Monday, August 8, 2011

FRANKENSTEIN (1931)


‘It’s alive! It’s alive! … Now I know what it feels like to be God!’
From the very opening expressionistic shot to its gothic climax, Director James Whale’s adaptation of Marry Shelley’s classic is just invigorating version to replace on screen even after 80 years of it’s making. It’s tale of Henry Frankenstein, a crazy scientist who looks beyond and challenges the God by his experiment to create a live human being from stitching together the parts of dead bodies. His assistant stole a brain from medical college but accidentally returns with an abnormal brain. Frankenstein’s fiancée, her friend and an old scientist and the mentor of Frankenstein tries to dissuade him but who can stop man from his height of madness. The being turns into mute monster and soon set the Bavarian town into mayhem.
It broke ground in two ways-(the creator) an abnormal scientist who challenges the authority of God and (the creation) a monster who is not entirely evil. The film has length of one hour and seven minutes but it has scenes which remain long lasting to the memory- the grave robbing scene, the tower like laboratory on mountain hill, the experiment on dead body on thunder stormy night, the most touching and heartbreaking scene of the monster and little girl where he first imitated throwing flowers and than throwing the girl and the final confrontation scene between the creator and the creation; the film is absolutely classic horror tale ever adapted on screen. Along with ‘Dracula’ released the same year, this film not only established the genre of horror in Hollywood but also saved the struggling phase of Universal Pictures..but above all it made Boris Karloff, the most memorable monster (?) in human form.
One of the greatest American films ever made. Period.

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