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Synopsis:
Victor Frankenstein (Augustus Phillips),
a young student, departs his home for college, leaving behind his
fiancée, Elizabeth (Mary Fuller). After two years of study,
Frankenstein discovers the secret of life. He writes to
Elizabeth, telling her his dream of creating
a perfect human being, and promising that, once he has succeeded, he
will return home and marry her. In his laboratory, Frankenstein
throws a number of mysterious compounds into a huge cauldron. He
then closes two metal doors, sealing the cauldron within an alcove.
Through a window in one of the doors, Frankenstein looks on in
triumph as something
begins to take shape.... But what emerges from the alcove is far
from Frankenstein’s “perfect human being”. As his creation stalks
towards him, the scientist backs away in horror, then faints. The
Creature (Charles Ogle) is hovering in confusion over the prostrate
Frankenstein when the scientist’s servant approaches; it flees
unseen. Regaining consciousness, Frankenstein looks around in
terror, but there is no sign of his creation.... Frankenstein
returns home, joyfully reuniting with Elizabeth; but his
happiness is short-lived: the Creature appears, berating him
violently. Hearing
Elizabeth,
Frankenstein implores the Creature to hide behind a curtain. It
complies, and the scientist manages to send his fiancée out of the
room without her seeing the lurking Creature, who watches
Elizabeth
intently. When she has gone, the Creature attacks Frankenstein in a
jealous rage, only to recoil in disgust and misery as it catches
sight of its own reflection in the mirror....
Comments:
Almost as old as cinema itself is
cinematic science fiction. Although, unlike the man who would soon
become their main professional rival, Georges Méliès, the pioneering
Lumière brothers dealt predominantly in filmed realities, they also
recognised the possibilities that lay in camera trickery; and
sitting alongside their documentary short films of 1895 is to be
found Charcuterie
Méchanique, or
The Mechanical
Butcher, a gruesomely humorous piece in which a pig
is pushed into one end of a certain apparatus, with various
pre-packaged pork products emerging from the other. This one minute
piece of footage represents a defining moment in the history of
film. Over the following fifteen years, countless similar short
films would be produced in France,
in Great Britain and in the United States;
and although most of these were comic in tone, there was an uneasy
quality to the laughter. Right from the beginning, the motion
picture camera was used to express society’s equal fascination with,
and ambivalence about, advances in medicine, science and technology.
During this period, the introduction of automation in factories, and
the perceived loss of human control, was a clear cause of
apprehension, and a version of the Lumières’ mechanised
meat-processor would make an appearance in films made in both
England
and America,
each one touched with the particular concerns of their country of
origin. Thus, in
Making Sausages, released by the George A. Smith
Company, everything up to and including old boots is fed
indiscriminately into the machine; while the Biograph Company
produced The
Sausage Machine, in which live dogs are forced into
one end of the processor, and out of the other comes – what else? –
hot dogs.
(A few years later, the Edison Company would come up with
Dog Factory,
an animal-friendly variant on this grisly theme, in which customers
could have a string of sausages fed into a machine, and end up with
a live dog of their breed of choice!) Many films dealt with polar
exploration and the potential applications of electricity, and a
number featured automata (not
“robots”; the term hadn’t been invented yet); some display a
startling prescience with regard to such things as flight, both
earthbound and celestial – and, for that matter, about the
possibility of wars being fought and decided in the air – and
high-speed travel. The recently discovered phenomenon of X-rays and
advances in surgical technique were also popular subjects, while the
controversy that raged over the theory of evolution made itself felt
in works such as
The Doctor’s Experiment, in which an ape-derived
serum makes men behave like monkeys, and
The Monkey Man,
which features cinema’s pioneer human-ape brain transplant. What is
very noticeable, even at this embryonic stage of science fiction on
screen, is how often in these films something goes horribly wrong –
although in this respect, the French seem to have been rather more
optimistic about technological advancements than either the English
or the Americans. And given the peculiar obsessions of this website,
we cannot close this look back in time without highlighting a
certain release from the Biograph Company: 1910’s
A Jersey Skeeter.
This satire of New Jersey’s
notorious infestation problem features a cider-sipping farmer being
harassed and then carried off by an enormous mosquito – the screen’s
very first giant insect.
But
without question the most significant science fiction work of this
era was the Edison Company’s 1910 production of
Frankenstein.
The discovery in 1963, not of the film itself, but a copy of the 15th
March 1910 issue of “The Edison Kinetogram” advertising the release
of this seminal production sent shockwaves through the cinematic
world. Innumerable hunts for an existing print were instigated, but
in vain. In 1980, the film was placed upon the American Film
Institute’s list of “The Top 10 Culturally And Historically
Significant Lost Films”, a depressing honour to say the least. At
the same time, the picture of actor Charles Ogle as “the monster”,
wild-eyed and threatening, continued to be widely reproduced,
tantalising and tormenting movie lovers in equal measure, as
Frankenstein
began to be mourned right alongside
London After
Midnight.
