Frankenstein, a young medical student, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée; but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster.
Frankenštajn, Frankenstein: A Liberal Adaptation from Mrs. Shelley's Famous Story for Edison Production, Frankenstein the First, Frankenstein de Edison, Франкенштейн, 科学怪人
The birth of the monster was really metal.
Part of the reason why Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been such a goldmine for film-makers over the years is, perversely, its unfilmability. Its Monster is not a Monster because he's ugly, he's a Monster because of the unnatural circumstances of his birth, and he has a heavy interior monologue dedicated to thrashing this status out. That's not natural cinematic material, and there are other challenges in Shelley's book. Shelley leaves the reader's imagination to fill in the apparatus which brings the Monster to life, turning the book's pivotal set piece into a blank cheque for visually oriented directors.
In J. Searle Dawley's 1910 short, the Monster is brought to life in a kind of Satanic hot tub, where putrefying flesh…
The first Frankenstein movie, which explains why so many future screen adaptations opt for a beastly brute for the creature instead of the more articulate entity I understand is in the novel. Best part is definitely the Creature's birth, which shows tissue forming over a skeleton and eventually culminating in a monstrous complete figure - achieved by burning up a dummy and reversing the footage, an innovation that luckily for Edison didn't grow up to kill him, maybe because he didn't actually come up with it.
Didn’t expect a short from 1910 to be so fuckin wicked
What if 🤔🧐🔎 Frankenstein 💡👨🏼🔬⚡️WAS the monster😈 🧟🤡all along ???🤯😳👀
Hooptober V: The Fifth One
4/32: 6 before 1970
Silent Film
The first movie adaptation of Frankenstein certainly crafts its own story and cuts the book down into a quick 15 minutes. It feels empty for most of the runtime, but there’s no denying the skill that when into the production.
I never liked Mary Shelly’s classic book, it dragged on and on and could never keep my attention. Luckily this didn’t have that issue due in part to a short running time a cool design for the monster (which I highly prefer over Karloff’s iconic look). Quickly covering the set-up, the movie slows down to give us a great moment where the monster is first “born”. Instead of already…
1st J. Searle Dawley
A surprising fact; 1910 Frankenstein is actually creepier than a number of modern horror films. Yes, it's creaky as hell, still using exaggerated acting, fixed cameras and sets that feel like they'd fall over if you blew on them. The poster also makes the monster look like he's about to bust into Thriller at any moment. But there are a couple of great pieces of invention that do raise eyebrows. There's a wonderful series of shots where one character is reflected in a mirror but speaks to an onscreen figure, a nice bit of trickery from the Cinema of Attractions. The other is the creation of the monster itself, a slightly animated scene where bits of flesh seem to congeal together on a skeleton. It's a gross moment weirdly similar to Hellraiser, if you can believe that, but it works nicely considering the film is 111 years old. Mmm, vintage.
The effects are cool. There are moments when the framing is nonsensical.
Not great but I love the interpretations on Frankenstein in film before Whale/Karloff changed the image forever
there's maybe a 3-second interval between the intertitles "FRANKENSTEIN LEAVES FOR COLLEGE" and "FRANKENSTEIN HAS DISCOVERED THE MYSTERY OF LIFE"
"the human body's gore / who the fuck created it? veins & brains are insane its some creative shit" - necro
Maybe it's because performing in silent films involves a lot more exaggerated gesturing, but man, Doctor Frankenstein, Frankenstein's GF and Frankenstein's monster all come off as major drama queens in this? 😆
I thought the closing mirror sequence was actually pretty clever.
Different versions of this short can be found on YouTube.