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The Fall of the House of Usher
The first of Švankmajer's 'tactile experiments', chosen partly because the title was on an official list of 'approved' texts. In this version there are no humans, just a glimpse of a live raven as the camera roams around an eerie derelict house.
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Overview
The director stated, 'The effect of Poe's stories does not reside in their plot, but in his ability to evoke feelings of horror that emanate from the inner being of the characters. He succeeds in describing the most intimate reactions of the human soul to that primal horror that rises up through our unconscious for which the situations are simply a kind of explosive trigger'.
See also Jan Švankmajer's other short films, The Ossuary, The Castle of Otranto and The Pendulum, The Pit and Hope.
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