But
miracles do occasionally happen, and one did here; for there
was one
print in existence. In the 1950s, it had come by convoluted pathways
into the possession of Wisconsin
collector and archivist Alois F. Detlaff. The copy had been
originally the possession of Mrs Detlaff’s grandmother, and had
passed through at least three sets of hands before returning to Mr
Detlaff who, finding that the print was deteriorating, put it into
storage and refrained from screening it. During the seventies, short
clips found their way into a British documentary, but without any
acknowledgement of their source; and for a time this effects of this
slight looked like keeping
Frankenstein from the general public in
perpetuity. At length, however, Mr Detlaff was persuaded to
participate in the desperately needed preservation of his most
precious print. The film’s first public screening in over eight
decades took place in October of 1993; the production of a DVD
version for commercial release followed another decade later.
With a
running-time of only fourteen minutes,
Frankenstein
is necessarily a much pared-down version of Mary Shelley’s novel;
yet what remains is a brisk and efficient compression of the novel’s
main points. The film opens with Victor Frankenstein departing for
college, leaving behind his fiancée,
Elizabeth. A title card then informs us
casually that, Two
years later, Frankenstein had discovered the mystery of life.
Frankenstein writes of his wondrous discovery to
Elizabeth, announcing his intention of
creating “a perfect human being”, after which he will return home
and marry her. In this we have, surely, one of the most historic
moments in the development of the science fiction film: the first,
although by no means the last utterance of
famous last words.
And without any further ado, we plunge directly into the creation
scene.
It
is fair, I think, to say that this is sequence by which any version
of Frankenstein
will, perhaps must,
be judged. Mary Shelley herself may have fudged the issue, but most
adaptors of this tale have felt themselves compelled at least to try
to flesh out the implications of her text. Perhaps the greatest
surprise and pleasure of this film is just how well its creation
scene stacks up against those of its better known successors – and
not just visually. Although the Victor Frankenstein of the novel
obtains his raw materials from “the charnel-house and....the
unhallowed damps of the grave”, as Shelley unforgettably puts it,
about the bringing to life itself there is, behind the abstruseness
of the language, a clear inference less of science than of alchemy.
Here, in a laboratory decorated by a scattering of skulls, and with
a fully articulated skeleton sitting companionably in a nearby
chair, this
Victor Frankenstein throws his ingredients into a mixing bowl and
stirs them with a spoon, before emptying the result into an enormous
cauldron and tossing is a few other odds and ends. (This portion of
the film features a generous employment of Whooshing Powder©.)
Frankenstein then seals the cauldron behind metal doors and leaves
his mixture to “cook”. Thematically, this depiction of the creation
of Frankenstein’s “perfect human being” is probably closer to
Shelley than any version filmed subsequently.
Through
a window in the metal doors, Frankenstein looks on, first in triumph
and excitement, then in mounting horror, as his creation takes
shape. To depict this, director-writer James Searle Dawley resorted
to a scheme equally simple and clever: building a monster
substitute, complete with internal skeleton, burning it, filming the
burning, and running the footage backward. The result is remarkably
effective, with the formation of the Creature’s head being
particularly eerie. The overall effect is only spoilt by some
amateurish articulation of the Creature’s arms. Although there is no
evidence that James Whale ever saw this version of
Frankenstein, and
although the first two cinematic renderings have very little else in
common, it is significant that both immeasurably heighten the impact
of the disclosure of their Creature by
delaying
it. Here, a misshapen hand reaches out from behind the metal doors,
and Frankenstein retreats in horror to his bedroom, fainting across
his bed. (Our Victor faints more in these fourteen minutes than many
later heroines would in ninety.) Then comes the great moment, our
first clear look at the Creature, as it lunges through the curtains
of the bed to hover over the unconscious Frankenstein. As with the
series of shots that stunned movie-goers in 1931, this revelation
must have launched the audiences of 1910 from their seats.
Yet
with our perspective of very nearly one hundred years, we can see a
difference here between the attitude of this Creature and that of
its descendants. As it leans over Frankenstein, we see only
confusion and concern; certainly no threat. Frankenstein revives,
sees the Creature, and faints
again –
twice. At the sound of footsteps, the Creature flees, and
Frankenstein’s servant begins the task of bringing his master
around. The scientist looks around apprehensively, but sees no
evidence of his handiwork; and, still shaky, returns home to be
reunited with Elizabeth.
And it
is here that this version of
Frankenstein
parts company with both the novel and any other cinematic version of
the story. That they were taking a big risk in filming this tale at
all, the executives of the Edison Company were only too well aware,
as the notes in that long-lost copy of “The Kinetogram” make
abundantly clear. “The Edison Company has carefully tried to
eliminate all the actually repulsive situations and to concentrate
its endeavors upon the mystic and psychological problems to be found
in this weird tale,” runs the text, adding still more comfortingly,
“We have carefully omitted anything which by any possibility could
shock any portion of an audience.” To an extent this is true.
