Lutenist Jozef van Wissem creates an all-new soundtrack for the 1928 French silent horror film (which inspired the Netflix series of the same name)

The French silent horror film The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, director: Jean Epstein, 65 min) was the inspiration behind the eponymous Netflix series, which met with enormous success and was described by Rolling Stone as “a literary orgy of death”. Both the film and the series are based on Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story. They all share the same protagonist: Roderick Usher.

Epstein’s film, with a screenplay by Luis Buñuel, is set in a remote house where the deceased wife of Roderick Usher suddenly returns to life after lightning strikes on a stormy night. 

The premiere of the live soundtrack for The Fall of the House of Usher by Dutch composer, lutenist and guitarist Jozef van Wissem took place in the first half of 2024 at the Timeless Film Festival in Warsaw. 
Van Wissem has a long history of producing amazing soundtracks: Take, for example, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) for which he won the Cannes Soundtrack Award, or more recently Un Prince (2023) by Pierre Creton as well as Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).