A Gothic visual dialogue

Film still from The Sorrows of Satan (D.W. Griffith, 1926), starring Adolphe Menjou, Carol Dempster, Ricardo Cortez and Lya de Putti
The screenplay was based on the Victorian gothic novel by Marie Corelli (1895)

Watch the film on YouTube ~ link to this scene : here

Nevertheless, our favorite scene takes place a few minutes before during the night in Geoffrey’s ominous mansion. Geoffrey’s wife, an exotic Russian princess in exile (Lya de Putti) confess Prince Lucio that she married Geoffrey only to be near him (Satan). Geoffrey awakens and creeps down the stairs to find his wife throwing herself at Lucio’s feet. It’s a suspenseful sequence with shadowy shots of the mansion that looks menacing. Link to scene

Read the novel on Project Gutenberg : The Sorrows of Satan or, The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire, A Romance : eBook

Cover design for Bela Lugosi’s Dead, the first single by the English post-punk band Bauhaus, released on 6 August 1979
It is often considered the first gothic rock record

Listen to «Bela Lugosi’s Dead» on Bauhaus Official YouTube channel

Rena Mandel as Gisèle in

Vampyr or

‘Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray’ (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932). First Dreyer’s sound film.

Jack Nance in Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977).

Henry Spencer (Jack Nance, credited as John Nance, tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

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