Certainly the film contains no murders, or executions, or grave-robbings;
nor is the issue of Frankenstein’s hubris and his usurpation of
God’s privilege in any way debated. Instead, a title tells us
baldly, The evil in
Frankenstein’s mind creates a monster. From the
beginning, the Creature is designated as “evil”, simply “evil”; not
because of anything that it has done or will do – except for
frightening Elizabeth into a faint and angrily snatching a flower
from Frankenstein, this Creature is completely inoffensive – but
because it was made by man and not by God. When Frankenstein returns
home, the Creature inevitably follows. What follows just begs for
misinterpretation. From all we know of this story, we are almost
certain to read the confrontation between Frankenstein and the
Creature, and the latter’s angry gesticulation in the direction of
Elizabeth, as a demand for the creation of a
mate. It isn’t: as the Kinetogram notes explain, the Creature is
jealous of Elizabeth; in its opinion,
Frankenstein belongs to
it. And as we will learn, in an unexpected way it is
quite right. This altercation ends with the Creature fleeing again,
and Frankenstein proceeds to marry Elizabeth. (No
version of the story has succeeded in making this credible.) The
Creature reappears on the wedding night, terrorising both bride and
bridegroom, before retreating to the drawing-room to gaze at itself
in the mirror. It then simply vanishes – but its reflection doesn’t.
Frankenstein enters and also looks at himself in the mirror –
and sees the Creature
reflected back at him....
While
the Creature’s murderous stalking of Frankenstein in the novel holds
intimations of the legend of the Doppelgänger, this climax to the
film feels more like Stevenson than Shelley. As the titles make
clear, it is Frankenstein’s love for
Elizabeth that
banishes the Creature, which becomes in these scenes the embodiment
of the scientist’s baser nature. The Creature’s willingness to hide
itself from Elizabeth, even as it
rages jealously against her, indicates Frankenstein’s attempts to
hide his darker side from the woman he loves. In this context, the
creation sequence becomes, so to speak, Frankenstein’s bucks' night,
his last lapse into sinfulness before the triumph of a pure love and
its sanctification in marriage. Thus, even as Frankenstein stares in
horror at his own capacity for evil, it fades away; and the film
concludes as man and wife embrace. And if this happy ending seems an
unlikely conclusion to the story of Frankenstein, it at least has
the merit of feeling far less tacked on than the one that closes the
1931 version.
Charles
Ogle’s “monster” is of course the centrepiece of
Frankenstein.
This ragged, shambling entity, with unkempt hair and claw-like hands
that look forward to
Nosferatu, is an oddly effective creation –
not least because Ogle, responsible for his own make-up, did as Jack
Pierce would later do for Karloff, and left his own expressive
features visible. Augustus Phillips is adequate as Frankenstein
(despite being, in what would come to be a grand horror movie
tradition, at least fifteen years too old for his role), but shows a
tendency towards what I am tempted to call
silent film acting.
It’s an unjust generalisation, but it conveys what I mean: Phillips’
habit of making a sweeping gesture with his arms whenever he enters
a scene is disconcertingly reminiscent of the “actors” who give
lessons to Prince George in the “Sense And Senility”
episode of
Blackadder. Mary Fuller is more natural as
Elizabeth, but her screen time is very
limited. Technically,
Frankenstein is an example of the kind of
static, single-shot film-making still common at the time. This style
– or lack of style – seems to have been typical of the films of
James Searle Dawley; curiously, since the early portion of his
career was spent under the supervision of Edwin S. Porter, the
pioneering director who helped introduce such concepts as close-ups,
panning, cross-cutting and editing within scenes. One point of
exception is the use of the mirror, which opens up the action within
the frame, allowing, as it were, a third person to be present in a
two-person scene; while the implications of the constant framing and
re-framing of Frankenstein and the Creature are both fairly
sophisticated, and psychologically acute.
That I
am in any position today to make these observations, positive and
negative, on this version of
Frankenstein
is an astonishing thing. The plain fact is, the film was not a
success. Whether, in spite of all the producers’ efforts, the public
found it too horrible or frightening, or even too offensive, or
whether they were confused by its subject matter, is unclear. Then,
too, although some critics gave the production a positive review,
others were quick to denounce the film as blasphemous, and on these
grounds many areas banned it altogether. The irony here is that
Thomas Edison himself had been amongst the first to agitate for a
lifting of “the moral tone” of films, and even played a part in the
establishment of
America’s first censorship board.
In any event,
Frankenstein was pulled from circulation; and while
many productions of that era would be re-released during the
following years, this one never saw light again. Of course, only a
miniscule fraction of the countless thousands of films produced
during the first decades of cinema survives today. Heartbreakingly,
it was the custom of the time to destroy films that were “done
with”; stripping them for their silver content was a common
practice. Others were put into storage, and simply rotted away over
time. The Edison Company also suffered a warehouse fire in 1914, and
many of its films not purposely destroyed were lost anyway. By 1918,
Edison had closed down his studio, and what could not be
sold was just thrown away. When we consider the existence of
Frankenstein
in light of all these facts, “miracle” begins to look like
too small a word.
----9/8/07
The
authorised version of
Frankenstein
is available exclusively through
Graveyard
Records And Collectables.
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