The Bride of Frankenstein. 1935. Directed by James Whale.

(6/4/00)

Boris Karloff is so poignant. He can bring tears to your eyes without saying a word. He really makes you understand and feel for this creature that everyone shuns and runs from. And he has no idea why--why he should be rejected like this. The hurt becomes anger, understandably. And the creature becomes the monster that everybody thinks he is.

I actually cried during tyhe scene where the creature meets the blind hermit who doesn't know what he is and opens his heart to him. When the hermit says a prayer, thanking God for finally sending him a friend to ease his loneliness a tear runs down the creature's face (he is lying down). It is a wonderful and excruciating moment.

But it doesn't last. Strangers come to the hut and start a fire and start thye creature up and soon the hut is on fire and as always it seems to be the creature's fault.

Another heart-rending moment is when the creature approaches the gypsy camp. He's hungry--that's all. And as soon as they see him everyone starts screaming and running. And there isn't anything he can do about it. It's horrible.

AQnd so it is natural for him to want a mate. And one is created. But the final twist is that even his female equivalent--likewise made out of dead bodies--rejects him. And to his credit the creature sends Baron Frankenstein and his wife away before destroying everybody else and the laboratory. This scrorned being at bottom is human enough to have a thought for others in this moment of pain and disappointment. And Karloff brings it all out.

Whiloe Karloff plays his role with seriousness and depth, Una O'Connor's and Ernest Thesiger's performances are both over-the-top. And they're both a lot of fun. (Una O'Connor is always a lot of fun.) Thesiger has a lot of great dialogue which he delivers in a flamboyant style. And he even sits down to enjoy a meal in a crypt from which he has been stealing corpses.

The little creatures created by Praetorius and kept in glass jars strike me as just a little bit too silly, though they have a kind of bizarre charm. They are dressed as a king and a queen, an archbishop, etc. The king seems to have been inspired by Charles Laughton's performance as Henry VIII.

The film has a very polished visual style. It seems to create a world of its own, a more exciting world than the one we normally encounter.

There are some fascinating shots of Elsa Lanchester's face as "the bride" which reminded me of Maya Deren. Lanchester also looks quite attractive as Mary Shelly in the first part of the film.

I do wonder about the need for that prologue with Byron and the Shelly's. The only point it appears to serve is as an excuse for a recap of what happened in Frankenstein, but it does seem a lot of trouble to go through just for that. Well, it also serves the purpose of reminding the viewer that Frankenstein was a tale with a moral to it.

The issue raised by the Frankenstein films--whether man has any business poking his nose into the mysteries of life--is still very relevant. It's probably more relevant than ever. But the old-fashioned preaching against man's restless investigation of these matters doesn't seem persuasive to me. Why shouldn't mankind probe the secrets of life and try to claim the power to create it? What makes that quest wrong?

Still, the story of a man who unleashes forces he cannot control and which leave catastrophe in their wake is a powerful one. Scientific discoveries can exact a heavy price. And dealing with matters of life and death is a heavy responsibility, no questions. But the lesson isn't as cut-and-dried as Elsa Lanchester's Mary Shelly would have us believe.

One other thing: I was bored by the actual scenes of the creation of the bride in the laboratory, probably because I have seen this film before.