| Collector's Corner October 2003
 Frankenstein
- Starring: Colin Clive,
Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff, Edward Van Sloan,
Dwight Frye, Frederick Kerr
- Directed by: James Whale
- Theatrical release: 1931
- DVD release: 1999
- Video: Academy Ratio
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
- Released by: Universal
Have you never wanted to do anything that was
dangerous? Where should we be if no one tried to find out what lies beyond? Have you never
wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud?
And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you
crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example,
I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.
-- Henry Frankenstein
When we first meet Dr. Henry
Frankenstein (Colin Clive), heir to the Frankenstein Barony, he is in the midst of raiding
a fresh grave with his hunchbacked servant, Fritz (Dwight Frye). Henry is robbing graves
and stealing corpses from medical schools and executions, all with the idea of stitching
together various body parts and infusing life into his "creation." Complicating
his life is his father (Frederick Kerr), who judges Henry to be a philandering crackpot,
and Henry’s impending marriage to his fiancée, Elizabeth (Mae Clarke). One night,
Elizabeth, her friend Victor (John Boles), and Henry’s medical school professor, Dr.
Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), become worried about Henry’s behavior and go to
Henry’s laboratory.
When they arrive, Henry is tense and anxious. Victor
comments that Henry is acting crazy. With the look of a cornered animal, Henry decides to
let them view his experiment. In one of the most famous scenes in cinema, Henry leads them
up the stairs to his lab and shows them a sutured cadaver resting on an oversized gurney.
As it’s raised into an electrical storm to receive life, Henry screams the infamous,
self-damning words, "Now I know what it's like to be God!"
When he comes to life, Frankenstein’s monster is huge,
scared, confused, and very powerful. Fritz, a hunchbacked sociopath grave-robber, is
pleased to have finally found someone on a social rung lower than his own. He shows his
delight by mercilessly torturing the monster, who eventually kills him. The monster then
escapes into the community, looking for a friend. When he accidentally kills a young girl,
he becomes a hunted beast. The entire population chases after the monster, finally
trapping him in a windmill, which they set on fire, hoping to send the monster to a fiery
and eternal grave.
In 1931, the year Frankenstein was released,
Universal Studios was on the brink of disaster. The world was suffering through the
initial years of the Great Depression, and businesses everywhere were going under. Though
their horror film Dracula (starring Bela Lugosi) had been a huge hit in February of
that year, Universal still had to lay off more than 300 employees in March, after which
the studio shut down for a month and a half. Searching for some way to stay alive, studio
boss Carl Laemmle aimed at another horror film with Lugosi, this time based on Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. The studio had also hired
James Whale as its top director, and Whale wanted to make Frankenstein
"because it was the strongest meat and gave me a chance to dabble in the
macabre," he said. "I thought it would be an amusing thing to try and make what
everybody knows to be a physical impossibility into the almost believable for 60
minutes."
For inspiration, Whale studied such silent film classics as
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, The Magician, and
The Golem. Working with John Balderston and Robert Florey, he came up with a script
that would cast the monster as a pathetic but dangerous creation. When the script was
finished, Lugosi threw a diva fit and refused to play the role, claiming it was
appropriate only for a "half-wit extra." They next offered it to John Carradine,
who told Whale that he had too much classical training to demote himself to such a role
(which makes you wonder what he later thought of his son David’s TV series, Kung
Fu). Finally, in the Universal cafeteria, Whale discovered a bit actor named Boris
Karloff (born William Henry Platt). Karloff was excited about the opportunity to work with
Universal’s most powerful director. The problem was, how to make Karloff -- 44 years
old, 5’ 10", puny, and thin -- into a frightening monster.
Whale enlisted Jack Pierce, who had done the makeup on Dracula.
Pierce studied anatomy textbooks and ancient burial customs to come up with the total
package. Karloff had to be filled up and out to make him into a seven-foot monster. Pierce
put 22 pounds of padding on him to bulk him up, and added 26 pounds of thick-soled,
industrial asphalt-spreader boots for added height. Karloff helped out in the makeup
design by suggesting he remove his false teeth to create the monster’s sunken-cheeked
appearance. The result was the most famous makeup job in Hollywood history.
 Filming went quickly, and Frankenstein
came in on time and on budget. But when the film was sent to the censors for
certification, two scenes were deemed too strong for public consumption. In the first, the
monster meets a small girl who offers him immediate, innocent friendship. They sit by the
water, tossing little daisies, and watching them float. Both are having a great time until
they run out of flowers. The monster then decides to throw the little girl in. Whale had
intended this to be a touching scene in which the monster equates flowers with little
girls, but the censors saw infanticide. The scene was removed (it is restored in the DVD
version’s chapter 11). The second problem was the "Now I know what it's like to be
God!" scene. The filmmakers resolved the dilemma by having a huge thunderbolt sound
just as Henry uttered the blasphemy (it, too, has been restored on the DVD, in chapter 6).
