Welcome to Commentary Commentary, the place we sit and hearken to filmmakers discuss their work, then share essentially the most fascinating elements. In this version, Rob Hunter revisits Roger Corman’s first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation along with his commentary for The Fall of the House of Usher.
We misplaced a legend over the weekend with the passing of filmmaker Roger Corman. Writer, producer, director, part-time actor — the movie lover labored tirelessly to get movies made, assist movies attain audiences, and provides elevate to new voices. From Jonathan Demme to Jack Nicholson, from Ron Howard to Pam Grier, from Joe Dante to William Shatner, the abilities who acquired their begin with the king are quite a few. He churned out lots of of movies right here at dwelling whereas additionally working to carry non-English movies and filmmakers to the eye of American audiences.
The man liked motion pictures with each bone in his physique.
In 1960, he kicked off a handful of Edgar Allan Poe variations for American International Pictures, and he began with The Fall of the House of Usher. Corman recorded a number of commentary tracks over time, and we’ve chosen this one to cowl right now as a celebration of his achievements, pursuits, and abilities. Now maintain studying to see what I heard on the commentary for…
The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
Commentator: Roger Corman (director, producer)
1. The opening photographs of a smoky panorama have been “the result of a forest fire in the Hollywood Hills.” He discovered it to be the right intro as Poe’s tales are “stories of the unconscious mind,” and that “we should not see reality.” To that finish, Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon, who additionally handed away this weekend) approaching the Usher home by means of the burnt area is the one shot of the actual world with every little thing else being shot on the levels representing the home.
2. The home’s entrance door opens, and Corman admonishes himself for not including a creaking sound. “But these pictures were shot on a really low budget and fast schedule.”
3. The movie shot for fifteen days, and it was Corman’s longest on the time. Like his different Poe variations, the movie price beneath $300k.
4. “This was the first film I shot in scope,” he says, including that he’s not sure if it was CinemaScope or one of many inexpensive anamorphic lenses that got here after CinemaScope. Regardless, he’s undecided it was the correct alternative right here as CinemaScope is at its finest when filming exteriors.
5. The nice Vincent Price was Corman’s first alternative for the position of Roderick Usher. Both gained quite a few awards, “but Vincent won more awards than I did for the picture.”
6. “I was a believer, and still am, in what we used to call Art History 1A, Articulation of the Service.” It refers to the concept that the set needs to be crammed with objects and imagery, all of which was rented for the productions at fairly cheap charges.
7. Madeline Usher was Myrna Fahey‘s first leading role — and her final feature film — before heading to a career on television.
8. The paintings in the Usher home were all commissioned from artist Burt Schoenberg. “Everybody at the end, took one as a memento. I still have mine.” The one he took was the portrait of Roderick Usher, and he was surprised that Price didn’t decide it for himself. Price really selected to maintain the creepy, red-tinted portrait at 44:45 of Captain David Usher.
9. Corman’s movie crew had a popularity as being among the many finest unbiased crew individuals round. When they have been between photos with Corman, different movies would rent them on as a unit moderately than have them individually touchdown new gigs.
10. The Fall of the House of Usher was the primary function movie for American worldwide Pictures that was launched and screened as a standalone movie. Prior to that time, AIP packaged all their movies into double options of monster motion pictures, sci-fi flicks, and so forth. They additionally most well-liked to supply them on a budget and in black & white. That was Corman’s directions going into The Fall of the House of Usher, however he “convinced them to make one, fifteen-day color film instead of two, ten-day black & white films.” He says there was some resistance to the thought, together with from one of many AIP executives who requested Corman “where is the monster in House of Usher?” He informed the swimsuit that the home itself was the monster, and so they acquired their greenlight.
11. Corman didn’t need Roderick Usher to be seen as a monster or feared for his power or ferocity. It was as a substitute his intelligence and empathy that Corman needed to deal with, and he feels Price did an outstanding job with the position.
12. He discovered theatrical audiences divided of their emotions and loyalties relating to the 2 male leads. “On one hand they could identify with Mark as the young man falling in love, becoming involved in a strange, romantic situation. Yet, at the same time, they might be able to identify with… and possibly even think of Vincent as a father figure.”
