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Synopsis:
As a funeral takes place, Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his
assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye), lurk nearby. When the mourners have gone
and the grave has been filled in, the two men emerge from hiding, shovels
in hand. The coffin is swiftly unearthed…. As the two leave the
cemetery, Frankenstein points out a body hanging from a gibbet, ordering
his horrified assistant to climb up and cut it down. Fritz reluctantly
obeys, but upon examining the body, Frankenstein rejects it in disgust,
commenting that they will have to get a brain from somewhere else. At the
Goldstadt Medical College, Dr Waldman (Edward Van Sloan) demonstrates to
his class the anatomical differences between a normal brain and an
abnormal, criminal brain. When the class has been dismissed, Fritz breaks
into the room. He intends to steal the normal brain, but after being
startled into dropping it, in desperation he steals the criminal brain
instead. At Frankenstein’s home, the scientist’s worried fiancée,
Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), greets with relief Frankenstein’s good friend,
Victor Moritz (John Boles). She tells him that although she has not seen
Frankenstein for four months, she has received a rambling letter from him
in which he insists that his work must come before everything – even
before her. Elizabeth begs Victor to visit Dr Waldman, Frankenstein’s
university mentor, and he finally agrees. At the last moment, Elizabeth
decides to go too. The two question Waldman as to why Frankenstein left
the university. Waldman tells them that it was because Frankenstein’s
experiments into chemical galvanism were becoming dangerous – and
because he began to demand that fresher specimens be provided for his
work, without much caring how they were obtained. The aim of these
experiments, Waldman reveals, was to create human life.… The three
decide to see Frankenstein at the ruined watchtower in which he has built
his laboratory. At the laboratory, as a violent electrical storm builds
outside, Frankenstein and Fritz prepare to conduct a critical experiment.
On a surgical table, surrounded by electrical equipment, lies a tall
figure covered in a sheet. Fritz recoils at the sight of a hand emerging
from beneath the sheet, but Frankenstein admires the fruit of his labours.
He tells Fritz that the stolen brain is within his creation – a body
made with his own hands…. There is a knock at the door. Frankenstein
initially refuses his visitors entrance, but upon realising that Elizabeth
is outside, reluctantly admits them. Elizabeth and Victor try to talk
Frankenstein into coming home with them, but when Victor accuses him of
being crazy, the scientist defiantly invites his visitors into his
laboratory. Frankenstein tells Waldman that he has discovered the great
ray that brought life into the world. Waldman demands proof, and
Frankenstein tells him that he shall have it…. As the storm continues to
rage, Frankenstein and Fritz raise the shrouded figure to the roof of the
laboratory, where its electrodes are struck by lightening. The figure is
lowered again and, as those gathered watch in horror and fascination, its
hand begins to move. Frankenstein howls in triumph….
Comments:
It was, appropriately enough, precisely nine months after the
beginning of screen horror in the sound era that, amidst a blazing shower
of sparks and at the height of a violent electrical storm, cinematic Mad
Science was born. Looking for a quick way to capitalise upon the huge and
unexpected success of Dracula,
Universal Studios made the obvious move and put into production an
adaptation of Frankenstein. As
had been the case with its predecessor, Frankenstein’s
path to the screen was convoluted, with the finished product bearing only
the vaguest resemblance to the tale on which it was supposedly based.
Although the novel “Frankenstein” was in the public domain, Universal
chose to by-pass it in favour of the stage adaptation of the story – or
rather, of one of them.
“Frankenstein” had been in print only a few years when it was first
dramatised; and over the following hundred years and more, stage version
followed stage version, each of them altering the story to suit their own
ends, and all of them contributing to what many people today consider to
be “the” story of Frankenstein and his Creature. In 1927, yet another
interpretation, this one penned by Peggy Webling, was presented upon the
British stage by producer-actor Hamilton Deane, who chose for himself the
juicy role of the Creature. This version of “Frankenstein” was
Deane’s follow-up to “Dracula”, and like that play was both acquired
for production in the United States, and substantially re-written by the
American playwright, John L. Balderston. Unlike “Dracula”, however,
“Frankenstein” was destined never to see the light of day in America
– or at least, not as a play: it was this version to which Universal
ultimately acquired the rights.
