Throughout the essay I will write about the ways both the monster and Dr. Frankenstein are portrayed by the two different directors and how this creates atmosphere and feelings in the audience. I will also be writing about how background music, Sound effects, and camera angles contribute to the separate films. Then I will go on to look at not only the costumes of the characters but the settings of the both films too.
In Whale’s 1931 black and white version of “Frankenstein” he characterises Dr. Frankenstein exceedingly well, but not truthfully towards Shelley’s novel. Firstly he changes his name from Victor (meaning victory) to Henry; this could relate to Whale’s view that Frankenstein is not victorious in the novel.
Frankenstein wears a typical long, white lab coat to suggest clearly to the audience that he is a professional doctor. It could also connote to the audience that he is smart, well brought up, devoted and possibly a perfectionist. This is also shown by the way Frankenstein’s hair is always perfectly tidy and combed. These are deliberate decisions made by the director, as this is the way he wants Dr. Frankenstein to be portrayed.
He is shown to be a character on the “edge” between sanity and insanity by his edginess towards his fiancée and his friend Victor when they disturb his creation process. While Frankenstein acts like this it is very hard for the watching audience to like him; his pushiness and aggression towards his loved ones makes it hard to feel sympathetic towards him. In fact the only sympathy that could be felt for Frankenstein is the fact that such a intellectual and obviously kind man has been drawn into his work so much it has effected his lifestyle and personality.
Kenneth Branagh, who plays Dr. Frankenstein in the 1994 version of “Frankenstein”, plays a very different Frankenstein to the Colin Clive character. The film is set era as the novel unlike the Whale film. With this in mind Branagh is put into very old looking, ‘tatty’, ‘scruffy’ and even possibly dirty looking, trousers and shirts. These clothes represent a much less serious, un-professional and more ordinary looking doctor. His hair is long, greasy looking, and slightly un-combed. This is very different to the Whale’s Frankenstein, which gives the audience a bit more of an understanding attitude towards the Branagh Frankenstein, as he seems a more human representation. So ultimately the audience feel more sympathetic towards him when he gets dragged away by his ambition, from his social life and into his experiment. His looks also interest the audience more as he acts saner than Whale’s Frankenstein so when he starts to lose touch with himself the audience start to analyse his thinking and interpret his actions.
In the Whale version the creation scene is very interesting in the way that it isn’t made into the most important scene of the film, but instead used to build up the audience’s anticipation to see the creature for the first time.
The scene is based in the top room of an abandoned and isolated windmill on a hill far away from civilisation. With Whale adding in the non-diegetic sound of thunder and lighting he successfully creates a spooky and eerie feeling before the scene has even started. In the mise en scene of the opening scene the first thing we see is the amount of electrical equipment circleled around the creature who is lying down on a table covered by a big sheet. As the scene continues we see the doctor hurrying around furiously trying to get everything ready in time.
