Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 American horror film directed by James Whale and produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.. It is adapted from the 1927 play Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre by Peggy Webling, which in turn was based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The Webling play was adapted by John L. Balderston, while the screenplay was written by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh, with uncredited contributions from Robert Florey and John Russell.
Frankenstein stars Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, an obsessed scientist who digs up corpses with his assistant to assemble a living being from body parts. The resulting creature, often known as Frankenstein's monster, is portrayed by Boris Karloff. The makeup for the monster was provided by Jack Pierce. Alongside Clive and Karloff, the film's cast also includes Mae Clarke, John Boles, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan.
Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, the film was a commercial success upon release, and was generally well received by both critics and audiences. It spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs, and has had a significant impact on popular culture: the imagery of a maniacal "mad" scientist with a hunchbacked assistant and the film's depiction of Frankenstein's monster have since become iconic. In 1991, the United States Library of Congress selected Frankenstein for preservation in the National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
In a village in the Bavarian Alps, scientist Henry Frankenstein and his hunchbacked assistant Fritz piece together a human body. Some of the parts are from freshly buried bodies, others from recently hanged criminals. Henry desires to create a human, giving this body life through electrical devices. He still needs a brain for his creation. Henry's former teacher Dr. Waldman shows his class the brain of an average human being and the corrupted brain of a criminal for comparison. Henry sends Fritz to steal the healthy brain from Waldman's class. Fritz accidentally damages it, and so brings Henry the criminal brain.Henry's fiancée Elizabeth Lavenza speaks with their friend Victor about the scientist's peculiar actions and his seclusion. Elizabeth and Victor ask Waldman for help understanding Henry's behavior, and Waldman reveals he is aware Henry wishes to create life. Concerned for Henry, they arrive at his lab just as he makes his final preparations, the lifeless body on an operating table. As a storm rages, Henry invites Elizabeth and the others to watch. Henry and Fritz raise the operating table toward an opening at the top of the tower. The creature and Henry's equipment are exposed to the lightning storm and empowered, bringing the creature to life. Henry is ecstatic at the sight of the creature moving and has to be restrained by Victor and Waldman. Henry proclaims he now knows what it feels like to be God.
Frankenstein's Monster, despite its grotesque form, seems to be an innocent, childlike creation. Henry welcomes it into his laboratory and asks it to sit. He opens up the roof, causing the Monster to reach out towards the sunlight. Fritz enters with a flaming torch, which frightens the Monster. Its fright is mistaken by Henry and Waldman for an attempt to attack them, and it is chained in the dungeon, where Fritz antagonizes it with a torch. Hearing Fritz screaming in the dungeon, Henry and Waldman find that the Monster has hanged Fritz. The Monster lunges at the two but they lock it inside. Realizing the Monster must be destroyed, Henry prepares an injection of a powerful drug and Waldman injects the drug into the Monster's back, rendering it unconscious.
Henry collapses from exhaustion, and Elizabeth and Henry's father take him home. There, he eventually recovers and prepares for his wedding, while Waldman examines the Monster. As he prepares to vivisect it, the Monster revives and strangles him. It escapes from the tower and wanders through the landscape, encountering a farmer's child, Maria. She asks him to play a game with her in which they toss flowers onto a lake. The Monster enjoys the game, but when he runs out of flowers, he throws Maria into the lake, inadvertently drowning her.
With preparations for the wedding completed, Henry is happy with Elizabeth. They are to marry as soon as Waldman arrives. Victor rushes in, saying that Waldman has been found strangled. Henry suspects the Monster. The Monster enters Elizabeth's room, causing her to scream. When the searchers arrive, they find Elizabeth in shock, then unconscious. The Monster has escaped.
Maria's father arrives, carrying his drowned daughter's body. He says she was murdered, and the villagers form a lynch mob to capture the Monster. During the search, Henry is attacked by the Monster. The Monster knocks Henry unconscious and carries him to an old windmill. The peasants hear the creature carrying Henry and find it climbing to the top, dragging Henry with it. The Monster hurls the scientist to the ground. His fall is broken by the wooden blades of the windmill, saving his life. Some of the villagers bring him home while the rest of the mob set the windmill ablaze, with the Monster trapped inside.
