A new Poe(try) film: The Death of Poe

Last year we saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti & Pablo Neruda captured on film, a forthcoming documentary on Charles Olson & his connection to Gloucester, Massachusetts, & a new film tracing the connections between poetry & the experience of war from Homer & Wilfrid Owen to poets of the present day, Voices in Wartime. We’ve seen recent film biographies of Miguel Piñero & Sylvia Plath. Now comes word of a new movie based on the mysterious ending of the life of one of the most beloved of American poets, Edgar Allan Poe.

from Redfield Arts (with thanks to Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino of Eratio Postmodern Poetry& the NewPoetry list for reposting the report):
“Death of Poe sets fest premiere,” by M.J. Simpson
Baltimore filmmaker Mark Redfield’s new feature, The Death of Poe, based on the final week in the life of Edgar Allan Poe, will receive its world premiere next month at the 17th edition of Britain’s longest-running horror movie event, the Festival of Fantastic Films. The fest, where Redfield’s version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde won the Best Independent Film prize four years ago, will be held in Manchester, England over the weekend of September 1-3, reports Fangoria.com.

Poe’s final days are a mystery which has long intrigued horror scholars. He traveled from Richmond, Virginia to New York, but disappeared midway and was found, several days later, wandering around Baltimore, where he died on October 7, 1849. “The picture is based entirely on the known facts surrounding his death,” Redfield tells Fangoria.com. “As for the actual cause of his death [and the days that cannot be accounted for], screenwriter Stuart Voytilla and I chose the most likely theories and incorporated them. Historians will be glad to know that we avoided the ‘rabies’ theory!”

And don’t expect a typically staid biopic, either; Redfield confirms this will be a true genre experience. “The Death of Poe isn’t a biography,” he says. “It’s a nightmarish postcard, if you will, of Poe’s last week on Earth. The picture plays very much as if Poe experienced the last week of his life in the final moments before he died and found peace. It has an uncanny sense about it, and people who have seen it come away liking Poe, and rethinking the popular conception that he was an out-of-control alcoholic. Buquel and Duchamp would’ve liked this picture, I believe!”

As writer, director, producer and star of the film, Redfield must have learned a great deal about the author during its making. “That’s difficult to answer,” he says. “One always assumes one ‘knows Poe’—until you reread him, read his letters and what others wrote about him. After the research and coming to understand our own film, and how it plays, my current view is perhaps a bit existentialist: that Poe was suicidal after his beloved Virginia’s death, and regardless of what the corporeal real world offered him, he had an artist’s compulsion to create, to the very end.”

Of course, Poe’s own tales have been adapted numerous times for the screen, most notably by Roger Corman, but Redfield’s own personal favorite, when pressed, is an unusual one. “The first film to spring to mind is the UPA cartoon of The Tell-Tale Heart, narrated by James Mason and released in 1953. It captures the spirit of Poe’s writing beautifully. If you can find it, add it to your collection, and watch it before one of the Corman-Price movies!” For more on The Death of Poe, check out the film’s official Web site.

Related articles:
“Why I Love Making...,” A meditation on media with poems, by Mike Hazard aka Media Mike
“Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe! The Empty House Tour,” by Tom Devaney