Frankenstein (1931)
SOURCE: 02/06/2001: http://www.filmsite.org/fran.html
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The classic monster/horror film of all time, Frankenstein (1931) is the screen version of Mary Shelley's Gothic 1818 nightmarish novel of the same name (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus). The film with Victorian undertones was produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal Pictures, the same year that Dracula (1931), another classic horror film, was produced within the same studio. [The sequel to this Monster story is found in director James Whale's even greater film, Bride of Frankenstein (1935).]
The film's name was derived from the mad, obsessed scientist, Dr. Henry Frankenstein, who experimentally creates an artificial life - an Unnamed Monster, that ultimately terrorizes the Bavarian countryside. Significantly, the film launched the career of actor Boris Karloff, who is surprisingly uncredited in the opening credits of the film as the Monster. In the beginning credits titled "The Players," the Monster is listed fourth, with a question mark after its name. In the end credits, however, where the cast list is prefaced by - "a good cast is worth repeating...," the Monster is listed fourth with BORIS KARLOFF's name following.
In the opening, pre-credits prologue, the film is introduced by a tuxedoed gentleman (Edward van Sloan, one of the principal characters in the film) who steps from behind a closed curtain and delivers the following teaser - a "friendly warning":
How do you do? Mr. Carl Laemmle [the producer] feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning. We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation - life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even - horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now's your chance to - uh, well, we warned you.After the credits play (with an eerie set of rotating eyes as a backdrop), the film opens with a close-up of a pair of hands hauling up a rope. The camera pans across a group of weeping and wailing mourners and priests (and a statue of a skeletal Grim Reaper) during a funeral service around a gravesite, as dusk approaches. The memorable, expressionistic grave-robbing scene occurs near the Bavarian mountain village of Goldstadt. Beneath the gloomy sky, a coffin is being lowered into a grave. Crouched in the background from behind the cemetery fence, brilliant medical scientist (but slightly insane) Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his dwarfish, bumbling, hunchbacked assistant Fritz (Dwight Frye) eagerly watch the proceedings. The first few clodfuls of dirt that hit the top of the casket make a dull clump/thud [an impressive effect for early talkie audiences].
They are there to steal the newly-buried fresh male corpse for an experiment that Frankenstein is conducting on the secrets of life. After the cemetery is vacated and the grave is filled in by a grave digger, they creep in and strip off their jackets, carelessly tossing them into the dirt behind them. The two dig up the fresh grave after the grave-digger has left. To symbolize Henry's sacrilegious lack of respect for the subject of death - an example of black humor, one shovelful of his dirt is irreverently thrown directly into the face of a nearby statue of the Grim Reaper! After completing the digging, they stand the coffin on end. Frankenstein pats the coffin with his ear close to it, murmuring that there will be a resurrection: "He's just resting - waiting for a new life to come." They haul the heavy coffin back with them on a cart as the moon rises.
On the way up a jagged, rocky slope, Fritz reluctantly climbs up a post and cuts down an executed criminal hanging from a gallows' rope. Struggling, he crawls along the crossbar with a knife between his teeth. Frankenstein hopes to use the victim's brain in his experimental attempt to assemble a new human life form, but the body falls to the ground. "The neck's broken; the brain is useless. We must find another brain," laments Frankenstein - not surprising since the man was the victim of a hanging.
Needing only a brain, Dr. Frankenstein sends his dwarfish assistant to his old, nearby medical school (Goldstadt Medical College) to steal one. [Frankenstein left the school when his demands for experiments with humans were not approved.] Fritz peers through the windows of the College, where medical students in an operating amphitheatre watch a dissection demonstration on a corpse of a psychopath "whose life was one of brutality, of violence, and murder." Professor Waldman (Edward van Sloan), in front of floodlights, demonstrates the differences between a normal brain: "one of the most perfect specimens of the human brain," and the degenerate murderer's brain: "the abnormal brain of the typical criminal." The Professor delineates the degenerative characteristics of the criminal brain - "the scarcity of convolutions on the frontal lobe...and the distinct degeneration of the middle frontal lobe."
