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(Based on a post I made on 30 January 2016.)
Here's a fun (read: heartbreaking) note about Frankenstein (1931): listen to the dialogue in the first few scenes after the creation.
Here are some of Henry's lines from his dialogue with Waldman:
"He’s only a few days old, remember."
"You must be patient. Do you expect perfection at once?"
"His brain must be given time to develop."
"I believe in this ‘monster’, as you call it."
By the end of that first conversation with his old mentor, Waldman's dehumanizing language is rubbing off on Henry, but the transformation isn't complete until the creature kills Fritz.
(In, by the way, completely-understandable self-defense.)
Until that point, despite the change Waldman is working on his thought processes, Henry still believes his creation is essentially good. It's the realization that his monstrous son is capable of violence that sparks Henry's nervous collapse.
And even then: Henry remains oddly passive -- well, at least, compared with Victor in the novel, who grows increasingly paranoid as events unfold, and, at last, takes to carrying a gun with him everywhere he goes.
Which is something I'm still turning over in my head, because I'm not sure exactly how to read the whole character of Henry Frankenstein. A lot of the power of that character comes from the way Colin Clive carries himself: nervous politeness, restrained tension, slowly fraying emotional control.
But a lot comes from the words he says -- at last, I come back around to the nominal topic of this post -- and it's worth saying that, uh, the dialogue in this movie definitely reads as off.
There's probably a really good reason that the only lines anybody remembers from Frankenstein are spoken by Colin Clive: he brings exactly the correct charge of sheer nervous energy to the role, and it makes even clunky technobabble sparkle. Without his voice, the words of Henry Frankenstein sound empty and bloodless; with it, they're electric.
...pun intended.
Here's a fun (read: heartbreaking) note about Frankenstein (1931): listen to the dialogue in the first few scenes after the creation.
Here are some of Henry's lines from his dialogue with Waldman:
"He’s only a few days old, remember."
"You must be patient. Do you expect perfection at once?"
"His brain must be given time to develop."
"I believe in this ‘monster’, as you call it."
By the end of that first conversation with his old mentor, Waldman's dehumanizing language is rubbing off on Henry, but the transformation isn't complete until the creature kills Fritz.
(In, by the way, completely-understandable self-defense.)
Until that point, despite the change Waldman is working on his thought processes, Henry still believes his creation is essentially good. It's the realization that his monstrous son is capable of violence that sparks Henry's nervous collapse.
And even then: Henry remains oddly passive -- well, at least, compared with Victor in the novel, who grows increasingly paranoid as events unfold, and, at last, takes to carrying a gun with him everywhere he goes.
Which is something I'm still turning over in my head, because I'm not sure exactly how to read the whole character of Henry Frankenstein. A lot of the power of that character comes from the way Colin Clive carries himself: nervous politeness, restrained tension, slowly fraying emotional control.
But a lot comes from the words he says -- at last, I come back around to the nominal topic of this post -- and it's worth saying that, uh, the dialogue in this movie definitely reads as off.
There's probably a really good reason that the only lines anybody remembers from Frankenstein are spoken by Colin Clive: he brings exactly the correct charge of sheer nervous energy to the role, and it makes even clunky technobabble sparkle. Without his voice, the words of Henry Frankenstein sound empty and bloodless; with it, they're electric.
...pun intended.
