The Fall of the House of Usher

Petr Čepek reads E.A. Poe and Švankmajer throws in a sequence of images that have little to do with the plot and it is up to the viewer's imagination how to deal with it. Since I’m giving it a three-star rating, apparently my imagination ends where Švankmajer's only begins. Short and weird, it didn't even appeal to me very much emotionally, although I like Jan Švankmajer's work very much. (24/08/2003)

Jan Švankmajer conceived the famous story of the horror fiction classic by Edgar Allan Poe in his own way as a highly stylized animated play without live characters. At the beginning of the film, a large gloomy house appears, and then the camera dives into a labyrinth of corridors and rooms where a coffin moves, and the atmosphere of decay of a human abode is expressed through the movement of matter, the crumbling of walls, a view of a swamp, and last but not least, an artistic color scheme in dark shades of gray and brown. It is accompanied by commentary from Petr Čepek. It is a noticeably sensory film with a ballad-like atmosphere. Overall impression: 90%. (21/01/2009)

This is even better than The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope. The Fall of the House of Usher exceeded my expectations, although I could not really get on very well with Petr Cepek's performance. Not that he was absolutely terrible, but sometimes he spoke too slowly and sometimes too quickly, to the point where he was almost unintelligible – although it did not adversely affect the action of the scenes. Cepek was better at the end, so that is the only such average thing about this beautiful short film. Svankmajer once again demonstrates how he can successfully combine Edgar Allan Poe's short story with other, historical short stories, as he did with the aforementioned The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope. In this movie, Svankmajer’s ideas are voiced by Cepek, as he recounts the miserable mental anguish suffered by both Usher and his sister, whom Usher buried alive. Cepek portrays the narrator who visits Usher in person, and who faithfully describes his feelings about the house, its surroundings, and Usher and his sister. When you hear that Usher was sitting on his chair, his back to the door, the whole time and swaying erratically, you know something suspenseful is about to happen. Only the climax will give you the answer to what is really behind the veil of truth. Then you shall finally find out what it means to be consumed by the notion of retribution for what you have done every day. (07/03/2009)