Edgar G. Ulmer — Roger Corman — Stuart Gordon. Movie adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat”

Abstract

The article entitled Edgar G. Ulmer — Roger Corman — Stuart Gordon. Movie adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” is a comparative analysis of three adaptations of a gothic short story. The attempt at finding inspirations from romantic poetics in the works of film directors, created in different decades and answering the question of how is it possible to transfer assumptions of romantic literature into movie language, was made in this text. In the movie from 1934, Edgar G. Ulmer connects gothic poetics with modernism aesthetics. He also adds historical context, referring to events in the First World War. On the other hand, taking classic literature became an opportunity for Roger Corman to play with convention. He expresses it in the adaption from 1962, in which terror gives space to humour. Stuart Gordon in turn, creates a post-modern variation based on a theme of The Black Cat, making Poe himself the main character of the movie from 2005. The important criterion of interpretation includes the motives of the Byronic hero, cat, madness and crime. Analysis of different ways to re-interpret the gothic short story leads to conclusions about filmmakers’ attitude to literary prototype. Also, the cultural context of individual adaptations was pointed out.