La Chute de la Maison Usher (1928)
With most of its factories destroyed and a great deal of its able-bodied population wiped out, the years following the end of World War I were marked by great economical instability in Europe. With exception of the Weimar Republic , where UFA -sponsored cinema was seen as a tool to restore its people's morale after having lost the war, little to no money was being invested in the European entertainment industry as a whole. Correspondingly, most domestic film companies opted to avoid altogether the risks inherent to movie production, by concentrating their activities in the more stable motion picture distribution business instead. As a consequence, film production came to an all time low in Europe in the early 1920s, whose home market was then flooded by Hollywood. Seeing themselves unable to compete with the powerful US film industry given their meager budgets, a group of French directors decided to take an orthogonal approach, striving to differentiate themselves by devel