And
so Frankenstein went into
production. Tod Browning having returned to MGM, Robert Florey was hired
to direct. Afterwards, Florey contended that much of the film’s scenario
was his idea, although screen
credit would eventually go to Dracula
screenwriter Garrett Fort and to Francis Edwards Faragoh, who would put
his indelible – and unforgivable – mark upon the whole Frankenstein
mythos by coming up with the infamous “criminal brain” twist. Dracula
cast members Edward Van Sloan and Dwight Frye were effectively asked to
reprise their earlier roles by playing Frankenstein’s mentor, Dr
Waldman, and his hunchbacked assistant, Fritz, respectively. For the roles
of Henry Frankenstein (as far as I’m aware, no-one has ever come up with
a reasonable explanation for why Victor
Frankenstein and his best friend, Henry
Clerval, swapped first names) and his fiancée, Elizabeth, Leslie Howard
and a struggling ingenue named Bette Davis were touted; while for the
Creature, only one actor was considered possible: Universal’s new star,
Bela Lugosi.
And
then everything started to go wrong.
Frankenstein’s
problems began with Lugosi, whose always-robust ego had inflated to
unimaginable proportions following his success in Dracula. Although early in production the feasibility of Lugosi
playing Frankenstein himself had in fact been discussed, it was not long
before, to the actor’s outrage and disgust, he was chosen to play the
Creature. Legends abound about Lugosi’s early make-up tests for the
role, which claim that he was photographed wearing an ungainly headpiece
that seems to have been modelled upon Paul Wegener’s appearance in the
1920 version of Der Golem. Alas, to this day no surviving footage from these tests
has ever been located, so we will probably never know for certain. In the
end, burningly resentful at being asked to play a dialogue-less role, and
offended by the production team’s refusal (no doubt, entirely justified)
to act upon his suggestions for the conception of the Creature, Lugosi
quit – for which, no disrespect intended, all fans of horror cinema –
all fans of cinema, full-stop
– should fall to their knees in profound and endless gratitude. Of such
things is history made. The production upheaval did not stop there,
however. Bette Davis was the next to go, her casting vetoed by Carl
Laemmle Sr, who found the young actress distinctly unsexy. In time, Leslie
Howard also received his marching orders, the film’s ultimate director
preferring another actor for the part of Henry. And yes, poor Robert
Florey, too, would soon find himself replaced; certainly not through any
fault of his own, whose enthusiasm for the project is well-documented, but
simply because another director was, at the time, more in favour on the
Universal lot. A former production designer and stage director, James
Whale had successfully adapted for the screen his own stage production of
the play “Journey’s End”, then scored a second triumph with his
filming of Waterloo Bridge. As a
reward, Whale was offered his choice of project, and cast his gaze over
all of the films in development at Universal, looking for one that would
offer him, as he put it, “strong meat”. He found it, in the tale of
Henry Frankenstein and his unnatural creation.
Arriving
on the set of Frankenstein,
James Whale immediately made his presence felt, insisting upon the casting
of two of his former collaborators in the roles of Henry and Elizabeth:
Colin Clive, who had played Captain Stanhope in Journey’s
End, and Mae Clarke, who had played Myra in Waterloo Bridge. For the pivotal role of the Creature, however, the
production team was no closer to finding the right actor – until fate
took a hand. There is no need, surely, for me to recount the story of that
historic commissary lunch, or how the artist’s eye of James Whale came
to rest upon the distinctive bone structure of an ungainly, middle-aged
bit player named William Henry Pratt – aka
Boris Karloff. Having struggled for a decade or more to make a career for
himself as an actor, Karloff had long since taken to heart the lesson of
humility that Bela Lugosi would tragically fail ever to learn. With rueful
good humour, he immediately accepted the chance to play an inarticulate
“monster” – never dreaming, of course, of the stardom that would
follow, nor the cinematic legacy he would create; nor indeed of the
physical pain that he would suffer, and continue to suffer long
afterwards, as the result of his brave exertions in the role.
