Frankenstein dates back a
long time, all the way to the dawn of talking pictures.
Because so many of its themes have been borrowed or
expanded on since then, it’s easy to over-rate or under-rate it.
You sit there thinking, “I’ve seen this before…”
Although I find parts of it annoying, I still find it
powerful overall. I give it credit too; anything which
has lent so many themes to works years later (not just
horror movies and horror fiction, either) is probably a
work of great power.
Where do you begin? Part of
Frankenstein’s power comes from it having two
points of view: that of the scientist, Henry Frankenstein,
and second, that of the Monster. The differences are
staggering.
Henry is a scientist, obsessed with “pure”
research, exploring places no one has gone before. But he
is not prepared for the being he has brought to life.
At one point he calls it “just a piece of dead tissue.” The
experiments by which he creates the Monster excite him, possess
him, like nothing before in his life.
But taking care of his creation (a full-sized living
thing) is way more than he can deal with. He soon loses
interest in this monster; in contemporary terms, he wants to
“put it behind him, move on with his life.”
Period. He leaves his trusted friend, Professor Waldman, to
kill his creation.
This is why it is so important to see the
Monster’s point of view too. This creation is far
more than an “it” you leave behind.
More than the beast he seems to be
In the novel, the Monster slowly becomes
educated, enlightened, then vengeful. He (accurately)
sees Frankenstein’s neglect and lack of foresight as causes
of his misery. When he demands that Frankenstein create
a mate for him and Frankenstein refuses, the Monster promises to
make his creator suffer– intensely.
The movie is too short to develop these themes
fully—by a long shot. But a few scenes of the Monster’s
doomed search for companionship will haunt you long afterwards.
And each is underlined by Boris Karloff’s superb acting as
the innocent turned savage.
Many critics point to an early scene where the
Monster slowly walks alone into the room where Frankenstein
and Professor Waldman wait for him. These critics are
absolutely right. “Wait until I bring him into the
light,” Frankenstein says, and turns down the room lights so as
not to startle him. The Monster comes in, making no
sound, but his expression showing a potential for deadly violence.
Frankenstein tells him to sit and he does. Then
Frankenstein opens the skylight a little, and the
light shines on the Monster. His face changes in a
startling way. The violent potential suddenly gone; he
shows us an open-ness to the light which is truly touching.
His expression is more like that of a young child with
an open heart, wanting to learn, wanting to understand.
Slowly he reaches up.
Then Frankenstein closes the skylight. The
Monster’s arms make small circles, as if asking his
creator for answers. The first of many losses.
Abruptly, Fritz, Frankenstein’s simpleminded
assistant, walks straight up to the Monster and
begins tormenting him with a torch. Frankenstein tells
Fritz to stop, but he is too hesitant, too weak in giving the
orders. (Up until now, Fritz has always obeyed him, the
minute he gave an order.) Frankenstein and Waldman need
to knock the Monster unconscious, then chain his arms.
From that point on the Monster feels like an
unwanted, neglected child. Fritz continues to threaten
him with fire and with his whip. “Oh…leave it alone,”
Frankenstein says to Fritz, his voice sounding impotent and
uncaring. You know that Fritz will make a mistake and wind
up dead. When Frankenstein and Waldman find Fritz hanging,
they treat the Monster like one of the criminally insane,
shocked at his fury when they lock him up. 
Henry’s story and the Monster’s story move in
radically different directions. Henry goes home
to recover from overwork at his father’s estate, in the lap
of luxury. The Monster is a prisoner in the barest of
locked rooms; not knowing yet that he has been sentenced to
die. Soon afterward, Waldman sedates the Monster and
prepares to give him a fatal injection. Of course, Waldman
gives him too little sedation and the Monster kills him
instead, then escapes.
You don’t see nearly enough of the Monster’s
interaction with other people; there is much more of that in
the excellent sequel,
The Bride of Frankenstein. What makes this
even sadder is that the one scene you do get is intensely
touching—The Monster and the little girl with the flowers.
