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Luis Buñuel left the shooting of 7be Fall of the House of Usher [La chute de la maison Usher, 1928], where he worked as an assistant to director Jean Epstein, because he thought the French cinema avant-garde and the way it worked were pretentious. The ongoing disagreements regarding the adaptation, and about how new cinema was meant to be, made him leave Epsteins project. But what Epstein intended by adapting The Fall ofthe House of Usher to film went beyond a mere translation of Romantic or crepuscular themes. Epstein combined a series of resources for creating a story from Edgar Allan Poe with a set of film images so that the resulting aesthetics adapted to the changes modernity had produced in the perceptive human system. With its background of poetic, pseudo-scientific, and philosophical influences, Poe s story helped Epstein build a film focused on the altered states of consciousness caused by modernity. Poe's influence also reveals something that surpasses adaptation, which is that his theoretical and sensitive universe became essential in nurturing Epstein s moving image philosophy.
This adaptation of The Fall of the House of Usher transcends the purpose of formulating an argument in another artistic language. The reference work becomes structure and substance of the artistic conception, the image and the environment of its by-product. Epstein thought literature and film were closer to each other than theater and film because they both allowed the development of subjectivity in a similar way. This tendency seems paradoxical if we consider the nature of film itself, which is mechanical and reproducible, but it is also completely understandable if we realize that, for Epstein, this medium became an instrument to reveal something beyond the image and the reproduced object through extreme close-ups and changes in the speed of movement, especially through slow motion. And it is also understandable if we comprehend that, due to its nature, film generated for Epstein a stronger impact on the nervous system.
The following discussion will show how Epstein not only collected specific themes from Poe, but also ways to build his films. The director analyzed the changes modernity produced in human perception, such as the mechanization of life, the overcrowding in cities, the acceleration of several means of transportation and communication,...