Word: shelleys
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...process; both relent in the face of the beloved's tender words. The earlier doctor seeks glory in a way that Branagh's does not, permitting an audience for the actual reanimation process to prove his sanity and prowess. None of the creators can summon the demented courage of Shelley's doctor to choose science over their human life. This is a reflection of the horror in which Shelley held the act of human creation: it necessarily meant selling one's soul to pursue such a dark...
Branagh's film, for all its transgressions, succeeds in communicating Shelley's own horror at the monstrous birth. Frankenstein's monster is neither child of God, nor of woman. He is an assault on universal order, on the principles of science and religion. This is most effectively described in the film's birth scenes. In the first, Victor Frankenstein's mother dies in caesarean delivery performed by her husband. Though physically (and graphically) destroying the mother, the birth produces a joyful child who is a delight from his first moments. The monster's birth, however, is an awkward torment...
...Shelley's novel explores not only the process of birth, but the effects of parenthood Frankenstein is littered with parentless children, like Shelley herself, whose mother died shortly after her birth. The monster's wrath stems from the refusal of the man he calls his father to acknowledge his offspring, or to provide for his spiritual comfort by creating a companion like him. The monster who grows under these circumstances has great capacities both for good and evil, presumably like all children at their birth. He is well-educated and seeks human companionship, but his rejection by the human race...
...film is a product of attitudes towards science in its time, thus ruling out Shelley's tragic father-son relationship. The 'science' of phrenology, the study of the physical characteristics of the skull as an indicator of personality and behavior, is used as a horror technique, obscuring true possibilities of horror. The brain transplanted into Boris Karloff's monster is that of a psychopathic criminal, presumed to be preprogrammed for murder and mayhem. The revealing of this fact to 'Dr. Frankenstein extracts a reaction of dread at the inevitable terrors such a brain, reanimated, will produce. Yet Karloff...
Films purporting to be inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein story often reflect the fascinations and obssessions of their creators far more accurately than the text they seek to imitate. Branagh's inclusion of a plague which destroys lives even faster than his monster, speaks dirctly to modern audiences, reconnecting them to Shelley's text. A film audience would be quite surprised, having viewed the films of the Brattle series or Branagh's film, to see what the text actually says. Its power, however, lies in that very ability to inspire the imagination which makes cinematic interpretations so problematic. There...