NFR Project: 'Bride of Frankenstein' (1935)

 

NFR Project: ‘Bride of Frankenstein’

Dir: James Whale

Scr: John L. Balderson, William Hurlbut, Edmund Pearson

Pho: John J. Mescall

Ed: Ted J. Kent

Premiere: April 20, 1935

75 min.

One of the finest of all horror movies is, surprisingly, a sequel. (Normally, sequels exploit the original, successful film’s concept but do little to improve on it.) Bride of Frankenstein outclasses Frankenstein, and it does so because its director didn’t think the effort would amount to much, so he decided to have fun with it.

It took the efforts of several writers to cobble together a script that both appealed to director James Whale, back for the sequel, and the censors. The spring of the plot is the monster’s quest for a mate, a “friend” who will love him. This is patently impossible, as he is a lurching, murderous hulk saddled with a criminal brain. Brilliantly, the film takes the monster’s side, turning him into a figure of pathos, a real character who changes and develops, and is arguably the wisest and sanest of the characters still standing by film’s end.

We are told that the film’s tale is intended to be a cautionary one, a “moral lesson of the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.” However, we soon move on to the terrifying attraction of graveyards, dead bodies, and dank and dismal laboratories. Whale rubs our faces in the horrific. Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) often bemoans his urge to violate the secrets of nature, but he’s easily drawn back into dark science.

The film is shot in the studio, and its patent artificiality underlines the fairy-tale nature of the film’s events. Whale revels in the transgressive elements of the screenplay and exploits them to the fullest. We begin with a prelude featuring author Mary Shelley regaling her companions with a continuation of the story . . .

The monster survives the fire at the end of Frankenstein, and promptly kills the parents of the little girl he killed in the last movie. He also scares the bejeezus out of Una O’Connor, a British actress who specialized in playing malevolent, hysterical hags (Whale lets her overact her head off, providing us with a little comic relief).

Dr. Frankenstein is determined not to meddle in things beyond his ken, but the arrival of the severe-looking and coyly gay Dr. Praetorius (Ernest Thesiger), his former teacher, quickly changes his mind. Praetorius has half the key to creating life – he can do so, but only by creating miniature men, homunculi. Together the pair plan to try to create another living being.

The monster wanders through the forest, frightening gypsies, a shepherdess, and some hunters, who shoot him. An angry mob captures him, ties him to a pole in much the pose of a crucifixion (crosses are nearly everywhere you look in this film) and carts him off to prison. Chained there, he soon rips away his bonds and wanders off again.

It is then that he meets the blind hermit (O.P. Heggie). Taken in by the man and tended to, the monster finds compassion and understanding for the first time. Fittingly, it is only the blind man who can see the monster as a creature with a soul, capable of learning and doing good. The monster abides with the hermit for a time, until two more hunters (one of them a young John Carradine) enter, decrying the presence of the monster and starting a fight that ends up burning down the hermit’s home.

Lost again, the monster wanders into a cemetery, and flees down into a crypt, descending into the netherworld. There he finds Praetorius, who is assembling a creature out of the bones of the dead. (The great Dwight Frye, who played the hunchbacked servant Karl in the original Frankenstein, is back, reincarnated as assistant and body-snatcher Fritz.) The ghoulish doctor and the monster strike a pact.

Soon they are confronting Dr. Frankenstein, forcing him to create a mate for the monster by kidnapping his wife and holding her hostage. The sweeping, breathtaking climax is set again inhe laboratory, on a stormy night, with all of special effects creator Kenneth Strickfaden’s electric gizmos flashing and banging away in the background. The procedure is successful! And out comes the Bride (Elsa Lanchester, in a marked departure from her Mary Shelley earlier in the film). Stiff and ungainly, halting, topped with a flaring, flying, grey-streaked hairdo, she recoils from the monster’s advances. Even his intended is repulsed by him.

The monster lashes out, and touches a lever that could destroy the entire laboratory. Dr. Frankenstein’s wife comes for him. “Go! You live! Go!” cries the monster, saving the two of them. To Praetorius and the Bride, he turns and has the last word, saying “You stay. We belong dead!” And he throws the switch and destroys them all. (Or does he? Frankenstein had many Universal sequels yet to go.)

What seems relatively tame now was extremely transgressive for the time; many places cut the film down or banned it outright. It certainly has a whiff of blasphemy, with Praetorius acting as the devil’s advocate. Dr. Frankenstein is once again spared from his own folly, as the providential nature of his creation spares him from destruction.

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

NFR Project: 'The Informer' (1935)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Informer’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Dudley Nichols

Pho: Joseph H. August

Ed: George Hively

Premiere: May 9, 1935

91 min.

It doesn’t rank highly on critical lists these days, but several decades ago this film was commonly regarded as one of the best ever made. Seeing it, especially in the context of the career of director John Ford, is a revelation. This dark tale of betrayal and death is redeemed by its profound depth of feeling.

What makes this film so extraordinary? First, Ford’s directorial assurance. By this time, Ford had made dozens of silent and sound films, including superior earlier efforts such as The Iron Horse and The Lost Patrol. Ford was unmatched in his ability to propel a film story forward smoothly, quickly, and unobtrusively. He wasted no footage. His touch is invisible, but his style is unmistakable. 

