Of all horror films, the figurehead of the genre is James Whale’s Frankenstein. One of the greatest films of all time, the work has been written upon, critiqued, and analyzed frame-by-frame, thus, I will spend the this review highlighting the more interesting readings of the film while ignoring the history and legacy of the movie, which can be readily found in bulk elsewhere, for the sake of brevity. Having said that, I will mention the often overlooked tidbit that the film is more dependent upon Peggy Webling’s 1927 stage adaptation than of the original, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, a fact which displays Whale’s cinematic sensibilities in the still early stages of cinema after having completed only two films before breaching Frankenstein.
The plot is simplistic, thus adding to its narrative beauty and, more importantly, its inspired use of diverse, convoluted subtleties throughout. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), a self-imposed exile from the professional world of medicine, is researching how to reanimate dead tissue in the form of a human being. His fiancée, Elizabeth (Mae Clarke), and friend, Victor Moritz (John Boles)–having received their first communication with Henry in the form of an ambiguous letter since his engagement to her four months prior–express their concern to one of Henry’s former professors, Doctor Waldman (Edward Van Sloan). The latter reluctantly agrees to accompany them to an isolated estate where they find Henry just as he begins his first reanimation experiment with a human. To their dismay, they witness “the monster” (Boris Karloff), a conglomeration of various corpses, as he is brought to life. The monster then proceeds to ravish the countryside after killing Henry’s assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye). The townspeople form a posse to hunt the monster, who has killed others by this time–including a young girl (Marilyn Harris). The posses encloses the monster and his creator in an abandoned windmill before setting it aflame. In the final scene, Henry–having been cast off the balcony of the windmill by the monster prior to its destruction–slowly recovers as his father, the Baron (Fredrick Kerr) toasts to the son of Frankenstein at the offset of the couple’s wedding.
There are seemingly countless readings of the film but my two favorite are diametrically opposed, juxtaposed themes: Biblical parable and atheistic metaphor. Of the former, we have Elizabeth as Eve interrupting Henry’s creation of life. Later in the film, in a somewhat forced scene, we watch as the monster attempts to “reach the light” provided from the skylight in Henry’s laboratory and, having been denied such, he becomes belligerent and murderous. Upon the latter theme of symbolic atheism, we have the opening scene where Henry flippantly tosses a shovel full of dirt onto a nearby statue of the Grim Reaper as he and Fritz exhume a recently buried corpse. We watch as Nietzschian Henry–seemingly without pause or hesitation–creates life (declaring, “Now I know what it feels like to be God!”) before readily agreeing to destroy it (though he doesn’t personally, he does lead the posse to the monster’s refuge).
The complexity of the film, like a Joycean novel, is due in part to the film’s willingness to render multiple readings, not only of the film as a whole, but of an isolated scene. For example, another of the more impressively restrained themes is the feminist rendering of Henry as Man proper, who–relying solely upon science in order to propagate the species–abandons Woman as a consequence. In this guise, we see a fearful Elizabeth uttering to Henry, “Something is coming between us” (literally, the “monster”). Next, there’s Henry noticing, before anyone else, the groans of his creation in a stereotypically maternal fashion. Finally, we have Henry telling Fritz, “The brain of a dead man waiting to live again in a body I made with my own hands!” Also, the latter two instances can easily be viewed as Whale’s satirical presentation of the traditional, heterosexual marriage complicated by the appearance of a child.
Not far from the previous interpretation is the sociological aspects of the film, first witnessed in the manner in which Henry parallels his creation. If he is indeed “God” and has fashioned the monster in his own image, modern man (insert “Man” here for another feminist perspective) is a frail, ignorant, near-random accumulation of the remains of the once-living human race. From this perspective, the plot itself now becomes a masterful implementation of black humor in that it presents humanity as a monster and God being a manic mad scientist.
We then have Maria’s childlike acceptance of the scientific abomination: Is she justifiably naïve upon meeting the creature considering her age, thereby allowing a criticism of socially constructed mores on the director’s part, or is the fact that the monster inadvertently drowns her in an attempt at sustaining the only thing he has found appeasing since his emergence into the world to be viewed as a synonym for humanity’s foolish optimism (keeping in mind that Whale was a prisoner of war during World War I)?
Henry’s irrelevance toward the sanctity of life can also be read as a condemnation of ethics and class structure in that Henry is the product of a wealthy upbringing (his father is a Baron). In this regard, Henry and his father parallel the relationship between Henry and his creation in that both “sons” are from powerful, upper class lineages and are victims of a deprivation of paterfamilial love and guidance. As such, neither offspring have been instilled with a sense of morality (which creates a purely empathic character in Henry for he therefore “doesn’t know any better” anymore than his naïve counterpart).
As I stated at the offset of this review, there exists many, many readings of this inspired piece of filmmaking, of which, I have merely scratched the surface of in my appreciation for the masterpiece. Does the film
remain accessible in lieu of its ingenious utilization of a simplistic plot, narrated in such a manner that it becomes a daunting convolution of possibilities? Yes, and enjoyably so because, regardless of how one approaches the film, Frankenstein remains, at minimal, one of the most entertaining narratives which set standards, not only for horror, but for all of cinema, whose effects we witness in every film we watch today.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
