Frankenstein (1931)
Frankenstein (1931)
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Background
The classic     and definitive monster/horror film of all time, director James Whale's Frankenstein (1931)     is the screen version of Mary Shelley's Gothic 1818 nightmarish novel of the     same name (Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus). The film, with     Victorian undertones, was produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal Pictures,     the same year that Dracula (1931) , another classic     horror film, was produced within the same studio - both films helped to save     the beleaguered studio. [The sequel to this Monster story is found in director     James Whale's even greater film, Bride of Frankenstein       (1935) .]
The film's name was derived from the mad, obsessed scientist, Dr. Henry      Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who experimentally creates an artificial life    - an Unnamed Monster (Boris Karloff), that ultimately terrorizes the Bavarian    countryside after being mistreated by his maker's assistant Fritz and society    as a whole. The film's most famous scene is the one in which Frankenstein    befriends a young girl named Maria at a lake's edge, and mistakenly throws    her into the water (and drowns her) along with other flowers.
In addition to this film, dozens of other adaptations have been made of     the  Frankenstein horror story (and lots of other variations such as Abbott      and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Frankenstein Meets the Space       Monster (1965), Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein        (1974) (shot in the same castle and with the same props and lab        equipment  as the original film), and Frankenhooker (1990)), including:
Frankenstein (1910), d. J. Searle Dawley, 16 minute        silent, Edison Company
Life Without a Soul (1915), d.        Joseph W. Smiley, the first feature-length Frankenstein adaptation, a lost        silent film, Ocean Film Corp.
Frankenstein (1931) , d. James        Whale, Universal
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), d. Terence Fisher,        Hammer Films (UK)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970), d. Jimmy Sangster,        Hammer Films (UK)
Frankenstein Unbound (1990), d.        Roger Corman, 20th Century Fox
Frankenstein (1993), d. David        Wickes, Made for TV, Turner Pictures
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994),        d. Kenneth Branagh, producer Francis Ford Coppola, TriStar
Van Helsing (2004), d. Stephen        Sommers, opens with        a slightly modified (revisionist) creation scene and the ending burning        windmill scene from the original film (in black and white!) as a springboard        for the film
Originally, the famed Dracula actor Bela Lugosi was        cast as the Monster, and French director Robert Florey was assigned to       direct.  But after various screen tests, Lugosi refused the part, and Universal       chose  Britisher James Whale to direct. Significantly, this film then launched       the  career of unknown actor Boris Karloff, who is surprisingly uncredited       in the  opening credits of the film as the Monster. In the beginning credits       titled "The Players," the Monster is listed fourth, with a question mark after its      name. In the end credits, however, where the cast list is prefaced by - "a       good cast is worth repeating...," the Monster is listed fourth with BORIS        KARLOFF's name following. Karloff's performance is remarkable - his acting        communicated a hint of the pitiful humanity of the grotesque Monster behind        its hideous, stitched and bolted-together body.
The Story
In the opening, pre-credits prologue, the film is introduced       by a tuxedoed gentleman (Edward van Sloan, one of the principal characters       in the film) who steps from behind a closed curtain and delivers the following     teaser - a "friendly warning" - to the audience:
How do you do? Mr. Carl Laemmle [the producer] feels it would be        a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning.        We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought        to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one        of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of        creation - life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even - horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do        not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now's your chance to - uh,        well, we warned you.
The credits play with an eerie set of rotating eyes as a backdrop. The     film  then opens with a close-up of a pair of hands hauling up a rope. As     dusk approaches,  the camera pans across a group of weeping and wailing mourners     and priests  during a funeral service around a gravesite, in front of a statue     of a skeletal  Grim Reaper. The memorable, expressionistic grave-robbing     scene occurs near  the Bavarian mountain village of Goldstadt. [The village     was constructed for  the previous year's film All     Quiet on the Western Front  (1930) .] Beneath the gloomy sky, a coffin     is being lowered into a  grave. Crouched in the background from behind the     cemetery fence, brilliant  medical scientist (but slightly insane and overwrought)     Dr. Henry Frankenstein  (Colin Clive) and his dwarfish, bumbling, hunchbacked     assistant Fritz (Dwight  Frye) eagerly watch the proceedings. The first few     clodfuls of dirt that hit  the top of the casket make a dull clump/thud [an     impressive effect for early  talkie audiences].
They       are there to steal the newly-buried fresh male corpse for an experiment       that Frankenstein is conducting on the secrets of life. After the cemetery       is vacated and the grave is filled in by a grave digger, they creep in       and strip off their jackets, carelessly tossing them into the dirt behind       them. The two dig up the fresh grave after the grave-digger has left. To       symbolize Henry's sacrilegious lack of respect for the subject of death       - an example of black humor, one shovelful of his dirt is irreverently       thrown directly into the face of a nearby statue of the Grim Reaper! After       completing the digging, they stand the coffin on end. Frankenstein pats       the coffin with his ear close to it, murmuring that there will be a resurrection: "He's     just resting - waiting for a new life  to come." They haul the heavy     coffin back with them on a cart as the moon rises. The film is enhanced by     dark and forbidding Transylvanian settings.
