NFR Project: 'The Invisible Man' (1933)

 NFR Project: ‘The Invisible Man’

Dir: James Whale

Scr: R.C. Sherriff

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Ted Kent

Premiere: Oct. 31, 1933

70 min.

In many ways, The Invisible Man is James Whale’s most audacious horror film, visually and otherwise. Despite the plaudits for Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Old Dark House, there is something desperate and unsettling about its protagonist’s precipitous descent into homicidal madness that is more compelling than the rest; it is eerie, uncanny, downbeat.

Its bold visual palette includes extraordinary special effects that bring the story to convincing life. Special effects artist John P. Fulton came up with ingenious techniques to make it seem as though an invisible man was plausible. Scenes were shot against a dead-black background, the actor completely covered in black, only his clothing and accoutrements filmed as normal. When printed against a positive print of the background, the figure vanishes, making the disembodied objects come to life.

Whale was fortunate in that he hired the excellent playwright R.C. Sherriff to adapt H.G. Wells’s 1897 novel for the screen. Sherriff is best known for his World War I play Journey’s End, which Whale directed and which led to his hiring by Hollywood. Sherriff adhered closely to the original, and created a pithy, expressive, and sometimes even humorous script.

The actor chosen to play Jack Griffin, the rouge scientist, was the then-unknown Claude Rains. It was vital for the man playing Griffin to have a strong and articulate voice, given that most of his performance would be communicated verbally, without benefit of expression. Rains was the man for the job. Born a Cockney, he quickly trained himself out of his lower-class accent and became one of the supreme speakers of the English stage.

The movie starts off in England’s provinces. A man struggles through the drifts of a daunting snowstorm, finding his way to an isolated inn. The locals are all gathered in the bar, whiling away the time, when the man enters. His face is covered in bandages, his eyes obscured by dark glasses. He seems more mummy than man.

He requests a room, and privacy. He is conducting experiments frantically, trying to find “a way back.” When confronted by the locals, he loses his composure, angrily stripping off his clothes and tormenting them in his invisible form. We learn through efficient exposition that Griffin discovered the secret of invisibility – but that, unknowingly, he injected himself with monocaine – a substance that drives its users mad.

The film’s razor-sharp editing gives us tantalizing glimpses of the invisible Griffin even as we are being fed his backstory; we are up to speed when he goes frantic and starts threatening those around him. He begins to kill without concern. He dreams of ruling the world in his invisible state, he rants about his power, suffers delusions of grandeur. Those close to him attempt to dissuade him and bring him in, but he grows more bloodthirsty, killing the weaselly informant that sets the police on him.

Whale has fun with the provincial setting that opens the film, portraying the local inhabitants as not too bright. As the country becomes alerted to the fact that an invisible man exists, all manner of people volunteer their own foolproof methods for catching the invisible man. Eventually, the powers that be catch up with Griffin, leading to his death – before which he exclaims, “I meddled in things that man must leave alone,” which was to become the familiar refrain of the mad scientist.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: King Kong.