Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Curse of Frankenstein Revisited

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
directed by Terence Fisher
written by Jimmy Sangster

Taking a recent second look at some of the old Hammer favorites I went back to the fountainhead of Hammer Horror, The Curse of Frankenstein because if you're going to watch the Hammer Horror Cycle you can't ignore the first one.

One thing I hadn't thought of in a long time was just how much of the film is spent in "doing science" and how little screen time the Creature gets.   If you keep a careful accounting of time you'll notice that the early events of the film move along at a leisurely pace but that once the monster is actually fully active things end pretty rapidly.   I'm sure there are some film schoolmasters who want to use this as an example of what not to do, but the actual result of this is that while action is delayed our investment in the characters is increased exponentially.   So much of this film is spent with people chatting that you can be forgiven for forgetting that there's human experimentation going on in the attic.

Speaking of human experimentation, the immorality of Frankenstein stood out more this time as did Victor's sense of class entitlement.   Young Victor is interested in science, but he's also a privileged brat.  That sense of aristocratic privilege comes back later when Victor refuses to marry the pregnant Justine.  He never has any intention of marrying her and in terms of his own legalistic sense of honor he never tells her he will marry her.  She states that he will be convinced "because of this..." and then kisses him.  He never gives any confirmation to her that her kiss (and anything that might follow) has convinced him to marry her.  It is, in fact, inconceivable that the haughty Victor would deign to sully his name with marriage to a chambermaid.  He is honor bound and class bound to marriage to Elizabeth.  

So, what to make of his dalliance with Justine?   On the one hand it gives the lie to the notion of Victor as being too wrapped up in his science to give thought to the issues of daily life.
It would be more accurate to say that science is his only passion, but that his relationship with Justine is the mere fulfillment of base physical demands.  For Victor, a dalliance with Justine is akin to having a sandwich for lunch.  Other incarnations of Frankenstein lean towards the absent-minded professor who might even forget the sandwich, but it's interesting that this Victor Frankenstein is human enough to pursue a sexual appetite in addition to his high-minded enlightenment pursuit of science and the secrets of life.  The fact that Victor and Justine have created life the old-fashioned way also stands in sharp relief to Victor's attempt to create life in a new and quite unnatural way.  Victor is already morally compromised by his treatment of Justine before he decides to lure her to her death and silence her attempt to blackmail him.  

Of course by the time Victor gets Justine killed by the Creature he has already murdered Professor Bernstein.  Paul Krempe might be considered morally complicit for not exposing Victor's activities (which would involve self-incrimination) but he gets a modicum of sympathy for attempting to save Elizabeth's reputation.  Is this a real concern, though?  Would Elizabeth's honor be dragged through the mud if Victor's grave robbing and other illegal activities are exposed?  Maybe, but what's more important is that Elizabeth is already known to be financially dependent on Victor.  Her marriage to Victor is in fact his payment for providing for the welfare of Elizabeth and her mother.  (So much for pure aristocratic honor and sense duty.  Victor doesn't provide for his aunt and cousin out of altruism but (in a very middle class mercantile way) expects recompense for that investment.  This also undercuts Victor's moral stature.   Paul knows that if the full range of Victor's illegal and immoral activities are exposed then his fortune might be forfeit and that would also hurt Elizabeth, who is completely innocent.  It is only when Elizabeth is in actual physical danger that Paul has no choice but to act.

Does Victor in any way redeem himself when faced with the Creature's attack on Elizabeth?  It seems that only then does he show that he might actually care about Elizabeth, but even then it is Paul who acts more effectively.  And Frankenstein is still morally and ethically responsible for once again reviving the Creature after its first murderous foray that resulted in the deaths of the old man and the young boy in the woods.   Paul, who knows enough of the story to corroborate Victor's prison confession refuses to do so.  While this leaves open the "insane nightmare" interpretation, it is just as likely that Paul sees no moral need to confirm Victor's narrative for the authorities when all relevant evidence has been destroyed and as it would not serve to save anyone, except for maybe Victor if he could convince a court that Justine's death was a regrettable accident.  Paul, who is already quite sure that Victor has gotten away with murder once and that Victor is responsible for any deaths caused by the creation and revival of the Creature, sees no cause to save his old friend by helping him weasel out of murder charges.  Paul may be concealing the full truth, but he is acting within an ethical code of protecting the innocent.  Elizabeth, the only truly innocent person in this film, is physically and financially safe now that Victor is bound for the guillotine.  Paul may have failed in teaching Victor ethics but he succeeds in saving at least one innocent from suffering because of Victor's single-minded desire.

Ultimately, Victor Frankenstein in this film is a single-minded megalomaniac.  He refuses to publish his early successes which might have been applied to improve medicine and save countless lives.  Paul sees the great potential for humanity in this, but Victor doesn't care about humanity.  Victor wants something else entirely: the godlike power of pure creation.  He is looking for the origin of life itself.  And he wants to have control over that.  And he's not looking for it in the name of any greater good.  He twists the pursuit of pure scientific discovery into something done entirely for personal aggrandizement, but what makes it exasperating is that even Victor seems to forget what the point of all that experimenting was in the first place.  For all his pursuit of personal greatness through discovering and harnessing the life force all that Victor really gets is the limited control over a monstrous creature.  His secrecy even prevents him from taking credit for any of the more useful incremental innovations that led up to his final experiment.  

And another issue is why does Victor think that a brain belonging to someone he murdered is going to be perfect for his creation?  Victor seems to place the blame of abnormality of the brain and Creature's murderous rage on the damage done to the brain when Paul struggles with him over it.   But even if the Bernstein's brain was completely undamaged wouldn't it carry the memory of the murder?  Victor's entire reason for using Bernstein's brain is that he is a great thinker at the height of his mental faculties.
Victor presumes that Bernstein's brain will retain all of that information and capability in its memory in the immediate aftermath of death.  But if the brain has its complete memory, wouldn't it also have the memory of its last moments?  For all his superior intelligence it seems that this does not occur to Victor. And it doesn't seem to occur to Paul, either, who could have used it to counter Victor's argument for using the brain.  In fact, this point is what drives the final act of Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed where brains and bodies are switched, and it in fact is a feature of some of the original Universal Frankenstein sequels that featured a lot of Freaky Friday body/soul switches.  

A good cast is still worth repeating
Baron Victor von Frankenstein -- Peter Cushing
Elizabeth -- Hazel Court
Dr. Paul Krempe -- Robert Urquhart
The Creature -- Christopher Lee
Justine -- Valerie Gaunt
Professor Bernstein -- Paul Hardtmuth
Aunt Sophia -- Noel Hood
Young Victor -- Melvyn Hayes
Young Elizabeth -- Sally Walsh
Priest -- Alex Gallier
Grandpa -- Fred Johnson
Little Boy -- Claude Kingston

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Jack Asher

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