Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall
of the House of Usher” has been adapted in variety of mediums since
its publication in 1839. There have been comics, audio recordings,
artwork, operas and films. The Roger Corman version, House
of Usher (1960), might
perhaps be the most iconic, with the always delightful Vincent Price
as Roderick Usher. However, thirty-two years prior, two silent film
adaptations of Poe’s story were released: Jean Epstein’s La
Chute de la maison Usher
(1928) was made in France while across the sea in America, James
Sibley Watson and Melville Webber co-created a short, thirteen minute
version simply called The
Fall of the House of Usher
(1928).
The Watson-Webber Usher
is perhaps an overlooked incarnation of Poe’s story, but it is an
interesting interpretation, especially when taken in tandem with an
alternate music score composed by British martial-industrial group
Hands of Ruin in 2017. The Watson-Webber Usher
is done in a surreal, expressionism style, much akin to German
Expressionism that was developing concurrently during the same
decade. Martial-industrial music itself draws heavily from futurism
which was being developed in Europe a decade before. The
Watson-Webber Usher,
with the Hands of Ruin soundtrack provides an intriguing
configuration: a gothic story, adapted into an expressionist film,
scored with shades of futurism.
This essay will analyze how the
Hands of Ruin martial-industrial score compliments the filmic version
of House of Usher.
First, this essay will provide details about the Watson-Webber
version of the story. Since it is such a short film, there have been
great artistic and practical liberties taken with the source material
to adapt it to an expressionism film. Second, what martial-industrial
music is, its connection to cinema and details of the Hands of Ruin
project will all be clarified. Finally, leveraging the work of Dennis
Pahl in his essay “Sounding the Sublime: Poe, Burke, and the (Non)
Sense of Language,” it will be illustrated how a martial-industrial
soundtrack compliments Poe’s gothic story via the Watson-Webber
film.
The House that Watson and
Webber Built
Watson-Webber’s The
Fall of the House of Usher
is a surreal short film, starring Watson’s wife Hildegarde as
Madeline Usher, Herbert Stern (an architect who had no previous
acting experience)1
as Roderick, and co-director Webber as a traveler. Per Hildegarde’s
memoirs, the film was shot in the stables near the senior Watson’s
home in Rochester during midwinter.2
Per Hildegarde, “It was Webber who suggested that a movie be made
of the Poe story which, up until then, had never been filmed.”3
The original version of Watson-Webber’s Usher
had no soundtrack, but was later scored by family friend Alec Wilder.
It is this version that can be heard in the Unseen
Cinema boxset release
of the film.
The film begins with transparent and overlaid copies of the first page of Poe’s story moving across, diagonally, and up and down across the screen in a mirrored effect. A traveller arrives at the fog shrouded, silhouetted House of Usher. Inside, both Roderick and Madeline sit down for dinner and drinks. The contents of a covered serving dish – a coffin - are shown to Madeline and she faints. Later, the traveller rings the door bells of the house, summoning Madeline. She wanders the halls in a daze, before fainting again. Images of coffins flutter by as Roderick seals his sister away in a casket. Repeating images of hammers fill the screen, signifying that she is being sealed inside.
Soon after, Roderick too begins
to roam his house, swinging his arm around as if he was still
hammering. Concurrently, a phantom of Madeline also wanders the
halls, her form split into multiple copies as if using a mirrored
effect. Roderick encounters the traveller who shows him a blank book.
At the same time, Madeline’s coffin appears, with the words “Beat,
Beat” (showing that she is much alive) filling the screen as the
traveller turns the pages. Madeline rises from her coffin and flings
herself onto Roderick as the traveller flees into the night.
There’s quite a few
alterations between the Watson-Webber version and the source
material. The narrator of Poe’s story sees their role greatly
reduced to that of the traveller. The filmic version instead focuses
on the relationship between the Usher siblings without much input
from the narrator/traveller. Roderick loses most of his
characterizations, such as his hypochondria, and instead they seem to
be repurposed to Madeline. The setting remains the same, though the
house in the short film is much more sinister. This is no doubt due
to the expressionist art style. The house shares much in common with
set pieces in The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920,
Robert Wiene) with painted shadows and doors and staircases at odd
angles. The Gothic trappings are still there, the core Poe story
still intact, though imagined through a surrealist style.
The House of Ruin
Martial-industrial, a subgenre
of industrial music, has a deep relationship with cinema. The genre
freely samples dialogue and sounds from various films, compose songs
specifically about films and filmmakers, and even compose their own
soundtracks to films.
Sampling dialogue from films and
incorporating them into songs is a long standing practice for
industrial music proper which can at least be traced back to Cabaret
Voltaire in the 1970s.4
There are numerous
examples of martial-industrial projects engaging in the practice. The
following examples do not constitute a comprehensive list of sampling
instances, but it should succinctly convey how ingrained the practice
is for the genre. TSIDMZ samples the final dialogue between Joan of
Arc and God from The
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
(1999, Luc Besson) in “Avatara In Eurasia (Yeni Ceri Mix).” Many
songs off Laibach’s Kapital
album use dialogue lifted from films instead of traditional sung
lyrics, such as Alphaville:
une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution
(1965, Jean-Luc Godard), in “Le Privilege Des Morts,” Lifeforce
(1985, Tobe Hooper) in “Young Europa pts 1-10,” and THX-1138
(1971, George Lucas) in “Regime Of Coincidence, State Of Gravity.”
