"To strike terror into the hearts of men"
Trailer from the 1931 _Frankenstein_ film, starring Boris Karloff.
(Class: Feel free to respond or comment to video posts)
(Class: Feel free to respond or comment to video posts)
posted by britt rusert at 12:49 PM
3 Comments:
I hope I am not alone in my opinion that this trailer qualifies as high comedy. Certainly the special effects are laughable and the monster is hardly frightening, but I am reffering more to the outline of the story that is presented. Surprisingly, the scientist (I'm not sure who to refer to as Frankenstein in this movie) is considered crazy and shows that hysteria when he brings the monster to life. Also, the experiment is not done in solitude, but rather with a sidekick and others who seem to be trying to stop him. Furthermore, the monster in the movie appears to rampage throughout the local town driven simply to kill or be killed. This is vastly different from the intelligent monster who kills only for revenge and was created in solitude. Why would so many aspects of the story be altered?
Hmmnnn...this is a good question about why so many elements of the novel were changed in the film adaptation. I would guess that some of it has to do with the limitations and specificities of the filmic medium itself--that is, there are things that can be repesented in textual narrative, but not on screen (and vise versa). At the same time, the film is produced just a few years after the first "talkie" (_The Jazz Singer in 1927) and I'm guessing that the sights and sounds of sensational horror stories on film were still quite a novelty. Even though the trailer seems so silly now, we might remember that sound film was a relatively new phenomena at the time--and maybe this contributed to people's authentic horror of the monster.
Any other suggestions re: the noticeable differences between the film and novel?
People generally go to see a movie, especially a horror movie, to be entertained. Therefore, I think that many of the discrepancies from book to movie are due to this necessity to be entertained. The viewers of this movie would much rather be “thrilled” than discover the symbolism hidden in Shelley’s original argument against Enlightenment science. While there appears to be a loss of general meaning to the story, there also seems to be some fire symbolism present. In almost every scene they show in the trailer, there is something on fire. I’m sure this is partly due to the primitive movie lighting available at the time, but possibly the producer may have tried to create an aura of hell. I’d have to see the entire movie to explore this more deeply, but the presence of fire and the horrific monster do allude to some of the satanic references in Shelley’s novel.
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