At Castle Frankenstein, Henry's father celebrates the wedding of his recovered son with a toast to a future grandchild.
Cast
Production
In 1930, Universal Studios had lost $2.2 million in revenues. Within 48 hours of its opening at New York's Roxy Theatre on February 12, 1931, Dracula starring Bela Lugosi had sold 50,000 tickets, building a momentum that culminated in a $700,000 profit, the largest of Universal's 1931 releases. As a result, the head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., announced immediate plans for more horror films. It purchased the film rights to John L. Balderston's planned stage adaptation of Peggy Webling's British stage adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's original novel.Immediately following his success in Dracula, Lugosi had hoped to play Henry Frankenstein in Universal's original film concept. However, the actor was expected by producer Carl Laemmle Jr. to play the Monster to keep his famous name on the bill.
Frankenstein was also inspired by The Golem, a surreal novel based on Jewish folklore, and its film adaptation, The Golem: How He Came into the World a silent horror film where the Golem is a literal being rather than the ambiguous existence it was in the novel.
Although Lugosi's departure from the production is often regarded as one of the worst decisions in any actor's career, in actuality, the part that Lugosi was offered was not the same character that Karloff eventually played. The initial director was Robert Florey, who had re-characterized the Monster as a simple killing machine, without a touch of human interest or pathos, unlike in the original Shelley novel. This reportedly caused Lugosi to complain, "I was a star in my country and I will not be a scarecrow over here!" Florey later wrote that "the Hungarian actor didn't show himself very enthusiastic for the role and didn't want to play it". However, the decision may not have been Lugosi's in any case, since recent evidence suggests that he was kicked off the project, along with director Robert Florey, when the newly arrived James Whale asked for the property and later cast Karloff, who resembled Whale.
Actors who worked on the project either were, or shortly became familiar to the fans of the Universal horror films. These included Frederick Kerr as the old Baron Frankenstein, Henry's father; Lionel Belmore as Herr Vogel, the Bürgermeister; Marilyn Harris as Little Maria, the girl the Monster accidentally kills; Dwight Frye as Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant, Fritz; and Michael Mark as Ludwig, Maria's father.
Kenneth Strickfaden designed the electrical effects that were used in the "creation scene". They were so successful that such effects came to be considered an essential part of every subsequent Universal film involving Frankenstein's Monster. Accordingly, the equipment used to produce them has come to be referred to in fan circles as "Strickfadens". It appears that Strickfaden managed to secure the use of at least one Tesla Coil built by the inventor Nikola Tesla himself.
The film opened in New York City at the Mayfair Theatre on December 4, 1931, and grossed $53,000 in one week.
Florey and Lugosi were given the Murders in the Rue Morgue project as a consolation. Lugosi would later go on to play Frankenstein's Monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man a decade later, when his career was in decline.
Pre-Code era scenes and censorship history
The scene in which the Monster throws Maria, the little girl, into the lake and accidentally drowns her has long been controversial. Upon its original 1931 release, the second part of this scene was cut by state censorship boards in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York. Those states also objected to a line they considered blasphemous that occurred during Frankenstein's exuberance when he first learns that his creature is alive. The original relevant passage was:VICTOR: "Henry, in the name of God!"
HENRY: "In the name of God? Now I know what it feels like to BE God!"
Kansas requested the cutting of 32 scenes which, if they had been removed, would have cut half of the film. Jason Joy of the Studio Relations Committee sent censor representative Joseph Breen to urge them to reconsider. Eventually, an edited version was released in Kansas.
As with many pre-Code films that were reissued after strict enforcement of the Production Code in 1934, Universal made cuts from the original camera negative, and thus most of the excised footage is often lost. However, the scene of the girl being thrown into the lake was rediscovered during the early 1980s in the collection of the British National Film Archive, and it has been restored to modern prints of the film.
In the Irish Free State, the film was banned on February 5, 1932, for being demoralizing and unsuitable for children or "nervous people" – age-restricted certificates were not introduced in the country until 1965. The decision was overturned by the Appeal Board on March 8, and the film was passed uncut on March 9. The film was successfully banned in Northern Ireland, Quebec, Sweden, Italy, and Czechoslovakia.