Frankenstein
is an epoch-making film, like Dracula
before it; yet again like Dracula,
it must be conceded that it is also a very flawed one; occasionally, even
a very bad one. Both films suffer greatly from their slapdash production
histories, and in particular from the inability of their writers to
overcome the stage origin of the material that they were adapting. In Dracula, this resulted in long, painfully static sequences that gave
viewers ample opportunity to contemplate just what was wrong with the film
they were watching. In Frankenstein,
the problem is less obvious, thanks almost entirely to James Whale’s
skill as a director. Indeed, it is doubtful that Whale ever gave better
evidence of his talents than he does in Frankenstein.
Perhaps because he had been a stage director himself, Whale clearly
grasped what pitfalls he had to avoid, and throughout the film uses
imaginative editing techniques and a constantly moving camera to disguise
the shortcomings of the scenes being enacted. At one point, Whale even
dares, not just to poke fun at his own sleight-of-hand, but to draw
attention to it, by having Frankenstein seat Dr Waldman, Elizabeth and
Victor Moritz in a row of chairs before the surgical table, prior to
animating his creation. “Quite a good scene, isn’t it?” comments the
scientist to his “audience”. “One man crazy, three very sane
spectators!”
But
for all Whale’s heroic wallpapering efforts, the fact remains that the
screenplay of Frankenstein, as
a screenplay, is simply awful, full of idiotic contrivances and huge leaps
of logic. Throughout, things happen with no rhyme or reason. Take Henry
Frankenstein’s “disappearance”, for instance. Elizabeth insists to
Victor Moritz that she hasn’t seen Henry for four months – since their
engagement, in fact. (Hilariously, Victor responds to Elizabeth’s
revelation by casually remarking that he recently “ran into” Henry
walking in the woods. Apparently, he didn’t see any reason at the time
to mention the encounter to Henry’s distraught fiancée.) Yet later on,
and despite the tone-setting shots of the isolated watchtower in which
Henry is supposed to have immured himself, it seems he’s no further away
than just down the road; walking distance even for his annoying old goat
of a father. Similarly, the distance of Goldstadt Medical College from the
Frankenstein village is strangely indeterminate (summoning up memories of
Dr Seward’s travelling Sanitarium in Dracula).
When Henry collapses, following the Creature’s killing of Fritz, Dr
Waldman is left behind at the watchtower laboratory to dispose of his
student’s handiwork. For reasons known only to himself, the scientist
delays taking action long enough for the Creature to develop a resistance
to the sedative with which it has been dosed – unfortunately for
Waldman. And how, exactly, did
Waldman manage to move the unconscious Creature from the basement-dungeon
in which we last see it, all the way upstairs to the laboratory!? Once the
Creature breaks loose, impossibilities come thick and fast. Henry and
Elizabeth’s wedding preparations are disrupted when Victor arrives with
the announcement that Waldman’s body has been found at the watchtower
– who found it? Most
notoriously (although in justice, something may have been cut here), after
the Creature accidentally drowns the child, Maria, her father carries her
body through the village, announcing that she has been murdered. Given
that there were no witnesses, why on earth would he conclude this? Even
more bizarrely, upon being called upon by the Burgomaster to name the
murderer, the villagers all shout an answer. Since they’ve been busy all
day quaffing the Baron’s free beer and slapping their knees, how could
they possibly know!? Yet before long – although after dark, of course,
so that their torches show to best advantage – the villagers are
dividing up into search parties, one of them led by – Henry
Frankenstein! We can only assume that he hasn’t chosen to break the news
of his own involvement in the proceedings. Or
revealed that he was the one responsible for the recent outbreak of
grave-robbing. All of this, however, is the kind of thing that may not
occur to the audience until after a viewing. The weakest scene in the film
– also the one in which the material’s stage origin is most apparent, not coincidentally – is also one of its most famous: the
confrontation between the Creature and the wedding gown-draped Elizabeth.
Badly structured in all departments (“Grrr!” “It’s upstairs!”
“Grrr!” “It’s in the basement!”), the scene culminates when the
clumsy, lumbering Creature somehow manages to sneak soundlessly into
Elizabeth’s room, and stalk her unnoticed while she restlessly paces the
floor. And then, having mysteriously “intuited” which was
Frankenstein’s house, made its way there, distracted everyone else in
the house and broken in, the Creature simply goes away once it has made
Elizabeth faint. You can
understand why all this was left in the script – and you can easily
imagine the impact it must have had upon the stage – but for all its
iconic value, this sequence is easily the silliest in the whole film.
