There were some lines of dialogue, that made me, as a part of the audience feel strongly emotional for the monster, the part being, the monster starting his journey and says ‘Geneva’. I say this because it makes me think ‘what is this monster planning? What does it mean? Will he find Victor Frankenstein? When he says this, he is standing in a Gothic setting at a snow scope. Which is trying to point out that he is too far away from land and he would unlikely be able to make it to anywhere because it is cold, he has no food and no transport apart from walking, however how far can one walk?
However, the monster shows two sides of him, because in another part, which was one of the highlights of the film, the monster pulls out Elizabeth’s heart, whilst doing lightning strikes and loud music is being played, which is building up tension in the audience. This shows the evil side of the monster and makes the audience have an aversion towards him.
The stars in this film were ‘Robert De-Niro’ who played the monster, 'Helena Banham Carter’ who played Elizabeth and ‘Dennis Kenneth’ who starred as Victor Frankenstein. These were the three main characters of the film, which were the ones that the film was referenced to. I think they were well cast because they made it emotional at times and played brother/sister, husband/wife parts really well. The monster was particularly excellent because he had effective make-up and the technique of him having stitches on his body, and his face being re-arranged made it seem like a genuine monster. They have convincing looks and facial expressions; the monsters voice was also convincing and made the film extra enjoyable. Robert De-Niro was also in another film called ‘Raging Bull; he starred as a boxer, who lost and wasn’t very good which is a lot different to what he starred in Frankenstein, because in Frankenstein he was tough and mean, he killed Elizabeth and destroyed Frankenstein’s family, he killed the little boy William.
The lighting of the film was different throughout the film because in the part where Elizabeth is reading the letter received from Victor she is standing in a candle lit room, which makes you know there is romance involved, the orange/red colour also indicates some danger. However, the setting before Victor moves away to live nearer by to his university, when they are in the hall, where everyone is dancing it is brightly lit up and everyone is wearing white, which symbolizes happiness and joy. There are other parts in the film where it is different for example in the beginning were the men are out sailing and the setting is dark, fogy and wet which made it seem like a scary cold night and something was going to happen.
There is a combination of colours used in the film to evoke a reaction in the audience. Such as when Elizabeth is saying goodbye to Victor and she is wearing blue to show laughter and happiness in the house and to show her feelings towards Victor Frankenstein. Everyone else was wearing white to show Happiness for Victor going to university.
The image of Elizabeth’s death, framing is used and it is trying to point out that Elizabeth is the main part of the scene. She is the center part of the story and her dying will build tension in the audience because they want to know what will happen.
In this framed image the camera was focused on the monster taking Elizabeth’s heart out and damaging her internal organs, I think the director arranged the frame in this way to attract the audiences attention to this particular part. He also used a frame at the beginning of the film to give a powerful opening to the film, which was the part of the men sailing on the ship, and the dogs starting to attack them.
The film has many parts where it shows long shots, medium shots and close ups. Examples of when there were long shots were in the part of when Victor Frankenstein was with his friend looking at the professor. When doing this is showed that the character was an individual character, I say this because he is showed away from everyone (using a long shot). A close up was used in the scene of Frankenstein and his sister talking together on the day that Frankenstein was leaving to go to university, they used a close up to show how close the two were and to build up atmosphere which allows the audience to feel the intensity between the characters in that particular scene.
A middle shot was shown in the scene of the monster jumping on Frankenstein in slow motion, it was really effective and was a part that you would want to see over and over again because it had excellent scenery and great camera shots. I stated it was ‘effective’ because it gave lots of detail and created impact for the audience.
In the scene of William being found murdered on the floor in the forest, the filming was shot at a different angle, it was shot at a high angle which was effective because it was showing that it was not a personal view but a spiritual view. The same type of view was used when Justine was hanged but it was from a low angle shot to make the audience give pity to her, and make the scene more emotional.
When Justine was hung, the camera moved up and down her to build tension and give the audience a full view of Justine to show no turning back and that trouble starts here for the murder of an innocent person.
A soft focus was usually done on Elizabeth especially at the scene of Elizabeth’s murder, they used this soft focus to make Elizabeth look like a pretty, young innocent woman, and this makes the audience feel sorry for her when she died. The scene is filmed with a hard focus was when Frankenstein was seeing his mother dead in the chair, she was completely covered with blood, he was red, and this showed that he had a lot of anger in him.
In Frankenstein there were a lot of orchestral music, instruments such as violins, which showed that there is danger in the scene. Brass instruments were played in some scene’s which was building up pace such as when Frankenstein was building the monster, they used brass in this scene because not a soul knew if it was going to work or not. The violin was played in the scene of the monster’s journey, which was giving the impression of danger.
Sound effects were also heard throughout the film especially in the beginning when the boat crashed into an iceberg and the Husky’s broke free, barks and chains were heard. This caused the audience to jump and know that the film was going to be scary. When Frankenstein’s mother died there were cries and screams heard all over to show emotional feelings between the family and how they were all affected when the death was announced.
The scene of when the monster jumps on the back of Victor Frankenstein, which was played in slow motion was good because it built tension in the audience, to see what would happen, will he kill Victor Frankenstein or not? It was a good scene especially with the background effect of a snow scope. This scene also included a stunt; the monster jumping on Victor, it made it more interesting to see the monster do the stunt because it showed that the monster would do anything to get what he wanted.
The costumes warn by the characters showed that the film was set in the 18th century, for example the dresses that were worn in Victor’s leaving party were all big, white and frilly. The clothes warn by the characters were also showing the different status of the people for example when Elizabeth first turned up and was wearing a little rag showed that she had come from a poor family however, Victor was wearing a suit, which made him look like he was rich compared to Elizabeth.
Overall, I think that the story had a high emotional impact for the audience and was a roller coaster ride of emotions.