Frankenstein

I have never posted anything here about the James Whale Frankenstein films - that’s odd. They are great films - they are also films I have spent a lot of time pondering. As it happens, I did not see them when I was a kid - unlike all my friends, who would talk about them every Halloween, arguing about whether the mob really killed the monster, or how he could keep turning up in more films... Not me, though, so I didn't really have any kind of primary shock of seeing them. I've mentioned this before - last year in fact, writing about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - 30s horror films seem to have been made for 2 audiences - for people who would see them once (for kids?) - and for people who would see them over and over. The first emphasizes the shocks, the spectacle - the second, the artistry, the characters and plots and themes - and many times, the half-submerged themes. Frankenstein is a prime example of that - the horror film (terrifying monster, battle against evil, etc.) is very effective - but under it - and not very far under it - is something else. A monster who comes off as much as a child, or maybe a shell shocked veteran, as monster... someone thrust into the world and abandoned, surrounded by people who are far more evil than he is. Though - even that breaks up in this film: the worst people are also by far the most interesting.



IN any case - the first one is the horror film - a tight, clean story, maybe the best story of the early Universal horror films - an economically told nightmare. The horror comes fairly straight, the shocks and spectacle played as shocks and spectacle, with far less of the operatic parody of the second one. Everything is to the point - though even here, a good part of the point is an ironic one. The monster - his first act is to reach of the light - he’s thwarted at every turn, hurt and abused, and blamed when he fights back or protects himself. Abandoned by his makers, set loose in the world, which he tragically misunderstands - that’s all there. Those elements get replayed in the second one, with a few more twists, and a lot more comedy - though the archness, the sense of the absurd, that animates the second one is present in the first as well. Technically, of course, is a triumph. The cast is superb - Karloff is miraculous, glorious looking and giving a stunning performance without saying a word.



The second one is even better. This film is different than the first of course - funnier - essentially a dark comedy all the way through. There is conventional comic relief in the first one - in the second one, the conventional comic relief (the very grating Una O’Conner) plays like comic relief from the much darker, and funnier, comedy of Pretorius. (Or is it the other way? Is Pretorius meant as a sophisticated, ironic, relief from the overplayed antics of the conventional clowns? Might be - O’Conner, particularly, is playing to the back of the hall - she’s very close to being a self-parody.) Though it is also a deeper, more serious work than the first one - the scene with the Hermit is meant to be taken straight (though it is seeded with jokes and ironies and what look like elaborate parodies of something); the ending - is almost heartbreaking. “We belong dead!” - the Bride’s hiss - the last shot of the monster’s tear - indeed....




Both films are masterfully made. They look great - deep spaces, fluid camera movement, imaginative editing. Whale wasn’t as extravagant as Rouben Mamoulian, but he was no slouch - both films contain numerous bits of bravura filmmaking. Showy angles; Whale’s favorite move of tracking through walls; neat compositional tricks, echoes and rhymes across the films:




- and a handful of magnificent editing sequences. The monster’s introduction is the most famous of these - jump cutting straight in - but there are several remarkable instances. The introduction of the secondary characters, Elizabeth and Victor, for example - a series of fast cuts from closeups of a picture of Henry to a maid announcing Victor's arrival to Victor (coming into the room) to Elizabeth standing from her couch. He seems to like that kind of trick, especially when he can play it against longer, often moving shots. And it's all in service of the film, sometimes to the point of symbolism - the monster's crucifixion, for example:



But there are equally significant bits of editing - this one at the end, Frankenstein and his monster looking through a mill wheel at one another, cut so they blend into one another:




It's one of the more obvious moments of doubling in the film - Henry becoming the monster - but hardly the only one. It's a theme picked up from the book - the ways the monster becomes Henry's (Victor's, in the book) double, the ways he supplements or replaces him. Replaces him in his bedroom on his wedding day - in film and book - in one of the more obvious cases:



These two films are very interesting as adaptations - there's no doubt that they abandon pretty much everything in the book except the title, some of the names (though even those are changed), and the Creature that Frankenstein made out of dead bodies. But at the same time, it gets back around to many of the book's themes - the doubling of monster and Frankenstein; the fraught relationships of fathers and sons; and a certain attention to the development of the monster - it is a book about education, and that is a major theme of the films, as well. In fact, the dominant theme of the second one - education and sexuality. The monster is a pretty clear figure of the Id - and frequently seems to spark sexual moments - taking Henry's place in his wedding bed in the first one - the whole plot, basically, of the second one. Though there, the emphasis has shifted from the idea of the monster as a kind of unleashed Id to the idea of the monster as a character in his own right - and specifically, as a young man coming of age. Karloff, I believe, later criticized the decision to make the monster speak in the second film - but I think that is central to the point of the film. It is about his education and development - and the failures of the people around him.






They are, these two films, both masterpieces - together especially. It is a sequel that picks up from the first and develops its most interesting elements - that takes the pathos hinted at in the first and works it out at length. And - as I said in those Jekyll and Hide posts - because they are horror films, because Frankenstein's monster is a monster - the filmmakers are free to take a much more challenging approach. Their heroes don't have to be heroic; it is possible for there to be unhappy endings. It's liberating. And the results, here, are among the best films ever made.