Yet
as I say, most of this may only be apparent after the event, or upon
subsequent viewings; because there is also much in Frankenstein
to love and to admire. So great is the film’s contribution to the
development of science fiction on the screen that its influence is felt to
this very day. Frankenstein
defined “Mad Science” not just for a generation, but apparently in
perpetuity. The point at which this film most closely resembles the novel
from which its story was drawn is their mutual conception of Frankenstein
himself, who is certainly not
mad, but rather suffers from a tragic mixture of overweening ambition and
weakness of character. One of the main flaws of the novel
“Frankenstein” (which, for all its seminal power, is certainly
extremely flawed) is Mary Shelley’s vacillation over the exact nature of
Frankenstein’s sin. Is it his desire to play God, or his subsequent
failure to take responsibility for his actions? (In justice to Shelley,
this flaw may be more apparent today that it was when her book was first
published. When “Frankenstein” was re-issued thirteen years after its
initial success, Shelley, by then beaten down by the tragedy of her life
and attempting a shaky rapprochement with her still-hostile family,
undertook a conciliatory re-editing her work, putting far more emphasis
upon the religious implications of Frankenstein’s transgressions. You
nevertheless come away from a reading with the distinct impression that
her real concern lay elsewhere.)
Thanks
to Frankenstein, the “mad
scientist” who “plays God” would become one of the most frequently
recurring – not to say clichéd – characters in all filmdom. In time
– and not much of it, either – few screenwriters would find it
necessary to provide any explanation for the action of their scripts: if
you had a scientist in your story, everything was automatically
explained. (Or as one of the most recent incarnations of this stock
character chose to put it: “I’m a scientist – that’s what we
do.”) But as is generally the case, Frankenstein
differs significantly from most of the films it spawned, inasmuch as it
bothers to provide its scientist with motivation – even justification
– for his actions. The critical moment of Frankenstein
is that which immediately precedes the revelation of the Creature. As
Waldman and his former student argue their respective viewpoints,
Frankenstein makes an emotional attempt to express the yearning for
knowledge that has led him to this juncture, demanding of Waldman whether he
has never wanted to “do something dangerous”; to “look beyond the
clouds and the stars”; to discover “what causes the trees to bud, or
what changes the darkness into light”? But all this wins no response
from Waldman, and Frankenstein stops himself, concluding his speech with a
half-shrug, a sad smile, and one of the most famous lines in all of
science fiction: “But if you talk like that – people call you
crazy….” This is a beautiful scene, and beautifully acted by Colin
Clive; and fascinatingly, it was not
in the shooting script. Legend has it that James Whale himself penned this
scene, and it may well be so. Perhaps the most fundamental difference
between “Frankenstein”, the novel, and Frankenstein,
the film, is Whale’s evident sympathy for the scientist; sympathy, that
is, not for his hubris, but for his desire to create, to explore, to
understand; and for the intellectual isolation that his pursuits engender.
We have already seen Frankenstein shunned and criticised by those closest
to him. His father, the most parasitic of aristocrats, is utterly scornful
of the notion of his son working at all. His mentor, Dr Waldman, dubs him
“dangerous”; his best friend, Victor, “crazy”. Even Elizabeth,
although she says over and over again that she believes
in Frankenstein, is speaking from the heart, not the head. The
scientist’s pursuits have left him utterly alone.