Frankenstein premiered in New York on December 4,
1931, and during its initial release, more than 12% of the US population went to see it. Frankenstein
was also a hit with the critics, making the New York Times’ Top Ten list. Most
important to studio boss Laemmle, Universal was saved.
The film’s stilted acting belongs to a different era.
Remember, most of these actors had been making silent films just two years before, and
were still assuming the hammy facial expressions of actors having to express themselves
without words. Oddly, the character played by the one actor who didn’t get to talk,
Boris Karloff, ended up being the most convincing, subtle, and evocative. Note his almost
religious response to light (enlightenment?), at 32:40 into the film: As he slowly raises
his hands to the light, you understand that he has a soul. Karloff had made something more
than a monster. He could break your heart with sympathy for the monster one minute, scare
you to death the next. More than anything else, he brought to the character the sense of
being an outsider who feels lost and longs only for compassion. The monster’s
violence stems always from naïveté or self-preservation, never from meanness. Karloff is
a large part of what makes Frankenstein great.
Ultimately, however, the reason for Frankenstein’s
great influence and continued popularity was James Whale. His directing is meticulous,
imaginative, and unpredictable. Everyone knows the scene in chapter 6, where the monster
is brought to life amid flashing electrodes and crashing thunder. This is classic
filmmaking. But look at chapter 2: Note the iconic images in the graveyard. As the camera
slowly pans, with short-focus techniques used to ensure lots of murky backgrounds, you
already know you’re in for a scary film.
Or skip to the opening of chapter 7, our first view of the
monster. Whale trusted the makeup design and Karloff’s acting to scare the audience.
Henry darkens the room as he hears steps approaching. A door opens in the distance, and a
huge silhouette appears. We notice the monster is backing in. The camera jumps closer. As
the monster slowly turns to the light, we see a rivet and a scar. The light from the
fireplace gradually illuminates the monster’s face. The camera jumps closer -- we see
the face -- then jumps closer still. No music, no special effects. Whale creates fear
through his use of light and shadows, cameras and actors. His genius is what allows Frankenstein
to transcend the horror-movie genre and become, simply, a great film.
Universal knew a good thing when it saw it, and four years
later followed Frankenstein with another film directed by Whale -- The Bride of Frankenstein, a classic by any
standard. They continued to shake the money tree with Son of Frankenstein (1939), The
Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House
of Frankenstein (1944), and House of Dracula (1945). The last three, in an
attempt to give the public their moneys’ worth, featured the full panoply of
Universal bad guys, including the mad scientist, the hunchback, the Wolf Man, Dracula,
and, of course, Frankenstein’s monster. All of the films are fun, but it is the first
two -- the James Whale films -- that are the best.
Whale’s own story ended sadly. No matter how many
other wonderful films he made (most notably, the 1936 Show Boat, with Irene Dunne
and Paul Robeson), his career was stymied by producers who thought he could make only
horror films. His homosexuality guaranteed him outcast status in Hollywood, and even
caused his being fired from Columbia Studios. He also suffered a number of small strokes
that left him in a physical shambles, and Whale killed himself in 1957. You can see a
truthful biography of the man in the 1998 film Gods and Monsters, with Sir Ian
McKellan as Whale and co-starring Brendan Fraser.
Universal’s DVD release of Frankenstein has a
beautiful picture with hardly any scratches or scrapes. The sound is as good as you could
get in 1931. They’ve added some nice extras, including a superb 45-minute
documentary, The Frankenstein Files, by David J. Skal, which goes into detail about
the importance of Whale, Karloff, Jack Pierce, and the rest without ever becoming stuffy
or academic. The audio commentary, by film historian Rudy Behlmer, gives lots of
information but sounds like a script read by a poor actor.
Inexplicably, Universal has dropped all of the original Frankenstein
movies from its catalog. I guess they’ve forgotten that, without Frankenstein,
there wouldn’t be a Universal. The two films of the series that are essential
to own, Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, are both readily
available at realistic prices from eBay and in Amazon.com’s Used section, but buy
them now -- they’ll go from "Used" to "Collector’s Items" in
no time.
Frankenstein is great filmmaking. Don’t let
Universal’s shortsightedness keep you from owning it.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
