Hitchcock/Truffaut -- Film Review The Fall of the House of Usher -- San Francisco Opera Performance Review

Hitchcock/Truffaut

Directed by Kent Jones

This is a film for film buffs, people who stay up till two or three in the morning watching old movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, people in the movie industry, students in film schools.  It's an insiders' look at Alfred Hitchcock and his films.  It's an honorific presentation of Alfred the Great, seen through the eyes of fellow directors such as Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, David Fincher, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Paul Shrader, and James Gray. It is very informative about filmmaking and about conceptualizing a film from the point of view of a director, how a film or a scene is shot, one's style as a filmmaker, the techniques of creating suspense, or visual interest, or psychological impact on a viewer.  It is amply illustrated with clips from Hitchcock's many films.  It is not about Alfred Hitchcock as a person.  It does mention that he had a close relationship with his wife and that he consulted with her on every film that he made.  But it is not about who he was, the personal meaning his films might have had for him, his relations with actors, movie studios, etc.  It was strictly about the films and about making the films.  It is based on an book published by Franҫois Truffaut in 1967, which he later revised and expanded in 1985.  The book is a series of extended interviews that Truffaut did with Hitchcock that were an in depth exploration of his films and his techniques as a filmmaker.  The book is a classic for filmmakers and students of film. 

This film wasn't exactly what I wanted to see.  I have seen a fair number of Hitchcock's films, but not all of them, and there were some discussed in the film that I had never heard of.  I am not a great fan of old movies and I am not interested in filmmaking.  I am a still photographer and a portrait photographer and there were some very interesting passages in the film that discussed how to frame and light a face to get a certain effect.  There was a series of portraits of Truffaut and Hitchcock taken during the interviewing process by photographer Philippe Halsman.  These were discussed including Hitchcock's input on the posing for some of them.  I found that very interesting.  I was hoping for a more personal and psychological portrait of Hitchcock, but this was not the approach or intent of this film at all.  It was all about the work and about technique.  It was well made and well put together.  If you are a student of film, or number film among your passions, then you should not miss this.  

The Fall of the House of Usher

San Francisco Opera Performance

December 8, 2015

I would like to start by commending the San Francisco Opera for doing something interesting, namely, presenting two very different versions of the same opera, or story line, side by side.  The Fall of the House of Usher was written by Edgar Allen Poe and published in 1839.  It is a somber, bleak story about grief, mourning, and depression over the loss of a beloved young woman.  There are only four characters in The Fall of the House of Usher and two of them have only minor roles.  It is essentially a two person story, but with little dialog and almost no action.  The attempt to create an opera based on The Fall of the House of Usher is an attempt to fashion a drama out of a story that is essentially undramatic.

Claude Debussy began adapting this story for the operatic stage in 1915, but he never completed the project.  Robert Orledge orchestrated and completed it for him in 2004.  San Francisco composer, Gordon Getty, took up the challenge to create his own operatic version of The Fall of the House of Usher, and the performance I saw on Tuesday night was the world premiere of that effort.  Getty's opera was presented first, followed by an intermission, and then Debussy's version formed the second half of the program.  It was interesting to be able to see the two versions in succession for comparison.  The problem with this story is that there is not enough dramatic substance in it to sustain an entire opera.  So the composers had use their inventiveness and interpretive imagination to craft something that could be staged.  This allows for a great deal of latitude in conceptualization. 

I had read Poe's story before attending the performance, but I had not read the program for the evening performance.  So when I saw Getty's opera unfolding it struck me that he had significantly transformed the characters, their relationships, and the entire conception of the story.  I felt like what I was beholding wasn't really The Fall of the House of Usher.  And, indeed, when I read the interview with Gordon Getty that was printed in the program, this is what he said,

Poe's story is about malaise; it's an absolute masterpiece.  But I wanted to get gallantry, valor, and chivalry into this story.  I wanted to turn these characters inside out, so I make the three principal characters the good guys.  Madeline, her brother, Roderick, and the visitor whom I make to be Edgar Allan Poe.  . . .  The visitor, whom I make out to be Poe, I made chivalrous and valorous. . . . I wanted all three (Roderick, Madeline, and Poe) to be the kind of people you'd want your children to marry.  This certainly isn't what Poe had in mind, but it's what I had in mind.  (p. 40)

So we're going to turn The Fall of the House of Usher into a feel good comedy?  Is this the Disney version of The Fall of the House of Usher in pastel colors that's suitable for children under twelve?  Gordon. 

Getty has every right to take such an approach.  I am not one who insists on sticking to an author's original conception.  I don't have a problem with taking a work or its characters in a radically different direction from their original conceptualization.  But it does raise a question whether this opera should continue to call itself The Fall of the House of Usher.  Calling it The Fall of the House of Usher raises expectations that clash with what Getty presents.  Getty's interpretation is really a different story and a different envisioning of the characters.  He has started with The Fall of the House of Usher as a foundation and then created something of his own from it.  I felt this in the music also.  I felt his tempos were a little brisk and the singing was set in somewhat higher registers that I was expecting.  The Fall of the House of Usher is somber and dark and foreboding.  Getty's music is not.  It is somewhat upbeat.  There are flutes and horns and a xylophone that tend to raise the timbre of the orchestration out of the depths of despair and grief.  What struck me well was the rich bass voice of the doctor (Anthony Reed).  This was where I felt all of the music should be.  Madeline Usher's offstage voice (Jacqueline Piccolino) was also exquisitely beautiful.  

