Filmed Reanimation
(originally posted on IMDb 22 August 2018)

Mary Shelley's novel is a rich text for film adaptations. It's about science, electricity, machinery, stitched-together parts, reanimation and creation. Cinema is born of all that. Since re-reading the book, I've been reviewing a bunch of Frankenstein films, and it's disappointing that so few realize the potential of this metaphor, of the monster as movie. Yet, as in everything else, this one is better than most. It's hardly the most faithful adaptation, as if that matters, but much of what it emphasizes and alters adds to the allegory. The original creation from 1816, of course, didn't conceive of an invention decades in the waiting, but it's not the role of film to slavishly render the intent and particulars of a novel's plot--especially not this one, which is about endowing life not by ordinary means, but by an entirely new conception. Thus, it's natural a Frankenstein film create something different.

In the beginning, Dr. Frankenstein and his hunchbacked assistant are established as observers, hiding behind the graveyard gate, as they await the end of a burial. This is the filming stage of creation. They, then, proceed onto the set of the graveyard, and, indeed, it's literally and obviously a studio artifice despite its exterior position within the narrative. As it should be, too, because naturalism is antithetical to what "Frankenstein" is about, so why not exteriors as artificial as the scientist's creation. They collect the raw material of corpses and a brain--read: the film. These various parts are stitched together - edited - into a new whole. Finally, in a magnificent laboratory of moving machinery and electric flashes, both inside by means of Jacob's Ladders and other gizmos and outside from lightning, they animate the being like the projection of cinema.

Live-action film involves the capturing of animate subjects, like people, by turning them into inanimate objects (that is, the capturing of their images as a series of still photographs); then, these inanimate objects are reanimated when they're projected on a screen. Frankenstein's creation and creature assume the same process: animate-inanimate-reanimate. Life, death, and life again. Thus, we have a metaphor of both the processes of filmmaking and of film itself. Some have proposed Ben Franklin as an inspiration for Shelley's story, but in this case, a more apt parallel can be drawn between Frankenstein and Thomas Edison, who was still largely considered in the 1930s to be the inventor of motion pictures, as well as the light bulb and electricity.

Many of the deviations here from the book are probably carried over from the stage, including the hunchback, which would figure so prominently in Universal's monster movies, and I assume that's where Henry and Victor's names were traded, as Henry was the name of Victor Frankenstein's friend in the novel. The same thing happened to the Mina and Lucy characters in Bram Stoker's "Dracula," which was also continued in some of the movies. The love triangle between Henry, Victor and Elizabeth and the expansion of Professor Waldman's role, which is similar to the Van Helsing played by the same actor in Universal's prior "Dracula" (1931), are likely inventions of this film, though. I like Edward Van Sloan's early part in connecting what would become Universal's shared universe of monsters. By playing the wise doctor and lecturer in Universal's first two entries and by providing the now-lost epilogue to "Dracula" and the prologue to "Frankenstein," where he breaks the fourth wall in an address to the audience, he links the pictures. He was also the only actor to reprise his role (although they screwed up his name and character) in "Dracula's Daughter" (1936).

I also believe that the laboratory here is a radical design; contrary to what some suggest, it's strikingly different than the also-excellent sequence in "Metropolis" (1926). The monster's scene with little Maria, indeed, recalls a similar scene from another German film about creation, too, "The Golem" (1920), but it's also a variation on the fate of William, Victor Frankenstein's young brother from the book. The burning of the windmill tower has also been compared to a scene from "The Magician" (1926), an MGM production, but one that stars Paul Wegener, a German who also made "The Golem."

The angry mob (another would-be staple of Universal's later monster movies) and the fiery climax are interesting for another reason, though, and that's what it suggests concerning the story's simile with film. Like "King Kong" (1933), which is even more explicitly analogous to cinema, the monster that is the surrogate within the narrative for the movie itself wreaks havoc. Quite unlike Shelley's creature, this one kills indiscriminately, as well as for retribution and by mere accident. No wonder that Van Sloan warns spectators ahead of time rather than waiting to comfort them at the end as in "Dracula," lest the mob turn on the film itself like the censors would by dissecting parts they deemed offensive. Ever more, lest they turn on the filmmakers, whom represented by Frankenstein form a metaphorical dopplegänger with the monster--a theme, by the way, that the film does rather well in adapting from Shelley. Additionally, the creature's fear of fire is striking. The nitrate film used back then was extremely combustible, which is why most silent films and many early talkies are now lost. A seeming time capsule, a form of immortality, too many films have had their true mortality revealed by burning. Ablaze, the windmill turning like a reel in a projector is a fitting fiery finale.

As an early talkie and really only Universal's second go at the horror genre they largely introduced to Hollywood with "Dracula" and confirmed by "Frankenstein," it does seem to be lacking for its creakiness and absence of a score, but that's common of the era. Plus, the monster's lack of speech is refreshing for the age of early talkies, bombarded by inane blather. This one also isn't camped up as with director James Whale's sequel, "Bride of Frankenstein" (1935), but much of the cast, especially Colin Clive, Dwight Frye and, of course, Boris Karloff, as assisted by make-up artist Jack Pierce, do well at striking a middle ground that is neither realistic or entirely over-the-top. Perhaps, most wanting is a mise-en-abyme, a film-within-the-film, to make the metaphor explicit. The homunculi of Dr. Pretorius provide this in the sequel. Nevertheless, few Frankenstein films near, yet they often imitate, this one's creativity.

(Included on my list of 50--and counting--Frankenstein films.)