Von Thronstahl’s “Polar-Expedition” samples The
Thing From Another World
(1951, Christian Nyby) and “The Whole Great World in Flames”
samples Mulholland
Drive (2001, David
Lynch). Dernière Volonté samples Klaus Kinski from Aguirre,
the Wrath of God
(1972, Werner Herzog) in “Der Zörn Gottes.” Hrossharsgrani’s
neo-peplum themed album Pro
Liberate Dimicandum Est samples
sword and sandal films 300
and Gladiator
(2000, Ridley Scott) on tracks such as “Never Surrender,” “The
Victory,” and its titular track. Kreizweg Ost, a project strongly
aligned to cinema, samples Der
Untertan (1951,
Wolfgang Staudte) in “Für Kaiser, Gott Und Vaterland” and
Mädchen in Uniform
(1931, Leontine Sagan) in “Eiserne Menschen.” There are, of
course, numerous others instances of martial-industrial music
sampling filmic sources.
The second relationship the
genre has with cinema is in regards to its actual texts. Many
martial-industrial bands pay lip service to cinema by appearing on or
creating themed releases, or pen songs that honour different films,
directors and actors (with Leni Riefenstahl being a popular choice).
Other projects even overtly state the influence cinema has on them
on. The compilation albums Riefenstahl
and Leni Riefenstahl
100 - Geliebt, Verfolgt Und Unvergessen
both pay homage to Leni Riefenstahl, and feature martial acts such as
Von Thronstahl, Allerseelen and Turbund Sturmwerk. Allerseelen has a
7” release titled Alle
Lust Will Ewigkeit / Traumlied
dedicated to Riefenstahl and features pictures of her from Das
Blaue Licht (1932,
Leni Riefenstahl) and Der
Heilige Berg (1926,
Arnold Fanck) on its packaging. Gerhard Hallstatt makes references to
the influence of both Kenneth Anger and Riefenstahl in his work in
his book Blutleuchte.
Von Thronstahl’s song “Tiefland (version)” is homage to
Tiefland
(1954, Leni Riefenstahl).
Finally, and most important to
this essay, there are instances where martial-industrial acts have
composed scores for films. The most famous is no doubt Laibach’s
score for Iron Sky
(2012, Timo Vuorensola) a film about Nazis from the Moon that want to
take over Earth. British group In the Nursery has made film scoring
an art as they have provided alternative scores (which they call
their Optical Music Series) to nine (mostly silent-era) films: An
Ambush of Ghosts
(1993, Everett Lewis [lost film]), Asphalt
(1929, Joe May), The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920,
Robert Wiene), Electric
Edwardians (films from
the Mitchell and Kenyon company), The
Fall of the House of Usher
(1928, Jean Epstein), Hindle
Wakes (1927, Maurice
Elvey), Man with a
Movie Camera (1929,
Dziga Vertov), A Page
of Madness (1926,
Teinosuke Kinugasa) and The
Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer). In the Nursery has also licensed some of
their music to films, such as Gran
Torino (2008, Clint
Eastwood), The Aviator
(2004, Martin Scorsese), and The
Manchurian Candidate (2004,
Jonathan Demme), with choice cut tracks being collected on their
compilation Music to
Make Movies To. So
infatuated with cinema, they have even composed soundtracks to
imaginary films, as is the case with their Stormhorse
album.
Following in the same vein as In
the Nursery, Colin Z. Robertson’s Hands of Ruin project has a
similar interest in the scoring of silent films, having done so not
only with the Watson and Webber’s Usher,
but also their follow up film, Lot
in Sodom (1933).
When Worlds Collide: The
Martial and Gothic Sounds of Poe
Dennis Pahl asks in his essay
“Sounding the Sublime: Poe, Burke, and the (Non) Sense of
Language,” what role sounds play in Poe’s stories and how are
they used to achieve his “aesthetic goals.”5
He posits that “one of the central aims of Poe’s aesthetics” is
the “pure elevation of the soul” via “the excitement of the
senses.”6 Pahl
points out that “sound plays a crucial role in Poe’s work …
because of its ability to produce sensory effects” for both “reader
and character alike.”7
Looking at “The Fall of the House of Usher” Pahl notes that the
house is “one of unsettling sounds and physical and psychological
instability.”8
For example, Pahl suggests that Roderick’s guitar playing is a
source of melancholy and a “sense of psychological
disorientation.”9
Pahl posits that “Poe makes
efforts to dramatize the way sounds become instrumental to, and often
underlies, the power of words.”10
Pahl calls attention to the sequence of when the narrator reads
Roderick “The Mad Trist” as Madeline rises from her tomb,11
with sounds such as
a “most unusual screaming or grating sound” which occurs
concurrently as the dragon is bludgeoned and emitting “a shriek so
horrid and harsh”.12
Pahl concludes with “the power of language, and of the sublime
sounds coming from that language, ends up not only giving vitality to
dead matter, but also bringing the being the nerve-shattering
experience that leads to and includes the house’s thunderous
fall.”13
The question now becomes have
the sounds that Poe wrote on paper been successfully interpreted by
the martial-industrial sounds of Hands of Ruin in the Watson-Webber
Usher?