But
for all Whale’s sympathy for Henry, Frankenstein
leaves us in no doubt that he is also the villain of the piece. While the
scientist’s crimes throughout the film are many and varied, the one
action that audiences, certainly modern ones, are guaranteed to find
unforgivable is Frankenstein’s rejection and abandonment of his
creation. It is difficult to deal with this aspect of the film without
reference to the novel from which its ideas were taken. Mary Shelley’s
own life was one of heartbreak and trauma. She herself suffered rejection
by her father, William Godwin, after her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died
only days after giving birth to her. As an adult, Shelley would lose three
of her four children during their infancies. The influence of all of this
in the novel is sadly apparent. Shelley’s ambivalent feeling about her
own reproductive capacity is evident, but so too is her horror at the
thought of what “science” might make possible – namely, male
usurpation of the reproductive privilege. In both novel and film, this
perversion of the natural order leads to death and tragedy. The written
Frankenstein, however, is certainly the more culpable of the two
incarnations, since he repudiates his work primarily because, although he
chose his “materials” so as to make his Creature beautiful, it turns
out to be ugly; and it is his
subsequent cowardice that causes the deaths of those closest to him. The
cinematic Frankenstein, in contrast, is appalled by what he perceives to
be the Creature’s sub-human intelligence and instinct for violence. Yet
both Frankensteins are guilty of the same fundamental error, which is not
giving a thought, as they undertake their “experiments”, as to what
will happen to the Creature beyond the instant of its “birth”. Their
true crime is their irresponsibility; they are, in short, bad
parents. And the film takes another turn here. There is a sense
throughout that the precise nature of Frankenstein’s work is somehow a
reaction to the predestination of his life: to his inescapable future as
the lord of the manor; and to, above all, his forthcoming (and possibly
arranged) marriage. Frankenstein’s expression, when his father gives the
first of his endless toasts to “a son to the house of Frankenstein!”,
conveys not just embarrassment or reluctance, but antipathy. Of course,
these days, with all that we know about the private lives of James Whale
and Colin Clive, it is hard to look at Frankenstein
and not read more into it than, perhaps, even Whale himself intended.
Still – the fact that Henry Frankenstein reacts to his engagement by
disappearing for four months, and upon the very eve of his own wedding
chooses to spend his time dabbling in unnatural reproduction, is
suggestive, to say the least. And given the way that these very themes
positively erupted four years later in Bride Of Frankenstein, perhaps this is not an over-reading of the
film at all.
There
is a very great injustice associated with Frankenstein,
and that is the use of the word “monster” to describe the outcome of
Henry Frankenstein’s experiments. Oh, there are monsters in the film,
all right, but they are all in human form. The hapless, bewildered,
terrified Creature that stumbles out of the darkness of its
basement-prison is, on the contrary, one of the screen’s true innocents.
The supreme blunder of Frankenstein is the idiotic subplot of the “criminal brain”
stolen by Fritz and transplanted into the Creature. (And it is idiotic in
practical, as well as in dramatic, terms. The script’s contention that
there are gross anatomical differences between “normal” brains and
“criminal” brains is laughable, of course, but if we play along –
shouldn’t medical student Frankenstein have recognised
that Fritz had brought him the wrong brain? – and not least because the
jar it arrived in was labelled
“ABNORMAL BRAIN”!!) By introducing this “explanation” for the
Creature’s behaviour, the film mitigates the issue of Frankenstein’s
culpability – or rather, it tries to. It also fails; because,
“criminal brain” be damned, the Creature is unarguably the most
complete of victims. Rejected by its creator, chained up in a prison,
beaten and tortured by Fritz, threatened with destruction at all turns---
Of course it becomes violent!
(Apart from anything else, Frankenstein
shows a wonderful understanding of the perversely cyclic nature of abuse.
Frankenstein’s own rejection by those closest to him does not prevent
him from rejecting his own creation; and nor does the suffering of the
marginalised Fritz stop him from
inflicting the most appalling tortures upon the still more marginalised
Creature.) Yet for all that, there is nothing truly “criminal” about
anything that the Creature does. Of the three killings it commits, two are
in self-defence, one a pure and tragic accident. Its two premeditated acts
of aggression are its terrorising of Elizabeth – whom it does not
actually hurt – and its
climactic attack upon Frankenstein himself, the man who brought all this
misery and suffering down upon it: a justified action if ever there was
one. (It is worth remembering at this point that Mary Shelley prefaced her
novel with a pointed quote from “Paradise Lost”: Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me Man? Did I solicit
thee from darkness to promote me?) The pity of all this is that we
have been made so thoroughly aware of the Creature’s capacity for
gentleness, even for affection. It asks so little of its miserable
existence – just what we all want – someone to be kind to it….
