Gothic Cinema
Reviews of the Tell-Tale Heart
The adaptation of the Tell-Tale Heart by Bart Mastronardi is very different from Poe's short story.
Among the main differences, Bart Mastronardi has turned the two male characters into female ones. To him the original strory is very skeletal and Poe did not give much information about the characters, so Bart Mastronardi wanted to add deeper layers to his characters. He was inpired by the character of Blanche Dubois in "A Car Street Named Desire" by Tenesse Williams for the character of the nurse, making her a more complicated character than the narrator of Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.
The relationship between the nurse and the old lady she works for is tinted with jealousy and the fright of growing old. The old lady represents the future of the nurse and the urge to kill her does not only comes from the ugly eye she has but also from the perspective of becoming old and ugly in turn.
To conclude, Bart Mastronardi made a superb and modern adaptation of a classic by Edgar Poe.
Alexandre Blomme France