Watson and Webber go to great lengths to replicate Poe’s sound in
their silent film, especially at the end when, as Madeline leaves her
encasement, the screen is filled with texts that read “crack,”
“ripped,” and “scream.” The words don’t simply appear on
the screen, but they flutter or jolt about, sometimes with letters
upside down, sometimes backwards, with a variety of striking
typefaces. This sequence perfectly replicates on screen what Poe was
trying to accomplish in his text.
Hands of Ruin, on the other hand, needs to juggle both the Poe text and the images from the Watson-Webber film to fully capture Poe’s usage of sound. Per Robertson of Hands of Ruin:
I used a mixture of acoustic and electronic sounds throughout the soundtrack. The film has one foot in the Gothic world of Poe and one in the modern and abstract world of experimental cinema. The mixture of old and modern sounds therefore seemed appropriate.14
In the Hands of Ruin version,
the film starts off with a low ambient hum that is found in drone and
dark ambient music. As the traveller on horseback approaches the
House of Usher a throbbing, rhythmic percussion is added. In a
martial-industrial sense, this is quite apropos: the silhouetted
traveler on horse back does have a military image about him, as if he
is a scout or a cavalrymen. In a sense, the traveller is invading the
House of Usher for only when he arrives does the sequence of events
(Madeline fainting, being sealed away, etc.) commence. When Madeline
drinks from her glass and is shown the coffin in the serving tray,
the percussion escalates, becoming more bombastic, complimenting the
high-stakes nature of the scene.
In the next sequence, Hands of
Ruin incorporates diegetic music in the form of bells: as the
traveller arrives at the door, he pulls a cord to ring the door bell.
Of course, it isn’t one bell that is rang, but a multitude of them.
Even when the action has moved on past the traveller ringing the
bells, the sound/music repeats a few more time, in essence shifting
from diegetic to non-diegetic. This adds to both the surrealism and
the unease of the sequence; the Hands of Ruin bells then become both
the practical sound effect as well as part of the music, both of
which lure and disorient Madeline. Hands of Ruin takes advantage of
blending the music into a diegetic source a second time as the many
hammers rain down on Madeline’s coffin. In these sequences, the
martial drumming in the score not only compliments the action via the
rhythm, but can be inferred as to coming from the hammers as well.
It is the final, climatic
sequence of when Madeline leaves her tomb that is the most important
to both the original Poe text as well as the Watson-Webber version,
and the Hands of Ruin soundtrack captures the sound for this sequence
perfectly. As the various words fill the screen, the hands of Ruin
becomes its most bombastic and jarring yet. The sequences of
staircases moving upwards like gears have both a “gear-like” and
“marching” effect to them, which compliments the martial and the
industrial qualities of the score. The rhythm becomes more sustained
and more intense as Madeline “marches” to Roderick’s quarters.
This sequence is all about movement, and the inherent nature of
martial-industrial music is the idea of marching forward. One of the
effects of martial drumming in the era of antiquity was the
destabilize the enemy, and such a destabilization occurs in this
sequence: a resurrected Madeline is mad had she throws herself atop
the frightened Roderick. Visually, the sequence is already shocking,
but the Hands of Ruin soundtrack truly brings out the sublime
elements in both the visuals as well as the adapted Poe text.
The end result is that the Hands
of Ruin alternate martial-industrial soundtrack is successful at not
only complimenting the Watson-Webber Usher,
but also capturing the sounds of Poe from his text. While perhaps not
adapted verbatim the various creaks and screams alluded to in the
text, the Hands of Ruin instead concentrates on replicating the power
of Poe’s words as interpreted by Watson and Webber: anguish and
melancholy.
End
Notes
1.
Hildegarde Lasell Watson, The
Edge of the Woods: A Memoir,
(self-pub, 1979), 108-109.
2. Ibid., 108.
3. Ibid.
4.
Simon Reynolds, Rip it
Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984,
(New York: Penguin
Books, 2005), 101.
5.
Dennis Pahl, "Sounding the Sublime: Poe, Burke, and the (Non)
Sense of Language," Poe
Studies 42, no. 1
(2009): 41, accessed July 28, 2018,
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/508844.
6.
Ibid., 42.
7.
Ibid.
8.
Ibid., 47.
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Ibid., 48.
12.
Edgar Allan Poe, The
Fall of the House of Usher (Los
Angeles, CA: Shadowridge Press, 2017), 47.
13.
Pahl, “Sounding the Sublime,” 48.
14.
Colin Z. Robertson, “Soundtracking The Fall of the House of Usher
(1928),” Greatwritersfranzkafka,
last modified February, 2013,
http://greatwritersfranzkafka2.blogspot.com/2013/02/soundtracking-fall-of-house-of-usher.html.
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