The Tell Tale Heart Film Analysis

What we cannot help but notice is the apparent simplification of the aspects of the double that Poe set up in his short story. Where the eye doubled with “I”, only the symbolic Evil Eye, reminder of death, remains. Where it was not very clear whether the madman and the old man were two distinct persons, all adaptations choose two actors to play them –the only ones which seem to deviate from this are the spoken words and Lou Reed’s songs, as only one man speaks for the entire tale and thus gives the impression to be all the characters. Simplification, or elision, is an inevitable process which every adapter must apply to their work, otherwise they risk ending up with a film like Erich von Stroheim’s adaptation of Frank Norris’ McTeague. Indeed,

Since one of the key aspects of music is rhythm, it was very important that the heartbeat was there to indicate we were telling the story of “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Another mean to show duality inside the character, Lou Reed uses a stereo effect which makes us hear the voices at times in the right ear, at times in the left: “True/ Nervous/ very nervous/ Madman”, or “His hour had come/ Please open the door/ Open the door”

In a way, this shows how much “The Tell-Tale Heart” is now part of the popular culture, and people can refer to it in anything, from the Simpsons to a very serious essay. It might not have happened if adapters had refrained from showing their work to the world. As a result, more than a medium onto which you transpose the themes of the short story, adaptation is a double of the tale