The Raven (1915 film)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven" has been frequently referenced and parodied in contemporary culture. Immediately popular after the poem's publication in 1845, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Some consider it the best poem ever written. As such, modern references to the poem continue to appear in popular culture.

Film

• "The Raven" was recreated as a hallucination of Poe's in the 1915 silent film The Raven. A fictionalized biography, it starred Henry B. Walthall as Poe.
• In 1942, Fleischer Studios created a two-reel Technicolor cartoon based upon "The Raven" which turned the story of the poem into a lighthearted comedy.
• A Bugs Bunny cartoon has Bugs reading a few lines from the poem, starting with the words, "While I nodded nearly napping".
• In 1963, Roger Corman directed The Raven, a comedy very loosely based on the poem.
• The stop-motion short film Vincent (1982), by Tim Burton, features a protagonist named Vincent Malloy, whose "favorite author is Edgar Allan Poe." As Vincent lies, seemingly dying, at the end of the film, he quotes the final couplet of "The Raven".
• In the 1989 film Batman, Jack Nicholson (as The Joker) quotes "The Raven" to Kim Basinger's Vicky Vale when he says, "Take thy beak from out my heart."
• Hannes Rall directed an animated, German-language version of The Raven (Der Rabe) in 1998.
• A Spanish short film, with English dialogues, directed by Tinieblas González appeared in 1999.

• The poem was translated to film by Trilobite Pictures and director Peter Bradley in 2003. The short film was released on DVD in 2005 by Lurker Films.
• In the 1994 film The Crow, Eric, the tragic main character, references "The Raven" before blowing up Gideon's pawn shop: "Suddenly, I heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?"
• In the 1994 film The Pagemaster, when Richard Tyler is visiting the land of horror and enters Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde's mansion, a raven swoops down next to them and screeches the word, 'nevermore'.
• The film Nightmares from the Mind of Poe (2006) adapts "The Raven" along with three Poe short stories: "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Premature Burial".
• The poem was referenced in the 2002 film "Finding Forrester", which starred Sean Connery. The film was discussed in the protagonist Jumal's English class.
• In the 2005 film The Crow: Wicked Prayer the third sequel to The Crow, during the final battle between Jimmy and Luc, Jimmy tauntingly shouts "Quoth the raven nevermore, motherfucker!"