And
it is this, perhaps, that explains the durability of Frankenstein itself, and the regularity with which its themes are
resurrected and re-worked in films even to this day. There is nothing and
no-one in all the annals of cinema who can touch the Creature for sheer
pathos. Perhaps King Kong comes the closest. I have certainly cried over
the fate of that beleaguered ape, as I am sure many of you have; yet our
sympathy for Kong operates on a different level from that which we feel
for the Creature. When we weep for Kong, it is because we feel for his
plight; but when we weep for the Creature, it is because we feel for ourselves.
It is no wonder that this story continues to resonate so deeply with
audiences. Every child who has ever felt itself to be a disappointment to
its parents; every individual ever rejected or ridiculed on the score of
their physical appearance; anyone who ever felt unloved or unwanted must respond to the Creature and its sufferings. How could it be
otherwise? That we continue to react so strongly to the centrepiece of a
film over seventy years old is proof positive that cinematic miracles do
sometimes happen. Just think of all the ways that things could have gone
wrong here: Frankenstein left in
the hands of Robert Florey (a talented director, but no James Whale); an
alternative design for the Creature’s look (neither of them the most
modest of men, Whale and Jack Pierce both claimed sole credit for concept
of the film’s brilliant, unparalleled make-up job; let’s just call it
a great collaboration); or, above all, a different actor in the role. Yes,
that’s the crux of it: Frankenstein
without Karloff is unthinkable; an obscenity. It is the actor, and the
actor’s heart, to which we respond. (Want to give yourself nightmares?
Try this: close your eyes, and imagine this film with Lugosi….)
Unlike
Dracula, Frankenstein is consistently visually interesting. James Whale was
far more the artist than Tod Browning; and, we feel, far more the film
scholar, too. Frankenstein
throughout shows the influence of the silent European horror films that
preceded it; the lighting and the camera-work are heavily Expressionistic.
This is particularly true during the graveyard scenes that open the film,
which are full of strange shadows and camera-angles (and are highlighted
by the incredible moment in which Frankenstein literally hurls dirt in the
face of Death), the laboratory scenes, and the climactic chase and battle.
Moreover, the relationship between Frankenstein and his Creature
(particularly with respect to the victimisation of the film’s so-called
“monster”) is reminiscent of that between the hypnotist and his
enslaved somnambulist in The Cabinet
Of Dr Caligari; while the film’s overall structure and look
(although not, thankfully, its
make-up!), and the Creature’s vulnerability to a child who shows no fear
of it, recall Der Golem.
Re-watching this film for the umpteenth time, but perhaps studying
it for the first time, I found myself particularly struck by two of Frankenstein’s
recurrent motifs. The first, fully in keeping with Frankenstein’s
attempt to tamper in God’s domain, is the film’s constant vertical
movement. For a film of its time, this is very unusual. Many productions
of the 1930s suffer from a slightly cramped feeling, due to the struggles
of the cameramen of the time to conceal the limitations of the sets on
which they were shot. Not so Frankenstein.
On the contrary, the camera of Arthur Edeson is constantly lifting from
the floor up into the air, showing off the sets (and glass mattes!) that
are one of the film’s glories. The laboratory, in particular, is a
beautiful piece of design, stretching up as it does towards the
life-giving lightning storm, and full to overflowing with Kenneth
Strickfaden’s fabulous (and, of course, wholly decorative!) electrical
apparatus. When the electrical storm reaches its height, Frankenstein and
Fritz raise the as-yet unseen Creature all the way from the laboratory
floor up to the opening in the ceiling; and when Frankenstein realises
that his experiment has been a success, his cries and looks of triumph are
also directed up – at Whom, we
have little doubt. (The thunderclaps that greet Frankenstein’s infamous
pronouncement that he knows what it feels like to be God leave us in little doubt that the heavens are not best
pleased with his presumption.) And so on it goes throughout. Characters
are constantly looking up, climbing
up, reaching up--- This climaxes, of course, in the carrying of the
unconscious Frankenstein up into the top of the ruined windmill, where the
cornered Creature makes its final stand. Frankenstein, initially intended
to set a precedent for all mad scientists to follow, and to die at the
hands of his creation, is given a last-moment reprieve here; and
significantly, he must fall to
live.
