Narrated by the ideally creepy-voiced James Mason, the film received an “X” rating in the UK upon its release, then went on to an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short (though it did not win). Just above, see the original animated “Tell-Tale Heart” from 1954. Poe’s talent for sustaining controlled hyperbole and for creating unforgettable images like the old man’s evil eye and loudly beating heart make his work especially inviting to animators, and we’ve featured many animations of that work in the past. Jung publishes a web comic called Applehead, and on her short film’s website (in German), she refers to her “Tell-Tale Heart” as “an animated satire.” In Jung’s version, they are father and son, and the old man is rendered even more grotesque, Ed’s psychological torments even more… shall we say, animated, with clearly comic intent. We’re never entirely sure in the original what the relationship is between Poe’s narrator and the doomed old man. In this version, however, a central ambiguity in Poe’s story is made clear. In the animation above by Annette Jung-adapted from Poe’s chilling tale-the madman Ed resolves to take the life of an old man with a creepy, staring eye. Have we ever been confronted with a more unnerving and unreliable narrator? Poe’s genius was to draw us into the confidence of this terrifying character and keep us there, rapt in suspense, even though we cannot be sure of anything he says, or whether the entire story is nothing more than a paranoid nightmare. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily-how calmly I can tell you the whole story. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.

Above all was the sense of hearing acute. But when he finishes his intimate introduction to us, we are much less inclined to trust his word:īut why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them. “True!” begins his most famous story, “ The Tell-Tale Heart“-”nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am,” and we surely believe it.

The tell tale heart by annette jung