THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER 2015

France | 1928 | 64 min |
Director: Jean Epstein
Cast: Jean Debucourt; Marguerite Gance; Charles Lamy

With live score by Irene Buckley

Price: €16/14 (conc)

A visual masterpiece of the macabre, Epstein’s Gothic fantasy is a viscerally compelling and profoundly unsettling meditation on the relationship between life, art and death. As his beloved wife Madeleine succumbs to a mysterious illness, Sir Roderick Usher invites his old friend Allan to his castle for support. He arrives to find Roderick consumed with completing a painting of Madeline, something that seems to draw the life out of her with every brush stroke he makes. Once the picture is finished, Madeleine collapses, and her physician confirms she is dead. After a solemn funeral, a ghostly presence invades the house of Usher...
Composer Irene Buckley has created an ethereal lament for voice, electronics and organ (James McVinnie) to accompany cinema’s first true Gothic horror. Buckley’s exquisite pieces traverse a dynamic region between classical and contemporary composition. Her acclaimed scores for silent film have astounded audiences at festivals internationally and been described as “pure cinema magic, a once in a lifetime experience that sent shivers down the spine” (A. Hunter, director, Glasgow Film Festival).