On the way up a jagged, rocky slope, Fritz reluctantly climbs       up a post and cuts down an executed criminal hanging from a gallows' rope.       Struggling, he crawls along the crossbar with a knife between his teeth.       Frankenstein hopes to use the victim's brain in his experimental attempt       to assemble a new human life form, but the body falls to the ground. "The neck's broken;      the brain is useless. We must find another brain," laments Frankenstein      -  not surprising since the man was the victim of a hanging.
Needing only a brain, Dr. Frankenstein sends his dwarfish       assistant to his old, nearby medical school (Goldstadt Medical College)       to steal one. [Frankenstein left the school when his demands for experiments       with humans were not approved.] Fritz peers through the windows of the       College, where medical students in an operating amphitheatre watch a dissection       demonstration on a corpse of a psychopath "whose life was one of brutality, of violence,     and murder." College      Professor Waldman (Edward van Sloan), in front of floodlights, teaches about      the differences between a normal brain ("one of the most perfect specimens       of the human brain") and the degenerate murderer's brain ("the abnormal       brain  of the typical criminal"). The Professor delineates the degenerative       characteristics  of the criminal brain - "the scarcity of convolutions       on the frontal lobe...and  the distinct degeneration of the middle frontal       lobe."
After the class concludes and the students are dismissed,       a window at the back of the amphitheatre opens - Fritz stumbles in and       down to the front where he finds the two jars of brains on display in the       room. One of the brains is normal, labeled "Cerebrum - Normal Brain." He grabs its glass     jar and begins  to rush out of the dissecting room, but inadvertently drops     it when startled  by the loud sound of a gong. In order not to disappoint     Dr. Frankenstein,  however, the dim-witted Fritz desperately grabs the other     glass jar labeled "Dysfunctio Cerebri - Abnormal Brain."
The next scene opens with a close-up of a framed picture       of Henry Frankenstein with a flickering candle burning closeby. A maid       announces a family friend visitor: "Herr Victor Moritz," followed       by a close-up of Victor Moritz' (John Boles) face. Frankenstein's fiancee       Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) greets him in the wood-paneled, high-vaulted, Victorian       style parlor of the Frankenstein manor. She is concerned, worried, and       uncertain about Henry, and wondering if he is emotionally disturbed. Anxious       about her marital partner, she explains how Henry's most recent letter,       the first she has had in four months, makes no sense. He has shut himself       off from the outside world, working to the limits of his endurance with       his experiments in an isolated, abandoned watchtower that serves as a laboratory.      The mysterious letter reads:
You must have faith in me, Elizabeth. Wait, my work must come first,        even before you. At night the winds howl in the mountains. There is no one        here. Prying eyes can't peer into my secret...I am living in an abandoned        old watchtower close to the town of Goldstadt. Only my assistant is here to        help me with my experiments.
She explains that Henry told her about his strange experiments at a significant      time - just before they became engaged and he retreated to his mountain     laboratory  away from her:
The very day we announced our engagement, he told me of his experiments.        He said he was on the verge of a discovery so terrific that he doubted his        own sanity. There was a strange look in his eyes, some mystery. His words        carried me right away. Of course I've never doubted him but still I worry.        I can't help it.
Victor saw Henry three weeks earlier, when he was walking       alone in the woods, and was told that no one was allowed to visit him in       his laboratory: "His      manner was very strange." He suggests going to see Dr. Waldman, Henry's      former  professor and paternalistic mentor in medical school. Victor also      reveals  that he is a rival lover with affectionate interest in Henry's      future bride:
Victor: Perhaps he can tell me more about all this.
Elizabeth: Oh Victor, you're a dear.
Victor: You know I'd go to the ends of the earth for you.
Elizabeth: I shouldn't like that. I'm far too fond of you.
Victor: I wish you were!
Elizabeth: (she turns away) Victor.
Victor: I'm sorry.
With Elizabeth's insistence to join him, they leave the       comfortable, secure surroundings of the living room area, and go together       to discuss their concerns with Dr. Waldman. The scene at Waldman's office       at the College, already in progress, shows a row of skulls positioned on       one of the shelves of his bookcases. On his desk is a row of test tubes       and another grinning skull. Surrounded by symbols of death, Waldman is       also troubled by their news: "Herr     Frankenstein  is a most brilliant young man, yet so erratic he troubles me." Frankenstein's      research in "chemical galvanism and electro-biology were far in advance      of  our theories here at the University" and had reached dangerously advanced       stages. His experiments to recreate human life, and his demands for corpses "were becoming dangerous":
Waldman: Herr Frankenstein is greatly changed.
Victor: You mean changed as a result of his work?
Waldman: Yes, his work, his insane ambition to create life.
Elizabeth: How? How? Please tell us everything, whatever it is.
Waldman: The bodies we use in our dissecting room for lecture purposes were        not perfect enough for his experiments, he said. He wished us to supply him        with other bodies and we were not to be too particular as to where and how        we got them. I told him that his demands were unreasonable. And so he left        the University to work unhampered. He found what he needed elsewhere.
Victor: Oh! The bodies of animals. Well, what are the lives of a few rabbits        and dogs?
Waldman: (leaning forward ominously) You do not quite get what I mean. Herr        Frankenstein was interested only in human life - first to destroy it, then        recreate it. There you have his mad dream.
Waldman is not up-to-date on Henry's morbid research and crazy experiments      and how he was grave-digging for already-dead corpses. Elizabeth begs that      Dr. Waldman join them to visit Henry's lab in the watchtower where the mad      experiments are taking place, and he reluctantly agrees.