Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

British Novel to FilmFu Jen University

Dr. M. Connor

Viewer beware! It seems to me that in recent years, there have

been many film versions of novels or plays that contain the original author’s name in the title: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and, of course, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

I have come to the conclusion that whenever I see the author’s name in the title, I should beware.

Almost all have been disappointments. The exception is Franco Zefferelli’s Jane Eyre, which, for contractual reasons, is supposed to be called Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, but rarely is.

High expectations In 1994, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, his first movie after his very successful and popular Much Ado About Nothing.

To say expectations were high is an understatement.

Critics had loved Branagh’s first film, Henry V and his follow-up films, Peter’s Friends and Dead Again met with modest success.

But he was back on top again after his luscious Much Ado. I admit to being a huge fan of that particular film.

A sexy Frankenstein It was certainly a sexy

film and gorgeously shot.

It was also a bit gory, so beware!

Not overly popular Frankenstein is a beloved novel, and it’s

quite true that it’s never really been brought to the screen in a way that is fully true to Shelley’s novel.

When the film opened, the reviews were crushing. It was universally panned by critics (more on this later), and most fans of the book didn’t like it, either.

But oddly.... But I have usually shown it in class when I

teach Frankenstein, and to my endless surprise, there are usually one or two students for whom this is a favorite film.

Those who like it are quite vigorous in its defense, so I feel that it can not be dismissed out of hand.

On why he chose the project "In the last 20, 30 years, [Frankenstein has] been

claimed by a whole generation of academics and scholars as a seminal piece of literature of that time. [It's] something which now, post-Freud, they feel reveals so many observations about family life, and incest, father-and-son relationships, and husband and wife relationships. [Frankenstein] speaks loudly to people, partly because it's so elusive. There's no definitive interpretation of it - it's certainly more than just a monster story.” Kenneth Branagh, (Berardinelli).

“Script War” Mary Shelley, of course, gets credit for the

novel, but the two writers credited with the screen play are Steph Lady and Frank Darabont, a two-time Oscar nominee for screenplay writing (1994's The Shawshank Redemption 1999's The Green Mile).

It seems that after the screenplay was delivered to the director, there were some massive changes.

Ego at work? Los Angeles writer Lady says that “director

Branagh, who stars as scientist Victor Frankenstein, revised the script to magnify his own role and shrink Robert De Niro's presence as the Creature.

De Niro's role, Lady claims, was cut by half. "Maybe the Frankenstein myth overtook the

movie," says the writer, still reeling from shock after finally seeing the film last week. "The fear that I had from the very beginning is that we would create an abomination, a patchwork monster." (Johnson)

Ego Trip Before I had seen the Lady quote, I

thought that the biggest problem with the film was that Branagh’s ego interfered with his work.

I found a number of alterations to Shelley’s text that seem to be made for the express purpose of making Victor heroic.

Victor in the novel is not a hero. In the novel, Victor attended Ingolstadt to

learn, period. In the movie, Victor is now specifically

studying to be a medical doctor. He wants to learn how to create the creature in order to bring an end to death, since he lost his own mother during the birth of his young brother (an embellishment to Shelley’s text).

Cholera epidemic In the novel, Victor sees the creature, is horrified,

and runs away from it. The next time he checks his lab, the creature is gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

In the movie, they add a cholera epidemic to the town around Ingolstadt, so that when the monster escapes, Victor thinks it will die, as newborns are vulnerable to cholera.

Not the actions of a true hero, but at least his behavior is somewhat excusable, and somewhat better than the behavior of Victor in Shelley’s version.

Justine Moritz In the novel, the monster kills William and frames

Justine Moritz. There is a trial, and Justine is hanged. Victor knows that the creature is truly responsible, but refuses to say anything, because he cannot bear to reveal the secret of his creation to anyone.

In the movie, the onus is taken off Victor because as soon as Justine is taken in as a suspect, a lynch mob comes to hang the child-killer before any kind of trial can happen. Victor has no opportunity to conceal his creation of the creature because everything happens too fast, so he comes across as more heroic.