I felt Getty needs to think more about the character of Madeline and what she is doing in this opera.  She flits between Roderick and Poe, but her function in the story does not seem well defined.  Did Roderick invite Poe to come and stay with him so he could foist his mentally ill sister off on him so that he might live better off in peace without her?  Is that the kind of friend he is?  "Please take my woman away because I think she'll be better off with you than with me."  What kind of an opera is that?  If Roderick and Madeline have the kind of close attachment as is portrayed, why is Roderick so eager to bring Poe into the middle of it?  If you move away from the idea that the opera is about grief over the loss of Madeline, and that Poe is there to offer support to his long time friend in a time of duress, then you have the problem of what Madeline is doing there, what role does she play in Roderick's life, and why was Poe invited for this visit?  Is he just there to talk about the old times as Getty seems to be presenting him? A long time friend comes to visit and talk about the old times and gossip about some school mates?  Is this an interesting enough topic for an opera?  You want me to pay 86 bucks to see that? 

Getty's reinterpretation of this story doesn't quite work.  Anyone who has read The Fall of the House of Usher is ready for a melancholy recitative on the subject of love and death.  The way Getty has put this together removes the center of gravity from the story.  There is no rationale for any of this to be taking place.  There is no driving force in what little plot there is.  A more promising subject for an opera would be Poe's personal life.  Poe's personal life is much more interesting, much more complicated, much more dramatic, much more operatic, and open to a much wider range of interpretations than is The Fall of the House of Usher.  Think about that, Gordon. 

The second half of the program was Robert Orledge's adaptation or completion of Debussy's unfinished operatic treatment of The Fall of the House of Usher.  This kept within the spirit of Poe's original story.  It focused on Roderick's attempt to cope with the loss of his sister Madeline.  Madeline does not appear in the opera until the very end.  The doctor's role is developed more than in Getty's version.  Here he plays a somewhat villainous role.  Roderick suggests that the doctor is attempting to take Madeline away from him and perhaps murder him and/or Madeline.  It could be that Roderick is showing signs of paranoia and delusion.  It is an interesting angle, although it is not fully developed.  Roderick seems to be deteriorating mentally and emotionally.  His friend does not seem to be able to do much for him.  This forms the substance of the opera.  In the end Madeline appears all bloody and ghostlike and the opera ends rather abruptly without a real culmination.  It does feel truncated and Madeline's dramatic and gory appearance is not well prepared.  I liked the music a lot better.  It was somber and dark and seemed appropriate to the mood of The Fall of the House of Usher. Generally, this opera suffered from a lack of dramatic interest, although it did have psychological interest and was a plausible interpretation of The Fall of the House of Usher.

The staging and visual effects in both operas were superb and made watching them a visual delight.   

In my opinion, though, neither one of these operas grasped what Poe's story is really all about.  I see Poe's story as psychological, rather than a narrative of events that could be real.  This story has more the quality of an elaborate dream.  Roderick and Poe are not two different characters, they are the same.  Mirrors of one another.  Roderick, living in the rambling House of Usher, represents an aspect of Poe that is dying and must die, namely his attachment to a girl who is ambiguously dead but also still alive.  She is dead in the sense that the romance or attachment that he once had to her is no longer viable, she is no longer in his life in a tangible way, but she is still very much alive in the sense that she still haunts his thoughts and his life, he still longs for her, and this attachment to a hopeless romance threatens to destroy him.  This is what gives the story its sense of horror and its sinister quality.  Unresolved grief can and does destroy people.  The story of his coming to the House of Usher and his encounter with Roderick is his attempt to confront and deal with this lingering attachment that is poisoning his life.  They attempt to bury Madeline in a vault in the basement.  She looked dead, but she had a smile on her face that suggested otherwise.  She did indeed claw her way out of the crypt and back into his consciousness and into his thoughts.  This failure to bury her definitively results in the entire house being destroyed.  Poe flees from the destruction of this failed romance, the part of himself that is being destroyed by it, that insists on remaining in love with Madeline.  The story is inconclusive, but I would suggest that Poe's being able to turn his back and ride away from the disintegration of the House of Usher represents a kind of triumph, an ability to leave behind this destructive attachment that has gnawed at his heart, weighed on his life and prevented him from going forward.  Now that the House of Usher has completely collapsed and fallen into the tarn, Roderick and Madeline are both indubitably dead, there is hope now that he can go forth and create a new life for himself.  Although it appears tragic and dark all the way through, it actually ends on a vague note of optimism and hope.