La chute de la Maison Usher (1928)

Adaptives equivalences from the perspective of modern opacity

Abstract

Starting from the approximations, based on the sign of modern aesthetics, between Literature and Cinema, this article has as main objective the analysis of equivalences and the relationship of adaptation between two works, the first being the short story by Edgar Allan Poe "The fall of the house of Usher" (1839), and the second, the film adaptation "La chute de la maison Usher" (1928),  executed by French director Jean Epstein. To this do so, the main concepts about adaptation studies are discussed and pointed out, mainly defended in the voices of Xavier (2003), Rancière (2012), Hutcheon (2011), Barbosa (1986), among others. In addition, it will support the analysis, the possibilities of approximation between Literature and Cinema, based on the characteristics of resistance to readability and non-destination of images, specific to modern aesthetics, and acquired by literature and cinema, from the romantic turn, in which the images produced metaphorically in the texts or on the screens, use a certain significant opacity, preferring to suggest rather than show, and opening the way for greater active participation of the receiver. In order to theoretically reinforce this discussion, research signed by names such as Sontag (2020), Rancière (2016), Wellbery (1998), among other studies, will be used. Thus, the analysis of the works in question will consider the two works individually, but it will also use possible parallels, equivalences or alterations between one work and another, pointing as a common denominator and key point of the adaptation process, the modern opacity in the construction and interpretation (more active and diverse) of meanings.