Persuasive Essay On Frankenstein

Over one hundred years after a young Mary Shelley first published Frankenstein in 1818, a relatively small Hollywood Studio, Universal Pictures, brought Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) and his monster (Boris Karloff) to the big screen in a film adaption of the same name. When it hit theaters on November 21, 1931, Frankenstein immediately succeeded as a box office hit, launching a franchise which eventually grossed over twelve million dollars (IMDb). Even today, the image of Frankenstein’s monster from this film (hereafter simply referred to as the Monster) appears every Halloween. But Frankenstein was no cinematic masterpieces as it was riddled with technical problems common in early sound films. So why was Frankenstein able to succeed in defining
one of the most iconic horror film characters of all time? It was not the cinematography or the editing or stage design that told the universal story which resonated with audiences, but Karloff’s unique performance as the Monster. His performance, his characterization, his stage presence, even his bone structure, determined why Frankenstein has been a lasting cultural success.
Directed by British Director James Whale, Frankenstein tells the story of Dr. Henry Frankenstein’s creation of a living monster from the stolen body limbs and an “abnormal” brain. The monster which Karloff called “a completely helpless inarticulate, lumbering, helpless, creature” must try to understand how to communicate and survive in a “strange and hostile world,” (Boris Karloff Talks Frankenstein). In doing so, he kills two people, Frankenstein’s assistant and his old college professor. When the Monster escapes from Frankenstein’s laboratory, he continues to wreak havoc, this time accidentally killing a child. In the end, Frankenstein himself must destroy the monster, nearly dying in the process.
But in the years before Karloff clomped onto the big screen as the Monster, artists created numerous renditions of Frankenstein’s monster. In 1823, Richard Brinsley Peake released a play Presumption based on Shelley’s book, which Mary Shelley saw and praised in her lifetime. Numerous other theatrical adaptations followed until twentieth century when three silent film Frankenstein variations were released, the first of which was the Edison company produced Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910), a short film starring Charles Ogle as the Monster. Later, a feature film, Life Without Soul (Joseph W. Smiley, 1915) and an Italian film, Il Mostro di Frankenstein (Eugenio Testa, 1920), came to theatres but were both eventually lost except for some promotional material and a few stills. The Monster returned to the stage again in 1927 when British playwright Peggy Webling released a Frankenstein play, with Hamilton Deane as the Monster. Universal’s president, Carl Laemmle Jr., bought the rights to John L. Balderston’s unproduced version of Webling’s play and writers based the 1931 film on Shelley’s book and that play. In his book Frankenstein, Robert Horton notes that “the 1931 film known as Frankenstein (more so than Mary Shelley’s novel, or any stage adaptation, or any sequel/spin-off) has contributed an image to world culture that is familiar even to people who have never seen the film,” (85). Even though Whale’s Frankenstein was not the first Frankenstein film or adaptation, this was the version that brought Boris Karloff’s Monster, a defining image of pop culture, to the world.
Considering the film’s popularity, many imagine it as a cinematic masterpiece of sorts, at least relative to other films of its time, but they are incorrect to do so. Even though Universal’s Frankenstein was more technically advanced than its predecessors, it was still filled with problems common in small studios such as Universal and in the early 1930s when Hollywood was still becoming familiar with how to use sound technology in film. It will come as no surprise that critics viewed the sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), also directed by Whale, as superior in craft. Universal hastily produced and edited Frankenstein in only a little over a month (AFI Catalog), which explains why Frankenstein is filled with jump cuts, continuity errors, and of course, horribly mixed and recorded sound. Since Shelley’s novel was set in the late eighteenth century primarily in Switzerland, denoting where this film takes place would seem important. But this story appears to take place somewhere in Germany, yet the British and American actors make no attempt to modify their accents or mannerisms. The costumes and technology in the film give no clear indication of a time or location, so Whale’s Frankenstein practically exists in a liminal space.
If not for the actors’ performances in Frankenstein, perhaps the magic of the story would have been lost to the audience, for it is the characterization of the Monster that really shines in Frankenstein.