13. Roughly 70% of AIP’s movie performed conventional theaters whereas the rest turned drive-in theater fare. “This type of picture was far more effective in a hard-top,” he says, including that the motion movies (bikers and gangsters) “played better in drive-ins.”
14. French critics helped set up Corman and Price as “higher level” skills after seeing the movie and studying varied issues into it, “which was, to a certain extent, what I was trying to put into it, and some things that had never actually occurred to me but occurred to them. But that may be reasonable, that’s part of the job of a critic.”
15. Poe’s tales are sometimes very brief, so the movies needed to elaborate and develop their concepts to justify a function. Corman offers author Richard Matheson immense credit score for “his ability to expand the story but to stay inside the vision and the mind of Poe.” He provides that whereas most writers required a number of rewrites to succeed in a taking pictures script, Matheson’s screenplays have been usually able to go from the primary draft with solely minor adjustments.
16. He’s usually been accused of printing the primary usable take, however “in reality I generally went two, three, four takes, something like that.”
17. Corman is a agency believer in “editing” the movie in preproduction by means of storyboarding the complete movie together with each shot, scene, and cutaway. “I would draw all my shots on the blank page in the script, opposite the printed page, so that I had double pages all the way through the script, so I could look at what I had written and what I had drawn.” More particularly, he says, his storyboards have been drawn from above the scene — his diploma in engineering being the principle offender there — with traces and angles displaying the motion of actors. This additionally meant that he hardly ever had a completed movie that required paring down. “I very, very seldom lost a scene in editing.”
18. “I like the concept of the off-camera scream or sound,” he says, because it suggests there’s extra taking place round a personality than she or he is conscious of. “There’s also the fact that sometimes after shooting, I get he idea that I’d like to have a scream here, and I add it in in post-production.”
19. Corman hadn’t deliberate on making extra Poe variations whereas making The Fall of the House of Usher, however he nonetheless made the clever alternative to depart the stairway set (seen at 54:53) and others standing after manufacturing wrapped. “We managed to use it in several other films.”
20. The fantasy sequence was shot with out sound, “an exercise in cinema technique,” and it’s one thing he repeated within the different Poe variations.
21. It’s been years since he’s rewatched the movie, and he had all the time remembered it as a dialogue-heavy manufacturing. “But now I’m struck by the amount of silent shooting there was, which I like.”
22. You can hear the glee in his voice when he mentions that the shot at 1:10:33 of the bloody fingers popping out of the coffin acquired an ideal response in theaters.
23. He views the movie as pretty complicated for a fifteen-day image, and today he’d give one in every of his administrators 4 or 5 weeks to perform the identical. “Maybe I’m just getting easier in my old age.”
24. The bulk of the home’s destruction was filmed on set, however a number of photographs of burning partitions and rafters have been captured elsewhere. They heard somebody was planning to take down their barn, in order that they paid to have it burned down as a substitute. He did one other hearth sequence in 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, however it was filmed within the UK and couldn’t match the fiery goodness on show right here “because the English were very, very careful about what they’d let me do.”
Best in Context-Free Commentary
“It’s interesting to see the MGM lion roaring in front of the American International logo.”
“I’ve always felt that something appearing quickly from the side of the screen gives it a little bit of accent.”
“I haven’t seen this film for I’d say, at least twenty years, and actually, I think it holds up.”
“Matheson is one of the best writers I ever worked with.”
“Let me just watch this.”
“We knew we were gonna have a great time when the fire started.”
Final Thoughts
Roger Corman has all the time been a compelling and fascinating speaker as regards to movies, and that continues to be evident on his commentaries as effectively. Sure, he’s all the time in salesman mode, however that side by no means dampens the passion for motion pictures that he brings to the dialog. Here he reminisces about Poe, AIP, and the nice Vincent Price, and it’s a very good hear.
Read extra Commentary Commentary from the archives.
Related Topics: Commentary Commentary, Edgar Allan Poe, Roger Corman, Vincent Price
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