OctoBOOr 10th: Frankenstein, dir. James Whale, 1931 (United States). 5/5 pumpkins. “Have you never wanted to look beyond the clouds and the stars, or to know what causes the trees to bud? And what changes the darkness into light? But if you talk like that, people call you crazy. Well, if I could discover just one of these things, what eternity is, for example, I wouldn't care if they did think I was crazy.”
If Dracula is the art house film of Universal’s original run of monster films, then Frankenstein is the crowd-pleasing blockbuster. That’s far from saying it’s dumbed down, however – if anything, it improves on what Dracula does well and throws in a few extras to sweeten the pot. The pacing is more taught and the film’s forward momentum moves at a breakneck pace; the acting is across-the-board fantastic; dialogue is snappier, deeper, and provides both philosophical monologues and well-placed moments of levity; special effects are more seamlessly integrated, etc. The set design is even more impressive; Victor Frankenstein’s mill/laboratory is absolutely stunning. Sharp angles and extreme blocks (seemingly anticipating Brutalist architecture over two decades early) run headlong into staircases warped in rounded, funhouse mirror shapes; it’s as if Frankenstein’s fractured, obsessed mind has been given concrete, external form. Which, of course, is the entire point of his experiment. In the end, he’s literally carried away by his own imagination. The Promethean myth is a perennial trope in horror and science fiction, and it has yet to find a more clarion voice than in this film.
OctoBOOr 3rd: Dracula, dir. Tod Browning, 1931 (United States). 4/5 pumpkins. “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you're a wise man, Van Helsing.”
I was lucky enough to catch this in a movie theater last night, which is really ideal, given the stunning set design and gothic atmosphere with which this film drips. It’s a film carved from black marble, which is to its credit during the Transylvania-set scenes (witness the shot where Renfield is framed by the shadow from the window, casting bars across his face as he walks, quite literally, into the spider’s web). That’s to its detriment when it transitions to the drawing rooms of London, however, where the film falls flat when not centered around Bela Lugosi and his interactions with Van Helsing. Lugosi gets all the laurels – and deservedly so – but Dwight Frye is downright unhinged as the pitiable Renfield and almost steals the show. It’s a role that apparently brings out the scenery-chewing best in actors (see Tom Waits in Coppola’s take on Stoker’s tale). It might be blasphemous to say, as many moments in the film rely on the aural negative space, but the film certainly suffers on the whole from not having a musical score. To that end, once you've seen the original, I suggest seeking out the version with the accompanying Phillip Glass/Kronos Quartet score, commissioned in 1998. As Roger Ebert remarked, "The Glass score is effective in the way it suggests not just moody creepiness, but the urgency and need behind Dracula's vampirism. It evokes a blood thirst that is 500 years old."