Mordaunt Hall wrote in a review for the New York Times just a few weeks after Frankenstein’s release that “Colin Clive as the doctor and Boris Karloff as the monster give tremendous performances. No matter what you think of the picture, you can take nothing from these players for the performances they have turned in. They are magnificent.” However, Karloff’s iconic portrayal almost never happened. Before James Whale came aboard as director, another director, French expressionist filmmaker Robert Florey, had enlisted Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi – Lugosi had played the titular character in Universal’s first horror film, Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) – to play the Monster. In the end both Florey and Lugosi left the project, Lugosi refusing the part when he realized the Monster did not speak in the film because he “was a star in [his] country and [would] not be a scarecrow over here.” Once Whale was in place to direct, he met Boris Karloff, an unknown actor at the time, in a lunch room and asked him over for coffee. When Whale asked Karloff to do a screen test for the Monster, Karloff recalled in a 1963 interview he was “delighted,” even though he thought “well that doesn’t speak very well of my nice straight makeup and my good suit,” (Boris Karloff Talks Frankenstein). A few
weeks later, once the screen tests with Karloff in costume and makeup were completed, Karloff got the part, launching his career at forty-four years old.
Even though the Monster’s horrific actions on screen were new and scary to many audience members, further analysis shows that Karloff played the Monster as simply.
All the Monster wanted was to live. In Whale’s Frankenstein the Monster was just a few days old, a child really, when he killed three people, who could not speak and had never seen anything but cruelty until he met little Maria. In fact, two of the people he killed incited the conflicts. Frankenstein’s assistant, Fritz (Dwight Frye), antagonized him, poking and prodding at him with a flaming torch in his hand. The Monster only attacked Frankenstein’s college professor, Dr. Waldman (Edward Van Sloan), in self-defense when the professor tried to kill the Monster. On a similar note, when he accidentally killed Little Maria (Marilyn Harris) by tossing the child into a lake, he was only mimicking how she tossed flowers into the water after she asked him to play with her. And then he even leaves to go seek help when she cannot swim. For having existed only a few days, he certainly has noble intentions. Even on set Karloff’s own kindness radiated through the Monster makeup. When seven-year-old Marilyn Harris met Karloff in full makeup and costume to the film the lake scene, she ran up to him and asked “May I ride with you?” to which Karloff replied “Would you, darling?” (The Frankenstein Files: How Hollywood Made a
Monster).
Although Marilyn saw right through it, the makeup work on the Monster in Frankenstein is the most recognizable monster makeup of all time. Film Historian Bob Madison even went so far as to claim that “It’s simply the most powerful character makeup ever created for the movies ever,” (The Frankenstein Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster). Jack Pierce, who eventually headed the Universal makeup department and was responsible for other classic movie monsters such as the Mummy and the Wolfman, was in charge of designing Karloff’s makeup. Developed over two to three weeks, this makeup (see figure 1) was the basis for all future iterations of the Monster. DESCRIBE THE MAKEUP. The makeup was very advanced for 1931, considering Pierce did not have modern materials to work with, and took over three hours both to put on and to take off of Karloff every day. Makeup Artist Rick Baker explained that Pierce used collodion, spirit gum, and cotton, to pull it off.
Succeeding Dracula as Universal Pictures second horror box office hit, Frankenstein guaranteed the success of Universal’s monster movie series and helped establish horror as a major film genre. Even though, at its core, Frankenstein tells a horrifying story of a confused man being killed by a mob mentality, audiences at the time were definitely horrified for other reasons. While not terrifying by today’s standards, the hanged bodies, three homicides, and needle injections in Frankenstein were enough to disturb 1930s audiences in a way they had never before experienced from a film. Test audiences were so frightened that in the theatrical cut Universal included a foreword narrated by Edward Van Sloan to warn the audience that “…it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you.” Never before had something of this nature been necessary. This acknowledgement of intent to horrify defines Frankenstein as a horror film and acts as a mold for the intentions of consequent horror films.