Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Sound of Silence: Frankenstein (1910)

You don't get any closer to the birth of the horror film than this. After knowing about this for most of my life, I finally sat down and watched it for this review. It's amazing to consider that you're looking at something that's over a hundred years old. This is going to be an odd movie to review because there's really not much to it. It's only twelve minutes long, there are no dialogue cards, and you can't judge the acting because all you can do is see it rather than hear it. Granted, I perfectly understand that you have to give this film some leeway because of the era it was made but still, I see it as a curiosity piece for film buffs and really nothing more.

Portrayed from the very beginning as a very loose adaptation of Mary Shelley's legendary novel (there's an opening title card that says so), this film shows the young Frankenstein (who's never given a first name) leave for college, bidding his beloved Elizabeth and father goodbye. At college, Frankenstein becomes obsessed with the mysteries of life and eventually believes he's found the very source of life. One night, he attempts to create the perfect human being in a vat of chemicals behind a door. Much to his horror, what is eventually formed is far from a perfect human being but a hideous creature. He soon leaves for home, having learned his lesson and wishing to spend the rest of his life with Elizabeth. But the monster, apparently angry at his creator for abandoning him and jealous of the romance between Frankenstein and his fiancee, isn't about to let him off the hook.

Little is known about the production of this film. Its director, J. Searle Dawley (who directed well over a hundred films between 1907 and 1926), supposedly shot it in just three days at the Edison Studios in New York. It's often called Edison's Frankenstein because Thomas Edison is usually credited as producer but from what I've heard, he almost never had any real participation in the films his company produced. For decades, was believed to have been lost but it was discovered in the 1970's as having been bought by a film collector in Wisconsin in the 50's. The owner then produced a preservation copy and it now can be seen quite easily because of its public domain status (I viewed it on YouTube).

Watching the film is a strange but interesting experience. It's quite deteriorated but there are some fairly good prints that are watchable all in all. It's very stagy, the camera never moves, and, like I said, it's only twelve minutes long (less than two reels). You have to be easy on it when judging it because it's one of the first of its kind and was made at the dawn of cinema, back when filmmaking didn't really exist as an art-form. It's also interesting to think that Mary Shelley's novel had to have been one of the first, if not THE first, books to be adapted as a motion picture. It's hard to judge the acting because one, you can't hear the dialogue, and two, we're talking about silent movies (a very early one, no less), where acting wasn't subtle in the slightest. Augustus Phillips as Frankenstein and Charles Ogle as the monster both ham it up big time (both of these guys appeared in over a hundred movies respectively throughout the silent era, especially Ogle, who appeared in 269). Ogle looks pretty ridiculous in his getup. When I was a little kid, I would read books about classic horror films at my school library and in the one about Frankenstein, they showed a hilarious closeup still of the Ogle as the monster. You never see the monster that close in the actual film and for good reason. He looks like an ugly old woman and in that particular still, looks as if he just sucked on a sour lemon. Again, I know they didn't have much to work with and it's unfair to compare it to Boris Karloff's legendary image but I can't help but snicker at the way the monster looks.

As simple as it is, I did find evidence that the filmmakers had an interesting idea in mind for this film. According to the Edison Kinetogram, a film catalog published to promote the company's films at the time, the film was meant to focus on the "mystic and psychological problems that are to be found in this weird tale." In the synopsis provided by the catalog, it is said that the monster was created because Frankenstein's mind had become tainted with evil in his pursuit of knowledge and his growing love for his fiancee is what ultimately destroys his hideous creation. I must say that the creation of the monster is quite impressive for a movie filmed in 1910 and it does go along with the motif the filmmakers were going for, since the creation does look more like black magic than anything scientific. After seeing his ghastly image in the mirror for the first time and with Frankenstein's love for his wife proving to great, the monster simply disappears into thin air. The catalog explains it as Frankenstein's love for Elizabeth cleansing his mind of all impure thoughts and therefore, making it impossible for the monster to exist. The ending even treats the monster as the evil side of Frankenstein, with his reflection in the mirror remaining for a moment after he disintegrates and Frankenstein himself seeing the reflection when he first enters. The reflection then disappears to reveal Frankenstein's own, symbolizing that his better nature has vanquished the evil. This is a callback to how many plays based on the novel portrayed Frankenstein and the monster as being mirror images of each other, having them dress similarly and so forth. Granted, it's nothing like its source material but when you consider that this was an early silent film that was intended to be the first adaptation of a well known story to film, the changing of the major aspects and themes of the story can be appreciated as being kind of ballsy. Whether or not it worked entirely is a different matter altogether (everything I wrote I found in a reprint of the Edison Kinetogram and while I got the vague impressions of it from the actual film, it didn't get that deep until I read that reprint) but I think it has to be commended for being different than what was probably expected.

The 1910 Frankenstein is ultimately just a curious piece of film history and nothing more. Is it a re-watchable film? Not in my opinion. This is just one of those movies that you see in order to say you've seen it and probably never think about again. It's unavoidably dated and simple but like I said, you have to admire it for doing a completely different take on a well known novel. Interestingly, while this film was considered lost for decades but eventually found, there is a 1915 Frankenstein adaptation called Life Without Soul that has never been found. Supposedly, it took place the year it was made instead of the period the novel was written in and centered around a would-be Frankenstein dreaming that he is the famous scientist and bringing to life a monster made of clay (like The Golem, which is often compared to the story of Frankenstein) that, as in the original novel, demands that his creator make him a mate as well. Other than the dream wraparound and the setting in 1915, this sounds like a much more faithful adaptation of the novel than the 1910 film. Who knows if this film will ever turn up because it would be interesting to compare the two. Anyway, final thoughts on the 1910 film: it's interesting to watch for movie buffs but I doubt it's something you'll be compelled to see again and again. Still, if you're interested in the dawn of cinema and the horror film in particular, I'd recommend seeing it.

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