This
verticality, this reaching up,
leads us into the Frankenstein’s
most interesting theme: its constant insistence upon the importance of hands; hands as a point of contact, as a medium for communication;
as the means of creation, and as
the means of destruction. The first thing we see of Henry Frankenstein in
this film is his hand, pressing down upon the shoulder of the over-eager
Fritz, as the two wait for the funeral mourners to depart. Frankenstein
continues to draw our attention to this motif with his reiterated speeches
about the Creature being the product of his hands,
his own hands. (Actually,
Frankenstein’s fixation upon what his
hands have been up to rather takes us back to the question of the
film’s subtext….) Fittingly, the first we see of the Creature is also
its hand, the deep scarred gouges about the wrist evidence of the
rough-and-ready acquisition of its component parts; and it is the
twitching of that very hand that signals Frankenstein’s seeming triumph.
The most memorable hand movement of the film follows, as the Creature
encounters sunlight for the very first time, and reaches up in mystified
delight, trying to catch the very beams within its stiff, gnarled fingers.
Frankenstein soon cuts off that light, leaving the Creature gesturing in
helpless bewilderment. It is a gesture repeated after the film’s great
tragedy, the accidental drowning of the child, Maria. (Just for the
record--- Whale was right, and Karloff was wrong. Undoubtedly the Creature
would have thrown the child into the water, not merely placed her in. For
it to do otherwise would imply an experience of the world, and a capacity
for reasoning, that it certainly did not possess.) Prior to this, there is
a moment of inexpressible poignancy as Maria begins to divide up her
flowers between herself and her new friend. As she does so, the Creature
reaches out and, with infinite gentleness, takes her tiny hand within his,
spreading the fingers and staring transfixed at its dainty perfection. And
they dare call it “monster”….
Karloff’s
acting during these scenes cannot be praised enough. It is delicate, and
full of judgement. We feel infinitely for the poor Creature, but we are
also made aware of its capacity for inadvertent
violence – never mind what it might do if thoroughly angered. The true
wonder of Jack Pierce’s make-up is that it lets so much of Karloff
himself show through; the Creature is never a mere object
to us. Post-Frankenstein,
Karloff inevitably found himself type-cast; yet he never seemed to resent
the fact, that early lesson in humility continuing to serve him well. At
worst, Karloff was at least assured of steady employment for the next
thirty-five years; and those of us who love horror films should be
thoroughly grateful for it – even though, it must be admitted, Karloff
the actor was often far, far superior to the material that he was offered.
As for the rest of Frankenstein’s cast, the standard of the acting varies from the
good to the serviceable to the frankly appalling. Colin Clive is actually
very effective as Henry Frankenstein, although no doubt some modern
viewers will find his fits of hysteria a bit difficult to swallow. In his
quieter scenes, however, he conveys a sense of humour, of irony, that
makes you understand just why James Whale insisted upon his casting. Of
course, Clive had the advantage of being well served by the screenplay;
the other actors had to make do with very little, and on the whole they
failed dismally. Edward Van Sloan is far more restrained here than he was
in Dracula, and while he
doesn’t make much of an impact, he does have his moments – like his
wry description of Frankenstein’s scientific shopping-list. (“He
wished us to supply him with – other
bodies – and not to be too particular about where and how we got
them!”) Dwight Frye’s Fritz is simply Renfield with a hunch; the actor
gives it his best shot, but the role was an insult. Nevertheless, there
would barely be a science fiction film made over the following two decades
that didn’t feature a doomed assistant modelled upon Fritz. Both Mae
Clarke and John Boles were far better actors than they were able to show
here; Boles, in particular, is stuck with the same kind of “useless
wooden block” role that would soon kill off David Manners’ career. As
for Clarke, she had a big year in 1931. The irony is that her best known
role is also her least distinguished. Those people wincing their way
through Clarke’s plummy, pseudo-British accents in Frankenstein
might have a tough time recognising Myra the prostitute of Waterloo Bridge, or the pathetic Molly Malloy of The
Front Page – or most of all, the gravel-voiced, pyjama-clad B-girl
on the receiving end of Jimmy Cagney’s grapefruit of The
Public Enemy. Worst of all, though, is Frederick Kerr as Baron
Frankenstein – an awful character, awfully executed. It’s possible
that Whale found the Baron amusing (or that he just liked having Kerr,
another old collaborator, on his set), but it’s doubtful that any viewer
today will find him anything other than an embarrassment.
