Week 1: Frankenstein 1931 film (extra credit: 1)

 Literally from the opening credits we get a hint of the gothic interest - a still image of eyes in the dark, rotating around the screen, like a visual representation of our instinctive fear of what lurks in the dark. Also aligned with gothic interests is the inclusion of several women attending what is supposed to be a high level medical course, and how Elizabeth now adopts something of an active role in the beginning of the film in order to, understandably, abridge the narrative.

This movie's depiction of the monster's situation is vastly different to the point of it probably being worse. The relationship between Victor an the Creation in the book is that of God and humans, in as much that God abandons his creations to figure things out on their own. The movie just literally has the Creation being punished just for being created, despite Victor being proud of creating it just moments before, until he finds out he used a criminal brain instead of the average-man brain. Without the context of the book, I'd be confused who we're supposed to support, but that's not a matter of the film makers really capturing the moral ambiguity of Shelley's work in my opinion.

Another strange thing is why they changed Victor's name to Henry? Why? Why for art thou Henry?

Something I think the film work does do nicely is how it frames nature around the characters in an approximation of sublime - the overwhelming dominance of nature or the illustrious manors in some of the shots as the characters only occupy the bottom third of of the screen. 

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