Poor Victor! In fact, there is quite a tense, if somewhat

overblown, scene as we watch Victor trying to save Justine from the mob, but he is just too late.

We then watch his sorrow.

Then there’s the bride.... In the novel, the monster extracts a promise from

Victor to create a bride for him. Victor agrees at first, but at the last second changes his mind, refusing to inflict another monster on the world. The monster is furious, and promises, "I will be with you on your wedding night."

Despite this promise, Victor marries Elizabeth, never once telling her about the monster.

In the movie, Victor is going to create a bride this until the monster provides Victor with the corpse he wants Victor to reanimate: the hanged Justine. It is only then that Victor refuses to build the mate, and only for that reason.

Megalomania? After the monster says, "If you deny me

my wedding night, I will be with you on yours," Victor has about fifteen guards around him and Elizabeth after they are married and has told everyone about the creature.

As Brian D. Johnson noted in his review, “Before long, the megalomania of the character and that of the director become indistinguishable.” (Johnson)

Other annoying features Branagh also overuses fancy camera angles to a

degree he never did as in his earlier films. He's always been fond of the rotate-the-camera-around-the-scene but he overuses it here, to the point where I wanted to scream, "Sit still!" at the screen.

Too many vertigo-inducing bird's eye shots, too. Also some scenes seemed out of place. The

dramatic confrontation on Mont Blanc was staged like it was a superhero battling a supervillain, with giant leaps and dramatic falls down ice floes, and this seemed to serve no purpose.

Cuts The episode with the Turkish girl Safie is missing. The Monster also does not educate himself with

classical education. I don’t think Plutarch, Milton and Goethe fly with modern audiences.

There is a brutal landlord whom the Monster kills when he rescues the blind grandfather.

Branagh also drops the Monster's narrative. (Perhaps this is where the cuts Lady mentioned were made?)

the murder of Henry Clerval and Victor's journeys to England, Scotland and Ireland are dropped.

What he put back in the film version Cuts are inevitable in any film version of a

novel, and for the most part, I have no problem with them. So the differences I’ve listed above are mostly trivial. But Branagh did have certain features in his film that previous film versions have left out.

Walton Most important, he left

in the Walton framework, though some critics carp that he did this badly.

But I think it’s important that it’s there.

Aiden Quinn as Walton. Source: ”Frankenstein in the 90s.” http://members.inode.at/359743/frankenstein/frankenstein-seventies3.htm

Artic pursuit

He also left in the arctic pursuit and setting in which Frankenstein tells his story .

Source: http://www.canalmgm.tv/docs/ficheros/200506290014_91_0_2.jpg

The Creature Most important, though, is

the Creature's ability to speak well.

This is a literate Monster we are dealing with. And a more human-scaled one as well.

DeNiro didn’t wear lifts in his shoes or bulk up his size in any way.

This is a major difference in a screen depiction of the Creature.

http://www.amctv.com/image/content/16/16037.jpg

http://www.charlie.pl/zdjecia/frankenstein.jpg

Elizabeth Another problem I have with the movie is

the expansion of the Victor-Elizabeth relationship, which comes at the expense of the monster's story.

According to Branagh, "It was important to me to have a very strong woman's role in a film of this size, and not just a token of love interest. [...] I wanted Elizabeth and Victor to be two equal partners." (qtd in ”Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, Frankenstein’s Castle)

Pretty hot relationship This is a noble

sentiment, indeed, but the problem is that in the book, Elizabeth is not an equal partner.

She’s is kept away from Victor’s work, and he shields her from the truth of what is happening to him.

Upping the sex factor? Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh as Elizabeth and Victor. Source: Pamela’s Archive Reviews: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/5640/archive/frank.html

Gratuitous? Elizabeth’s end is both

gruesome and grotesque, but critics are split on whether or not it’s in the spirit of Shelley.

