Frankenstein - 1910

"Sweetheart, tonight my ambition will be accomplished. I have discovered the secret of life and death and in a few hours I shall create into life the most perfect human being that the world has yet known. When this marvelous work is accomplished, I shall then return to claim you for my bride. -Your devoted Frankenstein."

The first surviving adaptation of "Frankenstein" to the movies was a 1910 film created by Edison Pictures. Running a little over 13 minutes in length, the movie presented a heavily (and I mean HEAVILY) abridged and re-imagined version of Mary Shelley's original story. 

The movie begins with young Frankenstein's admission to college, bidding his father and his "sweetheart" Elizabeth goodbye. Two years later, Frankenstein has become so wrapped up in his studies (Yeah, that's not how I remember college) that he's almost forgotten everything else. For his greatest experiment, the young man attempts to create a perfect human being. The process of creation is very different from what later movies would display, with a much greater emphasis on what looks like some kind of alchemy as Frankenstein dumps various ingredients into a great cauldron to create his marvel. However, what rises out of the boiling vat is a hideous, malformed abomination created by the evil in Frankenstein's mind that is irresistibly drawn to the man. Even as he tries to flee the creature, it follows him - all the way home, where Frankenstein has gone to marry Elizabeth. The monster Is intensely possessive of Frankenstein, and jealous of Elizabeth, and its tremendous strength makes it nearly impossible to fend off by any natural means. Frankenstein ultimately confronts the monster in a mirror (yeah, things get trippy here), and denies the evil within himself out of love for Elizabeth. The monster fades away, leaving Frankenstein and Elizabeth happy at last.

The overall movie has a far different feel than Mary Shelley's novel, and takes a very different approach in many respects. This may partly explain why it's barely remembered in comparison to later movies. Unlike Mary Shelley's misunderstood, lost creature, the monster here is narrated as being intrinsically malevolent and vicious. Despite this, there's a strange sort of sympathetic quality to the creature: it seems to be a part of Frankenstein's psyche, drawn from him and woefully incomplete, yet forced to survive the world on its own - and ultimately rejected and destroyed by the man who created it. More than that, the creature has a body count of exactly zero: it meekly hides behind a curtain at one point when Frankenstein demands it, and though it does threaten Elizabeth at one point, it flees when Frankenstein directly confronts it. The overall effect is a radical departure from the original novel, and could be easily rewritten as a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" story, and made more coherent in the process. Frankenstein himself is the ethical equal of his novel counterpart, but he survives in the end, and is even given a happy ending when his love for Elizabeth somehow "overcomes" his inner evil that personifies the monster. 

The monster here is played by one Charles Stanton Ogle, wearing pancake makeup, torn rags, a fright wig, and some of the strangest, most bizarre expressions you'll ever see. His performance is interesting, his movements swift and yet somehow stiff. The result is just uncanny enough to come across as intimidating, and the closest thing I can compare it to is Bill Skarsgard's performance as Pennywise from "It" in 2017. 

Overall, this movie has largely faded into obscurity compared to later "Frankenstein" movies, and is only really memorable today for two reasons: for one thing, it's the first surviving adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel, and for another, the actual creation sequence holds up amazingly well even today. It's obvious that the sequence is made by sticking an animatronic model of the monster into a cauldron, setting the model on fire, and then running the film in reverse so it looks like it's coming together from nothingness, but the overall outcome is astonishing, shining far above the rest of the movie. The film is little more than ten minutes long, and is in the public domain, so watching it is remarkably easy. Give it a shot, you might be surprised. 

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