Frankenstein (1910)

“…”

Oh my. I’ve no idea how I’m supposed to judge this film, more than a hundred years after it was made. It’s completely alien to my entire conception of what a film actually is, far more so than the several 1920s silent films I’ve seen. At least they can be watched from a modern perspective of what cinema is supposed to do, minus sound. This can’t, but it’s utterly fascinating to see.

For a start, it’s just twelve and a half minutes long, which is why I’ve been able to knock out two movie reviews in one day. That’s only long enough for half a dozen set-piece scenes which is what we get. Such plot as there is gets relegated to the intertitles.

The picture is so blurred that it’s impossible to make out the actor’s facial features, which isn’t helped by the fact that everything takes place in mid-shot. The camera is completely static- it’s more like watching a play than a film, even one from as little as ten days later. One scene is quite clever, though, using an on-screen mirror to give us two different perspectives on the screen.

Given how blurred and indistinct the actors are, the acting styles are not exactly understated. There are lots of big, big gestures from actors who are presumably based mainly in the theatre. It’s often not so much like narrative but something closer to dancing. Everything is about spectacle rather than plot.

It’s fascinating to see the different tints for different scenes, which works particularly well in the scene where the monster is slowly coming to life from skeletal beginnings in a large cauldron. The orange tint gives a real sense of being in a furnace. The whole scene is extremely effective, and is actually a superb example of special effects. It’s just a pity that the picture is so blurred that we never really get a proper glimpse of the monster.

One historical oddity is that the first thing we see is a credit to Thomas Edison, whose company was responsible for this film. That’s how long ago this was.

Frankenstein (1931)

“It’s alive!”

Hooray! The real life stuff has finished and I can start blogging again as normal. Time for a film, methinks. I’ve done a lot of Hammer; it’s time to do a Universal.

I love the bloke in the tux at the start with his wonderfully camp introduction. It sets the tone for the whole film, which is essentially a great big knowing wink. The credits are interesting, too: Mary Shelley is credited as “Mrs Percy B. Shelley” (it’s feminism gone mad!), and Boris Karloff is referred to as “?”, only being named in the closing credits.

The look of the film is just as stylised and atmospheric, paying no heed to realism and with no tree left ungnarled, as per the Hammers we’ve covered so far, but the whole thing seems to be shot so as to be a lot more claustrophobic. It’s also striking that everyone is in (for 1931) modern dress, and the setting seems to be firmly Bavarian (see the peasants’ costumes) rather than the mittel-European vagueness of Hammer.

For all that he starts off with grave robbing and stealing brains from dissection labs, Henry Frankenstein (why the name change?) is nothing like as nasty as the later Cushing version. Colin Clive does a great job of portraying his monomania, but as soon as his family performs an intervention halfway through the film he comes to his senses, and even leads a mob of baying peasants after the monster at the end. He seems to get away with rather a lot really. I was left mouth agape at the sight of Igor, whose name is Fritz, climbing up a not-very-solid gallows, in defiance of all health-and safety standards.

The early scene with the lecture is hilarious, with the lecturer telling his students with a straight face that he can physically tell the difference between a “criminal” brain and a “normal” brain! We’re also reminded that it’s 1931 by the fact that he goes on to say “Thank you, gentlemen- the class is dismissed,” in spite of the fact that at least a good third of the students seem to be women.

Elizabeth (token love interest and token woman) and Moritz are characters who exist only to advance the plot and be a bit wet, and are given dialogue so trite that it has to be deliberate; this is clearly James Whale having a laugh with the tropes. Even the performances of both actors seem to be deliberately wooden. And Baron Frankenstein, Henry’s grumpy, bibulous yet loveable old dad, is the funniest character in the film, who quite rightly gets the last word.

Funny though this film is, though, it’s full of iconic moments, and the moment where the monster is raised to the skylight to be infused with life as his creator raves that “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” is justly iconic. It’s is justly iconic. It’s easy to take for granted, too, how fantastic the monster’s make-up is, so familiar has it become. And our first glimpse of the monster’s face is simple but powerful. Even so, this doesn’t really feel like a horror film; there’s plenty of room for some archly ridiculous line about Frankenstein having found the “great ray”, beyond ultraviolet, which brought life into the world. Er, how scientifically rigorous.

The monster kills Igor, whose name is Fritz, but he was asking for it, frankly. It’s only when Dr. Waldman is killed that we realise the monster has become truly dangerous. The scene between the monster and the girl is the heart of the film, driving home the monster’s childlike innocence at the same time as we see it do the deed that puts it beyond redemption. Even here, though, the monster shows no malice. It is horrified and upset to see the little girl sink into the lake.

The scene of the girl’s father, numbed with grief, carrying his dead daughter towards the burgomeister is sad and effective, but I’m not sure how he realises she’s been murdered, or that there’s some unseen murderer hiding bin the woods. And I don’t think much of this society’s sense of justice, with the authorities happy to organise lynch mobs with not the slightest shred of evidence! Still, there’s no denying that the ending, with the mill quickly catching fire and Karloff brilliantly portraying the monster’s fear, is superb. There’s no way it can get out of that, right?