I do not like the final scene, where Victor brings Elizabeth back to life, and she then sets herself on fire.

I felt it was gratuitous, but perhaps by then, I was just tired of the film.

Elizabeth’s self-destruction. Source: Doomed Moviethon.com http://www.doomedmoviethon.com/images/flick_images/maryshelleysfrankenstein_4.jpg

Comparisons inevitable From Frankenstein’s Castle: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

must be compared is the classic "Frankenstein" from 1931 starring Boris Karloff. Most striking is the difference in tone between the films. The black-and-white Universal film was concocted to scare and shock audiences. The Branagh film, on the other hand, is more tragedy than horror. Its characters are multi-faceted instead of relentlessly single-minded. The Creatures in each film are also wildly divergent. Karloff played a grunting zombie who possessed a flat head, metal bolts extruding from the neck and only a minimal intelligence. De Niro's creature is intelligent to the point of being able to speak and read, is saddened by the reactions of those around him, and looks like a man hastily assembled from parts of other men. (”Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, Frankenstein’s Castle)

More on comparisons “As stated in the preface, an important purpose of

Shelley's Frankenstein is the "exercise of any untried resources of mind". The dedication of the novel to her father, William Godwin, suggests the kind of exercise she designed. Godwin observed that, all too often, vital questions are not asked, with the result that opportunities to produce better results are ignored. In order to demonstrate the great value of her father's insight, Shelley left the story unfinished. Discrepancies, unexplained changes, gaps, and curious inclusions are parts of the machinery Shelley provided that allow the reader to discover some truth in the way Godwin said truth eventually appears with "double lustre" in the sequel. It is this machinery that Branagh discarded.” (Wolf)

Branagh on DeNiro De Niro plays the Creature, “who emerges naked

from a vat of amniotic ooze. De Niro felt his creature needed the dazed look of a newborn, so he ‘would stand off to the side and spin around and around until he was completely dizzy,’ says Branagh, 33, who hoists the slippery creature to its feet. ‘He was a deadweight since he was so dizzy. I wished he had cheated a bit, so I didn't have to lift his whole bloody weight up.’

But then, a little madness was justified on the gothic set. ‘We were surrounded by goo, fake bits of brain and sawed-off limbs hanging all around,’ says Branagh. ‘It does have an effect on you.’” From People Weekly, Nov 21, 1994 v42 n21 p162

Review excerpts: I like what the critics had to say, so I

thought I’d give a selection of their pithiest quotes.

What Branagh wanted to do to the critics, I think. Kenneth Branagh and Robert DeNiro as Frankenstein and his Monster. Source: My Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~hamberg/Frankenstein/branagh.html#misc

From The New Statesman & Society: “You expect Frankenstein to be stitched together from many

parts, but Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, is so heteroclite it hurts. A ragbag of medievalism, modernism and by-the-book Romanticism, this is a Shakespearean's Shelley--tragical-historical-pastoral-farcical. Parts of it work (well enough), but that's like Frankenstein looking on his botched creation and concluding that, after all, it has a rather fine pancreas.”

“Branagh's Frankenstein, though, takes itself in deadly earnest as the definitive unsullied version, Shelley's first edition faithfully replaced--in a glossy new binding--among the respectful shelves of Eng Lit. Apart from a ghoulish major deviation at the end, Branagh's idea of respecting the text is very literal. He restores the original narrative frame, a showdown in the howling Arctic, as well as the original Swiss setting, peopled with a cast of minor characters, all so unfamiliar that we can't help after a while getting itchy and wondering where faithful old Igor's got to.” (Romney)

