I chose to pick the 1994 Dir. Kenneth Branagh’s version in contrast to Mary Shelley’s text because immediately after watching it I knew that it was not right. It presented to me an illustration completely exastrabated from that which I got from the book. The other version of the clip the 1931 version had some mistakes as well for example there where spectators there with Frankenstein as he animated life into his creature which is not true. He also used the electricity of the thunderstorms to animate his being which is inaccurate as well because Mary Shelly clearly says on page 35 in the text “I collected the instruments of life around me”. But what threw me off about this version was that it was a dark and rainy day just as stated in the book on the same page “It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle nearly burnt out..” on page 35. It had some type of similarity, which brings me back to the 1994 version that to me did not. In this clip Dr. Frankenstein looks like a healthy young man running around his laboratory turning switches. His shirt was wide open and his long curly locks of hair were swiftly moving as fast as he did all around the scene. In the text he was a miserable person. He was suffering from anxiety and had been working on this project for nearly two years. Shelly continues to mention in the first line of page 36 that he was neglecting himself of sleep and health which would depict the exact opposite of what the young man in the scene was doing. Instead we would see the scientist as a scruffy, broken down person probably moving at a very slow to moderate pace to get things done. In addition, It is true that Dr. Frankenstein was intrigued far beyond what was normal by his experiment but as soon as he got the chance to witness what he had created he was horrified. In the film this is not what is portrayed, the last words he exclaimed were “yes, yes, yes!” as if he were excited or happy about bringing his creature to life. Although in the text on page 36 Mary Shelly states “… but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” She goes on to say how he wasn’t able to even sleep thinking of the horrible mistake he had made, he even had nightmares. In the text, Frankenstein starts to feel a very negative way about his creation immediately after it is brought to life. He feels as if he created a monster and Mary Shelly makes this clear to us in lines such as “I beheld the wretch-the miserable monster whom I created.” This in addition to not being able to sleep or feed himself appropriately made him very fatigue and debilitated so I do not understand why the young man they chose to play him had so much energy in the clip that I watched.
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There are many differences between the novel and the film. I chose the novel because it explains very well how Frankenstein really was, and also in the novel explains very well every character and you can imagine those character however you want to imagine them. Also, in the film it leave out important parts, for example, the adoption of Elizabeth and how she is back to being healthy again. However, in the movie they show an interesting part that caught my attention and it was when Victor Frankenstein uses Professor Waldman’s brain and some other criminal pieces to create the monster while in the novel, the author, Shelley, left it unknown. I guess it was because she wanted the reader to fantasize the different possibilities in which he could have done his creation. In addition, in the novel Frankenstein was a little more cautious because in some ways the author did not want to make him seem like a really bad person.