Happy Father's Day!

 

 (imdb)

FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER-1928-A man named Alan (Charles Lamy) is summoned to the home of his friend Roderick Usher (Jean Debucourt), who lives in seclusion with his wife Madeline (Marguerite Gance). Rod-erick is obsessed with a portrait of his wife. When he thinks she has died he accidentally buries her alive. She breaks free of her tomb and comes back to haunt hubby. 

This adaptation of the classic Edgar Allan Poe story is very experimental in nature with many eerie and nightmarish scenes. Luis Bunuel is credited with the adaptation, a year before he and Salvador Dali made UN CHIEN ANDALOU, although it's unclear how much he contributed to the final film as he and director-producer Jean Epstein had an argument during the production and Bunuel left, leaving the director to make several changes in the story. Lead actress Gance was married to director Abel Gance (who appears as a bar patron) at the time and had appeared in his NAPOLEON the year before. This French production runs about 13 minutes. Another version was produced in the US in 1929.

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Bunuel

SIMON OF THE DESERT-1965- Penitent Simon (Claudio Brook) has stood on a high column in the desert for over six years so he can be closer to God. Priests and followers now gather as he is given a new taller tower. After refusing a blessing from a priest because he believes himself unworthy he ascends the new tower and promptly restores the hands of a man who had them cut off for stealing. The man's first act is to abuse his child. The crowd seems unimpressed by this and leaves. Later Simon is tempted several times by the devil who takes the form of a woman (Silvia Pinal) dressed like a little girl, then as a shepherdess (with a beard!) and later as a scantily clad female who arrives in a moving coffin. Satan takes him away and they wind up in a modern '60's disco where the band plays surf guitar music and young people do the newest dance crazed called “Radioactive Flesh”! When Simon says he wants to go home he's told he has to “stick it out till the end”. 

 Although only 43 minutes long SIMON somehow manages to be surrealist director Luis Bunuel's most anarchistic outing and continues his long obsession with the mocking of organized religion. It's also hilarious! The short running time owes to the fact that Bunuel simply ran out of money after less than three weeks worth of filming. He followed this two years later with BELLE de JOUR. 

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