The Monster meets her by a lakeside. She shows
him a game with flower blossoms; when she throws them into
the lake, they float, like beautiful little boats. Slowly
the Monster’s expression shows a shy smile, then a look of
deep satisfaction, as he watches her. Suddenly he gets an
idea; that if he throws the girl into the water too, she will
float, just as beautifully.
You’ve all heard the story of what comes next.
Unable to swim, she drowns before his eyes.
Slowly he realizes what he has done, and his expression
is one of devastation. As frightening as
Karloff’s make-up must have looked in 1931, it still allowed
you to see his full range of emotions. You won’t
soon forget his look of sadness and horror at what he has
done.
Sadder still, the studio heads decided the scene was
too scary; it was partially cut and the missing footage not
restored for many years. The version shown on TV and in
theaters shows the Monster sitting down next to the little
girl, and her accepting him (the only one in the movie who does).
Then abruptly it ends–right there.
A few scenes later, you see her father,
carrying her soaked body down the main street, putting
a sudden end to the wedding festivities. You have to
believe the Monster killed her. But you can
never answer the question… why would he?
The rest of the movie has some good moments, but
some missed opportunities too. Maybe Victor’s father is
supposed to provide comic relief, but he feels out of place.
Too much time is wasted talking about Victor’s upcoming
wedding, and on the pre-wedding celebration. The scene where
the Monster enters Elizabeth’s (the bride-to-be) room is
perhaps the scariest in the movie, but feels
forced, unlikely.
But Frankenstein was like a seed
that gradually grew into a great tree; a tree whose branches
left a rich harvest of fruit in the years since.
Frankenstein is a man whose intellect leaves his ability
to feel somewhere back in the dust. He never generates
much sympathy.
The Monster is another story. Think back on
your own life and any of the times you tried to tell someone
what was in your heart but walked away feeling like a fool.
That is the essence of the Monster. He can’t
even say he means no harm. He doesn’t have the words.
Some 40 years after the movie, a song was popular on FM
hard-rock stations.
“No one knows what it’s like/to be the bad man/ to
be the sad man/behind blue eyes” it began.
No one knows, because the narrator can never explain
it; like the Monster, he doesn’t have the words. Like
the people who encounter the Monster, people will see the bad, and
remain blind to the sad.
You get echoes of this movie in other
unexpected places: the great Ray Charles song,
You Don’t Know Me, even the Ben E. King
song, Spanish Harlem. Listen to the change
in his voice when he gets to the lines starting with, “With
eyes as black as coal/that look down in my soul…”
More feelings that can’t be expressed; people don’t
know how.
In The Elephant Man, the title
character remembers the mother he hasn’t seen for years.
“I’ve been a great disappointment to her,” he says,
ignoring the facts of his appearance. An appearance
so monstrous that his friend Dr. Treves must ask a woman, as
a special favor, just to shake the Elephant Man’s hand.
Such is the power of a parent rejecting you.
The Monster knows it well.
It’s not easy to forget the many bad Frankenstein
sequels, and the wonderful spoof of 1974,
Young Frankenstein. For example, as I
watched Frankenstein for the first time in years,
my reaction to the mob with their torches was “Not this shit
again.” At least until I remembered this was the
original. Universal Pictures, not yet one of the major
Hollywood studios in the 30’s and 40’s, milked this idea
for all it was worth, then continued making sequels after it
had really gone sour.
But go back to the 80’s, and read some of Clive
Barker’s brilliant, imaginative fiction. Again you get
the images; monsters too hideous to look at…then the stories
showing you their desire, only to survive, in the world of
the real monsters—the human beings.
Almost everyone agrees it would be impossible (then or now)
to film Mary Shelley’s novel as written. But director
James Whale, in the space of about 70 minutes, captured a good
slug of its essence. Despite all the sequels, clichés
and parodies, this is a movie you will remember.