From The Christian Century What ordinarily makes a horror tale horrifying is the careful

construction of a situation which has the appearance of normalcy but then discloses some terrifyingly "other" reality" Unlike Shelley, however, Branagh never establishes the veneer of normalcy; in fact, he strives mightily to do the opposite. Cameras shoot from wild top-down or down-up angles, swirling around the actors. Conversation proceeds at a dervish-like pace, with much screeching and shouting by Frankenstein's adoptive sister and fiancee Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) and fellow medical student Henry Clerval (Tom Hulce). Whereas Shelley's Frankenstein seeks out the serene beauty of the Swiss Alps to escape his guilt and dread, Branagh's Frankenstein fights his way through torrential thunderstorms and fog, encountering disaster at nearly every turn. I found myself tiring of the film's frenzied pace - every scene seeking a climax and the sound score hammering it home. Apparently Branagh intended with this surrealistic style to evoke Frankenstein's megalomania, his hubristic desire to create as only God can.” (Rike)

From The New Republic: “But Shelley's purpose is almost utterly lost here. The film is so

breathlessly rushing, so full of slapped-in characteristics and relationships, so bulgy with moments of passion that seem arbitrary pauses for romance, that the result is like a hard-breathing synopsis. This two-hour picture comes off as an attenuated storyboard for a four- or five-hour film that hasn't yet been made.”

“Helena Bonham Carter, as his fiancee, tries bravely to give cohesion to what is really a series of quick sketches of a woman. Ian Holm, fine actor that he is, struggles similarly with Dr. Frankenstein pere. Robert De Niro plays the Creature, but he didn't need to: anyone else could have worn the make-up and spoken the lines. (He doesn't get near Boris Karloff's pathos.) The one interesting performance is by John Cleese as a maverick medical professor--a pretty thorough transformation of the Cleese we all know and love.” (Kaufmann)

From Maclean’s “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a bombastic, overwrought

spectacle, a clanking melodrama that marries Old Gothic theatricality with Hollywood overkill.”

“There are wild departures from the novel. The script lards Shelley's Prometheus metaphor with modern references to organ transplants. The laboratory creation of the Creature is elaborate and clinical discovering that the secret ingredient is amniotic fluid, Victor Frankenstein swipes a batch from a woman in childbirth. That literal naturalism only accents the implausibility of the premise. And in a ludicrously over-the-top scene derived from The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and stitched onto Shelley's story Frankenstein completes the manufacture of his creature's spouse in the most grotesque manner imaginable. The effect, however, is unintentionally comic.” (Johnson)

From Time “This is not to suggest that a bunch of 1930s scenarists

were better writers than Mary Shelley, only that they had a clearer sense of their medium's imperatives than her present servants do. James Whale, who made the 1931 version and its even stronger sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, certainly was a better director than Branagh. The latter has just created isolated sensations that aren't even frightening. Whale had real style. He understood that if it was too late to take this tale completely seriously, it was too soon to camp it up or make it an exercise in empty disgust. Delicately poising irony, dark sentiment and terror, he drew you into his web. Branagh never weaves one. He's too busy serving his own expansive ego.” (Schickel)

Sources: Berardinelli, James. “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; A Review” Movie-

reviews.colossus.net. 22 Mar. 05 http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/m/mary_shellys.html

Johnson, Brian D, “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein”, movie review, Maclean's, Nov 14, 1994 v107 n46 p112

Kauffmann, Stanley, “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein”, movie review, The New Republic, Nov 28, 1994 v211 n22 p56.

”Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” Frankenstein Castle: The Ultimate Frankenstein Film Site. 22 Mar 2005

http://members.aon.at/frankenstein/frankenstein-seventies3.htm#mary%20shelley

Rike, Jennifer L. “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein”, movie review, The Christian Century, Feb 15, 1995 v112 n5 p177.

Romney, Jonathan. “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein”, movie review, New Statesman & Society, Nov 4, 1994 v7 n327 p32.

Schickel, Richard, “Mary Shelley's Frankenstein”, movie review, Time, Nov 7, 1994 v144 n19 p73.

Wolfsehr, Tom. “Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein versus Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.” Hailmaryshelley.com 22 Mar 2005. http://www.hailmaryshelley.com/kennethbranaghsfrankenstein.htm