Felt by some of us lovers of the cinema to be a tiny treasure of the silver screen, Jules Dassin's 1941 short feature version of
The Tell-Tale Heart features a manic performance from
Joseph Schildkraut as the apprentice weaver who kills his cruel master, only to be tormented by guilt, in the aural form of his master's still-beating heart.
Edgar Allan Poe didn’t always transfer successfully to screen,
even when dramatised to the utmost in the hands of Roger Corman. And even in Roger
Corman’s hands, plenty needed to be added ― including camp, suspense, romance
and even back stories and new action.
The divide that is being bridged in the filming of Edgar Allan Poe concerns the massive popularity of Poe’s writing. Because of their short length, their memorable titles and
scenes, and the fact that they largely presented a Freudian interior human world,
long before there was any Freud or Freudian analysis, kept the writing of Edgar
Allan Poe valid ― even unto the 1960s ― these facts alone make Poe tempting indeed for any movie producer.
But in Poe stories there is often not a lot of action, but
instead, vortices of interior turmoil. There is sometimes not a lot of
dialogue, but instead doubting turns and descriptions of crummy corners, hysterical
emotions and vast natural, often unseen forces. There are often strong key images, that everything hinges upon ― and sometimes the stories seem to be entirely internal ― a little like this one.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)