Frankenstein, 1931 dir. James Whale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOcJwt8XB4M
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, 1994, dir. Kenneth Branagh
Watch these two clips and in a 250-word comment below, reflect on the portrayals of the Creature’s birth and how they differ from Shelley’s description in the novel. What do the films retain or change, and how does it affect your understanding of the scene?
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the main character Victor Frankenstein comes up with a method to bring something to life using spare parts. On one end the book uses a couple of pages to describe this process, in which they mainly focus on how terrified Frankenstein is of this newly created being. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body…Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room..” (40). Frankenstein ends up becoming so scared that he abandons the being, runs away, and eventually became very ill. On other hand, these two movie clips portray this scene focusing more on the creation of the being itself and less on the aftermath. These two clips made the creation of this being appear a lot more dramatic and significant in comparison to when I had read the book. The reason for this is most probably because the producer needs to keep that audience hooked throughout the duration of the movie.