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

“Pass the marmalade, Elizabeth.”

Right then, here begin the movie reviews! And we start with, er, some text in a Gothic font. And then the credits, and the music, and the picture quality, and the vistas- definitely not TV! Interesting from the start that, although nominally set in Switzerland, this is a stylised and not necessarily realistic Mittel-European setting. The outdoor scenes seem to be sets at least some of the time, and any vistas of Alpine scenes are not really intended to look natural.

Peter Cushing is fantastic as Victor Frankenstein, and it’s interesting to see how straight he plays it, as he dominates the film such as to set the whole tone. Of course, the whole thing is, deep down, terribly camp, and feels as though it is intended as such, but it’s a very, very deadpan sort of camp.

The film is told in flashback, with the main narrative bookended by scenes of a desperate Frankenstein awaiting his execution. We then cut to scenes of him as an intelligent, enthusiastic but rather cold young man, who uses his vast inherited wealth to ensure that he gets the best scientific education money can buy, striking up a close friendship with his tutor, Paul.

But all this starts to fall apart as soon as the pair succeed in bring a dead dog back to life. The cracks immediately begin to appear in their relationship; Paul thinks only of the medical benefits this could bring, while Victor immediately shows signs of Evil Genius Syndrome, interested only in his own knowledge and personal glory. And the morally dodgy decisions start here; first he steals the body of a hanged man, then he buys a pair of eyes, and then he robs the grave of a celebrated sculptor for his hands! Interestingly, though, towards the end of the film Victor protests that all doctors rob graves, for the benefit of humanity, and Paul doesn’t demur. This is a rare moment of moral ambiguity.

The part played by Victor’s doormat of a cousin, Elizabeth, is disturbing. Firstly, because they plan an incestuous marriage (eurgh!). Secondly, this is the second quarter of the nineteenth century (going by the fashions), and yet no one raises an eyebrow at the two of them living together. But she is so naïve, not questioning Victor’s obsession with his experiments or his extreme neglect of her. The only one who genuinely seems to care about her is Paul.

Victor’s even worse than that, though; he’s having an affair with his maid, Justine, and has promised both women that he’ll marry them. From this point on, having established that he’s a cad and a bounder, the film shows him becoming more and more morally repulsive.

The visit from Professor Bernstein highlights an odd thing about this film; why is it that the main characters speak with Received Pronunciation while the minor characters all sound a bit German? Aren’t they all supposed to be speaking Swiss German? Also amusing is the scene where Elizabeth naively bemoans the time her fiancé spends in the laboratory,, and we pan to the two men with their brandy and cigars. The gender roles in this film are quite hilariously antediluvian at times.

Be that as it may, Victor’s casual and shocking murder of the Professor is a huge turning point. Of course, the Professor is then buried in Frankenstein’s family vault, from where he can cheerfully obtain the brain. This film’s version of Baron Frankenstein is much more villainous than is usually the case.

Paul, by now, has huge scruples and, in a scuffle between him and Victor, the brain is apparently damaged- although we only ever have Victor’s word for this. It isn’t long, though, until Paul is persuaded to help. But the monster has unexpectedly been brought to life, and it looks very effective indeed. Christopher Lee’s make-up looks nothing like the Universal version, for legal reasons, but this is a real strength.

The argument between Victor and Paul after the monster escapes is interesting. Paul wants it killed, but is it not a sentient being? This monster has nothing of the pathos of Karloff’s version, though. He simply terrifies the blind man and (implicitly) kills him, while the child by the lake (in this version a boy) apparently survives.

The scene where Paul shoots the monster is visibly shocking and horrible, with plenty of blood, but that’s it. The monster’s dead. Paul can now leave. Except--- has it not been foreshadowed that Frankenstein can bring the dead back to life.

Victor further demonstrates his utter caddishness in cruelly mocking the pregnant Justine, whom he had promised to marry with no intention of doing so. Now he simply dismisses her, very possibly to a very grim fate. The power imbalance between them, in terms of both class and gender, is huge. She looks for evidence in the lab with which to prove his crimes to the authorities, but he locks her in with the monster; his second murder.

Paul finally returns on the eve of the wedding to see the monster, resurrected and pathetic, reduced to spending its life on the end of a chain, obeying simple and pointless commands from its master. Paul, appalled, resolves to go to the authorities but, while they remonstrate, the monster escapes, heading to the roof for the climax. In the end it is Victor, threatened by his own creation, who shoots the monster.

We return to the cell, where Victor begs first the priest and then Paul to support his story that it was the monster, not he, who murdered Justine. But he is, of course, being disingenuous; it was he who locked her into the room with the monster, and in any case he was already a murderer by this point. A last scene between Pauil and Elizabeth strongly implies them to be a future couple, as our last shot lingers over the guillotine.

That was good, albeit with a lack of irony that would be impossible for such a film nowadays. The ethical dilemmas look a little different, too, in these days of stem cell research. A good start for Hammer horror, though. I’ll have to watch the Universal version soon…