminiscent of the most famous portraits of Poe himself!) at his spooky mansion. The writer soon learns not only of Usher's odd mannerisms, but of a phantom-like sister who prowls the grounds. In a bizarre waxworks-like masked ball, a birthday celebration turns deliciously ghoulish. the writer leaves the mansion with a lot of inspiration for his own future works! Taking off from the Roger Corman version of THE HOUSE OF USHER starring Vincent Price (not one of my fave Corman Poe's), Harrington's version is an improvement (perhaps not so coincidentally) because it uses the short film format to tell its tale rather than the rather convoluted plotting of the Corman version. As Usher, Harrington adds a touch of irony and poetry to the performance that overcomes his sometimes awkward acting. And, using his own house as an interior, brings an atmospheric touch to the proceedings. After the screening, Harrington gave his own props to Jean Epstein's silent version (1928) of the tale. Harrington also indicated that he is raising funds to shoot two more Poe stories in order to make up a feature length motion picture Anthology. It will be a film worth seeking out.
★ 7 / 10
Facing mortality
gbill-74877
"Now you understand: we share the same soul." Curtis Harrington's final film, made when he was 74, is a version of Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher,'…
"Now you understand: we share the same soul."
Curtis Harrington's final film, made when he was 74, is a version of Poe's 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' mirroring his first film, made at 14 and while in high school. All these years later it seems perfectly suited to where he was in life, facing his own mortality, sensing faded glory, and yet still having a playful sense of the macabre. It's a rather lugubrious story but that was in keeping with the source, and there are some wonderful shots in the film's climactic moments.
We also get some lovely little musings on artists and poets, such as "You must never forget that the life of the artist is less important than his art." That's something you could see Harrington believed with how he made 'The Wormwood Star' 44 years earlier, putting all of the focus on Marjorie Cameron's art and poems and none on her personal life or beliefs. And yet, "...the line between the two, that's where the mystery lies; it's a maze of ambiguity," something that called to mind 'Fragment of Seeking' or 'Picnic' for how the art reflected the artist's sexuality. Later, while talking about great poets, he has Usher say that poetry must be read in the original, citing an example of Nabokov's struggle to translate Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, because while the poem's meaning could be translated, "the meaning is not the poem." Attempts to dissect art or take it in a literal sense are bound to butcher its aesthetic beauty or miss its deeper, more profound truths. These are small little things in the film and aren't grand summations of Harrington's beliefs or anything, but I liked thinking about them in light of his body of work.
5.5/10
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