Some Recent Viewings

It has become a struggle to come up with anything for this blog. Very odd. It's true I have done some traveling lately - have started a class - and back to work, after some time off, always a challenge... an "opportunity"... my movie going has been light, and I haven't done much with the films I've been seeing... but things are starting to get back in the groove...

There is this, notable - James Whale films at the HFA. This is a treat - the horror films are familiar, but the melodramas and comedies are not - they hold up well to the rest. Remember Last Night? is a rather Thin Man-nish production - a pair of drunken upper class twits celebrate their 6 month anniversary with their even more appalling (and drunk) friends - all of whom are cheating on their spouses, borrowing and stealing money from one another, and getting in dutch with the mob... booze flows, glassware breaks, the help is insulted and at the end of it, someone turns up shot in his bed and no one remembers what they did the night before,. Edward Arnold is called in, a cop, someone's friend, who charges around noisily accusing everyone at random, while the bodies (and plot twists) continue to pile up... When the running time is up, Arnold randomly solves the case, and everyone has a drink. All this plays like a very nasty parody of a thin man film (full of utterly horrible characters and endless misbehavior and a ridiculous plot), disguised as an homage. It is, however, gorgeous looking, all those big white sets and evening gowns and Whales characteristic camerawork - there's one magnificent shot in the middle of the film, a long snaky tracking crane shot through the house as the "heroes" rush to help one of their friends, who may have taken poison... Nonsense, but lovely nonsense.

Waterloo Bridge is better -Whale's breakthrough film, a WWI melodrama with Mae Clarke as an American chorus girl in wartime London, sunk to a more basic profession. She picks up a naive young soldier in the Canadian army - takes him home - and he proves such a dear she sends him on his way not only unkissed (etc.), but without taking any money from him. He does not get the hint and is back in the morning asking her to marry him (as men did in old films - though in a wartime setting, this is a bit less far-fetched.) She won't - but he's persistent and she ends up in the country with his family - she keeps trying to get away, but he keeps coming for her... Anyway: a fine film. The soggy plot is more than redeemed by the cast and Whale's direction - Mae Clark is particularly fine - a poor man's Barbara Stanwyck, all twitchy, fast movement, buzzing with energy - she doesn't have Stanwyck's control, but she has a nice edge to her. The film as a whole is stagy, but Whale gives it a nice sense of space and shoots it with grace - lots of long takes, a fluid camera, fairly sophisticated sound - it's a neat little film. Even manages to fight off most of the sentimentality - balances it with a fairly clear eyed view of war and sex and money.

And finally - Impatient Maiden also played - another nifty little film, again with Mae Clarke, this time as the secretary to a divorce attorney, a job which has taught her cynicism. She rescues a neighbor from suicide - and falls for Lew Ayres as the doctor who answers the call (while her roomie, Una Merkel, falls for Andy Devine, as a "gentleman nurse" - both laying on the cornpone charm)... Love blooms, but there is no money, so they are impatient - then - he grows moral, while she is more than willing to screw around like it's 2009. So they break up, and things get complicated as the divorce lawyer takes a turn... Anyway - films like this are why I adore the early 30s - it's got a lot in common with the Capra films of the period - a blend of comedy and romance, a few melodramatic twists, though not too sappy. (It lacks the hard edges of Warner Brother's films of this sort - or the desperation that turns up in most Capra films.) They all mix modes, mix moods, they rip along at a ferocious pace, a good number of them treat women as conscious agents in their fate - it's a lovely period. Impatient Maiden is a joy - breezy, modern, and though a few sentimentalities emerge about sex, they are as much about money as sex - our leads can't marry for they have no money... Money being deeply ingrained in this story. It's got a nice sense of place as well - old LA - the girls live on Bunker Hill, ride the Angel's Flight, live in a nest of rooms in a tenement.... Whale loves the space - tracks through it, through walls, showing all the rooms, the tight quarters and inconvenient telephones... And again - Clarke is wonderful - playing who girl who, basically, simply seems to have been born 70 years too soon. Though frankly, I'm not sure how likely a woman like this - who has nothing against love and sex, but finds marriage overrated to the point of irrelevancy - is to show up on screen in 2009...

And finally - since I'm here - the one new film I've seen: Extract is the latest from Mike Judge. Too bad James Whale isn't around to direct it... Judge is no director - he can be a scattershot writer as well, but he's still as sharp an observer as you can ask. There is a plot - a bottling plant for food flavor extracts - a worker is hurt in a freak accident - a con lady induces him to hire a lawyer; meanwhile, the owner has marriage trouble, and listens to Ben Affleck's advice on how to fix it - hire a gigolo? This business proceeds in fits and starts, though the pleasure is in the scenes, the interactions, the character sketches, the little caricatures... The cast is a treat - Affleck is marvellous, a dude dude, dumb as a board, selfish and lazy and irresponsible, and still acting like a manipulator; Clifton Collins as the unfortunate Step, JK Simmons as the #2 guy at the plant, who can't bother to learn anyone's name... even Gene Simmons, perfectly cast as an ambulance chaser... Jason Bateman anchors it, an ideal straight man, just a little bit smarter and better than anyone else, though still stupid - or really, selfish and innattentive... It's not a great film - but it's a sweet and generous one, as Judge's work usually is...