After a 15-year absence from screens, director Curtis Harrington has returned to filmmaking with Usher. A 40-minute adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale "The Fall of the House of Usher," Harrington's film was shot in his own Hollywood home in 2000 and financed with his own money. In these respects, the film joins the ranks of some other post-Hollywood films of Hollywood filmmakers: for example, five years after making his final studio film, 1959's Solomon and Sheba, King Vidor made a 30-minute experimental film on the nature of consciousness (Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics); and more than a decade after Hollywood last funded him as a director, Orson Welles made a series of films (finished and unfinished) in the '70s largely financed out of his own pocket (The Other Side of the Wind, F for Fake, Filming 'Othello', The Dreamers, et al). These films all belong to a category (if not a genre) that Bill Krohn of Cahiers du Cinema terms "M.I.A." cinema. As Krohn notes, the point is that filmmakers like Vidor and Welles continued working long after Hollywood deemed them irrelevant or over-the-hill; Vidor may have been "missing" from the MGM lot, but he was definitely "in action," making cinema. To the above films, we may add Usher to the list of "M.I.A." films.

In a sense, Usher is a more explicit reflection on its director's marginalization within Hollywood than other "M.I.A." films. The film is ostensibly an "update" of Poe's tale, but the way Harrington modernizes it is interesting: only the film's opening title sequence--which shows young writer Truman Jones (Sean Nepita) traveling to the home of old, eccentric poet Roderick Usher (played by Harrington himself)--reveal the film to be set in the 21st century. (Indeed, the very first shot is of a jet landing at LAX.) As Jones is driven by limousine to Usher's home, out the window we can make out what clearly looks to be contemporary Los Angeles. The landscape is marked with billboards and telephone poles. But after the car enters the gate of Usher's home--which is enshrouded with fog--the film might as well be set in Poe's 19th century rather than Harrington's 21st; that's how free the body of the film is from references to modern life and that's also how little the essential plot and tone of Poe has been changed.

This contrast--between the 21st century world outside of the house of Usher and the 19th century universe of the macabre contained within it--is an apt metaphor for a director whose cinematic style doesn't at all reflect that of contemporary Hollywood. Harrington's filmmaking aesthetic--which, as Andrew Sarris was perhaps the first to identify, resembles that of Josef von Sternberg more than any other modern director--is as much of a throwback as Usher's old
gothic home. His images--realized by Orson Welles' great cameraman Gary Graver--are full of evocative, atmospheric touches: the return of Roderick's sister Madeleine (also played by Harrington, listed in the credits as "?") to Usher's home is particularly well realized, shot in shadowy light and set against a thunderstorm brewing outside.

Usher, of course, also belongs to another category of films besides Krohn's "M.I.A."s. That category is the oeuvre of its director. In such films as Night Tide, Queen of Blood, Games, How Awful About Allan, and now Usher, Harrington has distinguished himself as one of the finest modern filmmakers and one of the few real heirs to the classical horror film.

Thanks to Curtis Harrington and Joseph Kaufman.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002