There
are a few familiar faces amongst the supporting cast of Frankenstein, such as Michael Mark, who plays Ludwig, Maria’s
bereaved father. I suffered a moment of strange recognition upon
re-watching this movie: twenty-nine years after Frankenstein,
Mark would play the not-so-mad scientist, Dr Zinthrop, in The Wasp Woman; and in between the two films, he didn’t
change at all – except that his hair and moustache turned white!
Also featured in Frankenstein is Lionel Belmore, who plays the Burgomaster – and
who would continue to do so, or at least appear in a similar role, in just
about all of the Universal horror films that followed this one. And this
brings us to the other enduring legacy of Frankenstein:
its creation of that strange, cinematic world that I like to call
“Universal-Land”. Where and when,
exactly, are the events of Frankenstein
supposed to be taking place? The names (place and character) are all
Germanic; the sets are pure “Mittel Europe”; yet the aristocratic
accents are all British (something not uncommon in American films, of
course). The clothes are all modern (circa
1930) and so is the language; but the lack of cars, phones, and batteries
place it decades earlier; as does the Baron’s condescendingly feudal
attitude to his “peasants”. And it is the transformation of those
peasants late in the film that provides the film’s comic highlight. At
one moment, they’re all clad in gypsy dresses and lederhosen and
slapping their knees in the village square; the next, the men are clad in
the very spiffiest of thirties suits – and, oh Lord, the hats!
Check out the hats! – yet nevertheless carrying burning torches (as all good
mobs would do in dozens of films afterwards), and wielding farm implements
rather than guns. As the decade progressed, the enclosed world of the
Universal horror film would grow ever more bizarre and anachronistic,
finally becoming a disturbing kind of Neverland; one that steadfastly
refused to acknowledge in any way the events that were really
taking place in Europe….
It
can be hard, these days, to discover in Dracula
just what terrified people so in the 1930s. It is rather easier to
understand what bothered them about Frankenstein.
Consider the subject matter: funerals, coffins, grave-robbing, corpses on
gibbets, surgical transplants, reanimation of a dead body, the killing of
a child--- Make no mistake: for the unprepared audience of 1931, this was
grim, frightening, confronting stuff. And the producers of Frankenstein knew that, too – and were sufficiently worried to
tack a prologue onto their film. Even as Dracula
originally concluded with Edward Van Sloan, as Van Helsing, reminding
people that “after all, there are
such things!”, Frankenstein
opens with Van Sloan warning the audience that the upcoming film might
“thrill – shock – even horrify!”
This is partially tongue-in-cheek, of course; the eternal horror film
challenge – can you take it?
The opening of the speech, however, in which Frankenstein
is described as the tale of a man who “sought to create life after his
own image, without reckoning upon God” is obviously the studio’s
attempt to ward off the critical and social attacks it knew only too well
would follow. Well, it didn’t work, of course; the film was
roundly attacked; but it was also hugely profitable. The other studios,
which had held off even after the success of Dracula,
were finally convinced that this “horror” trend was no mere flash in
the pan, and scrambled to put their own films into production. The next
year, 1932, is one of the richest and most magical in the history of the
genre film, with remarkable film following remarkable film – as we shall
see in due time. In truth, neither Dracula
nor Frankenstein can match the
quality, or the audacity, of many of the films that followed them; but it
must never be forgotten that they blazed the way, laying down the
foundations for all that would come after. And while many better films
would follow, these pioneering works remained, and remain,
consistently popular. The two films were even re-released as a double-bill
late in the thirties – neither of them quite
the works they had been, granted. This was after the introduction of the
Production Code, and both films suffered accordingly. In Frankenstein, the most significant cuts were to the scientist’s
declaration of his divine presumption, and to the Creature’s drowning of
Maria – the latter, of course, leaving behind a far more upsetting
implication. Incredibly, it took decades for this footage to be restored,
but thankfully, it did finally happen; and at last we can see, as
audiences of 1931 did, Henry Frankenstein in all his hubristic arrogance
– and his Creature, in all its piteousness.
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