Frankenstein (1910)

‘I shall create into life the most perfect human being that the world has yet known.’

Two years after leaving for college, scientist Frankenstein is ready to embark on his daring experiment to create life. Although he is successful, his creation has the appearance of a monster. The academic flees, returning to his home town where he plans to marry his fiancée Elizabeth. However, the creature is not far behind…

The first cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s famous novel, this 12-minute silent picture was produced by the Thomas Edison Company in New York. Director J Searle Dawley also wrote the screenplay, which is presented on a small number of sets with a minimal cast, but still manages to make its’ mark over a century later.

Academic Frankenstein (Augustus Phillips) departs from home to travel to college, leaving his intended bride Elizabeth (Mary Fuller). Two years pass before the night when he is finally ready to conduct his ambitious experiment: the creation of life. The intention is to create beauty and perfection, but the results are far from it. Phillips is repelled by the monster (Charles Ogle) when it enters his bedchamber and escapes the city to return home. He tries to bury his memories and marry Fuller, but Ogle’s creature is not so easily dismissed.

Obviously, the film’s place in the history of horror, and cinema itself, is impossible to deny. It’s the first baby steps of a genuine cultural phenomenon that has encompassed hundreds of movies, television shows, stage adaptations, comic books, further literary adaptations and appearances in every conceivable corner and medium of the entertainment world. The themes and incidents of the story have also been the inspiration and basis of more rip-offs, homages and knowing references than perhaps any other character in literary history. The mad or misguided scientist was born with Frankenstein.

That’s a heavy legacy for any first film to shoulder, especially one of a vintage of more than 100 years. The surprise is that it holds up so well within that limitation. Credit here must go to writer-director Dawley, particularly for his screenplay. Boiling down a novel of almost 75,000 words into just 12 minutes of screentime is no laughing matter, but he sensibly distils the action into three swift acts: the setup, the creation and rejection of the creature and the wrap-up at Frankenstein’s home. It’s an elementary summary of the tale, but it’s not as if Dawley had much wiggle room, given the short runtime. More significantly, he does come up with a couple of nice, creative touches which are pretty original.

The most immediately striking element of Dawley’s film is the creation sequence. Rather than having the creature assembled from various spare parts looted from local boneyards, this monster is grown inside a cauldron. During the process, the creature rapidly takes on muscle, bulk and form, added during frequent cutaways to the watching Phillips. This is very different from the usual approach where the scientist endows the life force into an inanimate body via various fizzing electrical devices or a convenient lightning storm. The approach may have been due to the limitations of what Dawley had to work with, but it’s undeniably a little gruesome and quite effective if you make allowances. It also serves as a vague precursor to the kind of body horror that is a staple of the genre today.

The other interesting spin on the material is foreshadowed by one of the intertitles before the creation sequence, which states: ‘Instead of a perfect being, the evil in Frankenstein’s mind creates a monster.’ This statement suggests a much closer link between man and monster than the mere application of electric current. Publicity material issued at the time presented a very literal reading of the following events. These culminate when Ogle literally vanishes into thin air because ‘The creation of an evil mind is overcome by love and disappears’. To modern eyes, this suggests that the monster represents his creator’s twisted psyche, that it’s birthed and sustained by his unhealthy obsession with forbidden knowledge. After all, one of the film’s final shots has the creature only visible in a mirror as his creator’s reflection. There is nothing shown of any scientific method because Frankenstein is literally ‘playing god’, creating a man in his own image, which proves to be far from divine. He is trespassing on the Lord’s domain, but, unlike the ‘hero’ of Shelley’s novel, he faces no real consequences for his hubris.

Of course, Dawley’s film has all the limitations of cinema produced in its era. The acting is over-demonstrative for the most part, and the camera remains fixed in one place in a single shot for each scene. However, Ogle does attempt to infuse his creature with some pathos, and his clutching hands do recall the pathetic gestures employed by Boris Karloff in his iconic portrayal. Also, it’s tempting to believe that ‘mirror shot’ may have inspired German writer-director Paul Wegener’s landmark horror entry ‘The Student of Prague/Der Student von Prag’ (1913), produced just a couple of years later. After all, the creature’s status as the scientist’s doppelganger or Mr Hyde to his Dr Jekyll is heavily implied.

The film was thought lost for many decades, but a print was preserved by a Wisconsin film collector. Although acquired in the 1950s, it was only 20 years later when he realised its extreme rarity and the film was restored and preserved for all time. Generally, the output of the Edison Studios is not highly regarded, but Dawley was a prolific director, making more than 200 short films for the company before this Shelley adaptation. He did try to convince Edison to produce more extended subjects, but the famous inventor dismissed the suggestion, believing that audiences would not have the inclination to watch or the attention span required. Frustrated with that lack of vision, Dawley spent time with Adolf Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company, where he directed further literary adaptations such as ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1913) and ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ (1918). One of the founding members of the Motion Picture Directors Association, he directed his last feature in 1923 before becoming involved with the emerging technology used in sound films. In later life, he worked on the Arizona Republican newspaper, writing a regular column called ‘Sweet Arts of Sweethearts’, which covered the ‘courtship, betrothal and wedding customs’ of various cultures around the world.

Essential viewing for those interested in the history of film horror.