After the class concludes and the students are dismissed, a window at the back of the amphitheatre opens - Fritz stumbles in and down to the front where he finds the two jars of brains on display in the room. One of the brains is normal, labeled "Cerebrum - Normal Brain." He grabs its glass jar and begins to rush out of the dissecting room, but inadvertently drops it when startled by the loud sound of a gong. In order not to disappoint Dr. Frankenstein, however, the dim-witted Fritz desperately grabs the other glass jar labeled "Dysfunctio Cerebri - Abnormal Brain."
The next scene opens with a close-up of a framed picture of Henry Frankenstein with a flickering candle burning closeby. A maid announces: "Herr Victor Moritz," followed by a close-up of Victor Moritz' (John Boles) face - he is one of the family's friends. Frankenstein's fiancee Elizabeth (Mae Clarke) greets him in the wood-paneled, high-vaulted, Victorian style parlor of the Frankenstein manor. She is concerned, worried, and uncertain about Henry, wondering if he is emotionally disturbed. Anxious about her marital partner, she explains how Henry's most recent letter, the first she has had in four months, makes no sense. He has shut himself off from the outside world, working to the limits of his endurance with his experiments in an isolated, abandoned watchtower that serves as a laboratory. The mysterious letter reads:
You must have faith in me Elizabeth. Wait, my work must come first, even before you. At night the winds howl in the mountains. There is no one here. Prying eyes can't peer into my secret...I am living in an abandoned old watchtower close to the town of Goldstadt. Only my assistant is here to help me with my experiments.She explains that Henry told her about his strange experiments at a significant time - just before they became engaged and he retreated to his mountain laboratory away from her:
The very day we announced our engagement, he told me of his experiments. He said he was on the verge of a discovery so terrific that he doubted his own sanity. There was a strange look in his eyes, some mystery. His words carried me right away. Of course I've never doubted him but still I worry. I can't help it.Victor saw Henry three weeks earlier, when he was walking alone in the woods, and was told that no one was allowed to visit him in his laboratory: "His manner was very strange." He suggests going to see Dr. Waldman, Henry's former professor and paternalistic mentor in medical school. Victor also reveals that he is a rival lover with affectionate interest in Henry's future bride:
Victor: Perhaps he can tell me more about all this.
Elizabeth: Oh Victor, you're a dear.
Victor: You know I'd go to the ends of the earth for you.
Elizabeth: I shouldn't like that. I'm far too fond of you.
Victor: I wish you were!
Elizabeth: (she turns away) Victor.
Victor: I'm sorry.With Elizabeth's insistence to join him, they leave the comfortable, secure surroundings of the living room area, and go together to discuss their concerns with Dr. Waldman. The scene at Waldman's office at the College, already in progress, shows a row of skulls positioned on one of the shelves of his bookcases. On his desk is a row of test tubes and another grinning skull. Surrounded by symbols of death, Waldman is also troubled by their news: "Herr Frankenstein is a most brilliant young man, yet so erratic he troubles me." Frankenstein's research in "chemical galvanism and electro-biology were far in advance of our theories here at the University" and had reached dangerously advanced stages - "they were becoming dangerous":
Waldman: Herr Frankenstein is greatly changed.
Victor: You mean changed as a result of his work?
Waldman: Yes, his work, his insane ambition to create life.
Elizabeth: How? How? Please tell us everything, whatever it is.
Waldman: The bodies we use in our dissecting room for lecture purposes were not perfect enough for his experiments, he said. He wished us to supply him with other bodies and we were not to be too particular as to where and how we got them. I told him that his demands were unreasonable. And so he left the University to work unhampered. He found what he needed elsewhere.
Victor: Oh! The bodies of animals. Well, what are the lives of a few rabbits and dogs?
Waldman: (leaning forward ominously) You do not quite get what I mean. Herr Frankenstein was interested only in human life - first to destroy it, then recreate it. There you have his mad dream.Waldman is not up-to-date on Henry's research and experiments - he was grave-digging for already-dead corpses - not destroying life. Elizabeth begs that Dr. Waldman join them to visit Henry's lab in the watchtower where the experiments are taking place, and he reluctantly agrees.
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