Film Critique on Frankenstein (1931)

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This week, my English class watched a film on Frankenstein which was made in 1931 by James Whale. We had just finished reading the novel of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley so we got to see two completely different points of view. Both the film and the novel represent the characters completely differently from each other and it shows in the character development and in their actions. There were some overlapping between the novel and the movie. But the movie and the novel were completely different from each other.

The story of the film is similar to the novel but the character development is what makes them different. The movie seems to take place in a small town near the country side during the late 1800s. But the plot isn’t as real as the novel because the film doesn’t give as much information as what he is doing as the novel. There is a lot of information the novel is giving that the film just isn’t showing. Of course in the film they create a similar atmosphere when Victor Frankenstein is working on the creation. But, the killings of the creation aren’t being replicated as in the novel. In the novel it created a more serious tone for these killings because we got some much more insight as who the victims were. The cast of course was great but the creation could have been better. The actor wasn’t showing much emotion as the creation in the novel was showing through his actions. The effects the film used including light, lighting, and fire were in a way symbolism for different things. For example, when the light shined on the creature’s face and how he reacted showed that he was just like any other human being and reacted the same way a human would if he was kept in constant darkness. The novel tried to show that the creature was also a normal human being. The film had similarities to the novel but could have done a better job at capturing the character development such as shown in the novel.

One of the film’s weaknesses was the lack of character development and how they are portrayed. The film lacked the ability to develop the characters well enough to see the impact it has on others. For example, the creature met the little girl and played with her but when he killed her, it didn’t seem to have an impact on the creature very much. He just continued to try to kill people as he was doing before the killing of the little girl. Of course the only element the film had similar to the novel was the plot and even then it was not as similar to what had happened in the novel. But the novel didn’t have any humor or slight happiness to it as the movie did when the wedding was happening. The novel has an overall seriousness to it.

My overall impressions of the movie weren’t really that great. I would recommend the movie to others only if they read the novel. This way they are getting a different view of the novel and not have a bad impression of the novel before reading it. If I would have read the novel second, I think would have been less interested in the story knowing what generally happens in the plot.