And of course he knew the setting. He was of Irish descent, and he idolized the Old Country. He left Maine as a young man to join his successful performer and director Francis Ford in Hollywood. He knew the culture and its people intimately, and that air of authenticity permeates The Informer.

It is 1922, and Ireland is in midst of the Troubles, its occupation by repressive British forces bearing down on the populace. An underground army of plain-clothes volunteers, known as the “organization,” carries out attacks on the occupiers. The British retaliate, and Dublin is a battle zone, heavily patrolled.

One foggy night, a big, beefy, n’er-do-well, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen) is wandering the streets. He sees a wanted poster on the wall for his friend Frankie McPhillip – 20 pounds is the reward for turning him in. Gypo’s prostitute girlfriend Katie bemoans the fact that they haven’t any money, money that might take them to America and a new start.

Gypo is caught between the two sides. He had refused to kill an English soldier in the name of the cause, and thus was thrown out of the organization. “The English think I’m with the Irish, and the Irish think I’m with the English,” he says. He has no job, no prospects, and little self-respect left.

The dim-witted Gypo determines to sell out his friend. He turns him in to the police. Frankie is killed resisting arrest. Gypo gets his 20 pounds.

The rest of the film is a nightmarish odyssey through the fog-shrouded streets of Dublin, as Gypo careens from pub to pub, drinking like a fish, trying to put off the blame on an innocent man as the informer, and finally running for his life from the vengeful rebels.

A second great strength is the superior screenplay of Dudley Nichols. Nichols was a prolific and highly talented screenwriter – his works include Bringing Up Baby, Gunga Din, Stagecoach, and The Bells of St. Mary’s. He was able to translate ideas into actions, and emotional states into images. He spoke film.

The story, adapted from Liam O’Flaherty’s 1925 novel, is simple and powerful. We track the coming apart of a man, a tragedy sparked greed and short-sightedness. We could all of us be Gypo, if we were the sum of our flaws. Nichols paints the screen with recurring images – a wanted poster that keeps nagging at the legs of the protagonists, a handful of coins that jangle accusingly to the floor, the cash that leaks out of Gypo’s pockets as he attempts to rid himself of his ill-gotten gains.

The key strength is the performance of Victor McLaglen, who justifiably won the Oscar for Best Actor for his work. Gypo is an inarticulate brute, but McLaglen’s incredibly expressive face silently conveys shame, longing, anger, and fear with unprecedented subtlety. As McLaglen spent most of his film career as a comic Irishman, it’s astonishing to see him put so much humanity into Gypo. By film’s end, he receives a self-inflicted crucifixion, clinging with his last breath to the possibility of forgiveness.

Dublin’s foggy streets reflect the moral ambiguity and confusion of the situation. Ford and his cinematographer Joe August use the foggy night setting to exquisite advantage, moving characters in and out of shadow, stalking down the street to keep up with a frantic Gypo. Everything serves the story and nothing is extraneous.

A well-made film, this. In addition to McLaglen’s Oscar, Ford won for Best Director, Nichols won for Best Screenplay, and the wonderful film composer Max Steiner won for Best Score.

After this, Ford’s reputation was secure in Hollywood, and he began to craft a long list of classic films.

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

NFR Project: 'Becky Sharp' (1935)

 

NFR Project: ‘Becky Sharp’

Dir: Rouben Mamoulian

Scr: Francis Edward Faragoh

Pho: Ray Rennahan

Ed: Archie Marshek

Premiere: June 13, 1935

84 min.

Becky Sharp is in the Registry due to its being the first three-strip Technicolor feature. However, it is also a classic example of a mid-century “prestige” film.

The color technique had been experimented with for decades, with a crude two-strip (red and green) color process that only approximated real color. With three-strip, the full palette of colors could be conveyed.

Unfortunately, the film’s first director, Lowell Sherman, contracted pneumonia and died during filming. Brought in to replace him was Rouben Mamoulian, known for his innovations and his strong artistic sense. He had already made important films such as Applause and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It’s a period film, a costume drama based on the 1848 William Makepeace Thackery novel Vanity Fair. Set in England during the time of Napoleon, it’s the somewhat seamy saga of Becky Sharp, an ambitious young nobody who canoodles and intrigues to rise in society and gain wealth and comfort. Thackery was very discouraged about the human condition, and his estimation of human character is pretty low; this film adaptation brightens things up a bit.

Mamoulian makes incredible use of color, from the red uniforms of the dashing officers to bright blue and yellow gowns, flashes of fire, and sumptuously designed interiors. The art direction is superb – no expense was spared. The visuals are compelling and beautifully staged.

Miriam Hopkins, the blonde ingenue, plays Becky with a sassy wit and indomitable spirit. Her devil-may-care approach to life stands in sharp contrast to the more staid people around her. Her rapid rise pleases few, but seems to be irresistible. She falls from grace, but unlike in the novel, in which she pays dearly for her sins, in the film she simply moves offstage with her latest male conquest.

Another notable aspect of the film is the fine acting work by three English actors who would be cast in film after film in Hollywood – Nigel Bruce, famous later for playing Dr. Watson, as the buffoonish Joseph Sedley, Alan Mowbray as her true love, Rawdon Crowley, and Cedric Hardwicke as the lustful Marquis of Steyne.

Adaptations of “great novels,” often severely altered from the original, continued to be a Hollywood staple.

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