Frankenstein
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Movie Reviews of Frankenstein
Movie Review: Frankenstein-man or monster
Summary: 5 Stars
wow, i read the book and this movie is so close to how the book is written. anybody who has read the book will like it alot more than if you had not read it. I highly recommend watching this movie, it is greatMovie Review: This is Frankesnstein
Summary: 5 Stars
This is Frankenstein. This film is as likely as we will ever get to a version of Mary Shelley's novel. The acting is good and the scenery is fantastic. It captures the pathos of the novel perfectly. 10 stars.Movie Review: True to story
Summary: 5 Stars
I used this video with my ESL students after reading an abridged version of Frankenstein. THey were able to relate it to the story we read. It is long, though, but worth it if you can spare the time.Movie Review: Frankenstein video
Summary: 5 Stars
I used it to accompany the reading of the novel in the high school British Literature class I teach. No parents will object to this one. My only complaint is that the creature wasn't ugly at all.Movie Review: faithful and truly fine adaptation of the Shelly novel
Summary: 4 Stars
This film captures the spirit of Mary SHelly's masterpiece better than almost any film version I have seen, and it is a good bet I have seen most of them. In many ways, this is my favorite of the classic monsters, the superhuman constructed by a scientist of genius, only to have his creation slip from his control. Not only is it a warning (so typical of the Romantics) against placing too much faith in science, but it is also a deep enquiry into human nature.
This version of Frankenstein begins with a desolated man (Newman) lost in the arctic, unburdening himself to the captain (Sutherland) of a ship of exploration. He was on a quest to resurrect a being from death, which had come to fascinate the young aristocratic scientist. Though obsessed, he came from the happiest home, a perfect childhood cut short by the sudden death of his mother. Once he creates the monster - here the film fudges the vagueness in the book by positing it is electricity that is the secret - he is repelled by it. As in the book, the monster escapes in the coat of the doctor, which included his lab notebook so that he can re-find him.
The formation of the monster closely follows the book: he retreats to the forest in extreme loneliness, rejected by his "father" and anyone who sees him. For a long period, he watches a happy family, learning to speak and teaching himself to read; obviously he is highly intelligent, even sensitive. When at last he approaches the blind father of the family, he weeps at the first kindness he has ever known, only to be violently ejected by the son upon his return. This makes him murderously angry, forcing him to search out his creator (to gain a mate like himself) and giving up on man. Similar to the Karloff character, it is clear that, had he been treated better, he would have developed in a completely different direction. There is also accident, which further alienates him from humans and in particular from his creator, who sees him as irredeemably evil. Once he refuses to create a mate, the monster declares war on him and the consequences are utterly horrific. All the time, Frankenstein reflects on what he has done, how he erred into a god-like arrogance, which ruined him and all those he loved. The monster is perhaps the best actor, who is at once evil yet full of remorse, full of blood rage yet capable of tenderness, brutish yet patient and cunning.
The only flaw in this is the weakness of some of the acting. Newman, whom I loved in Dune, simply is not up to the task in my view - he is good but not great. In particular, he fails to project a very complex relationship with the monster. Hurt, as a German professor, delivers an unconvincing cameo performance, there only for the draw of his name in my viewing. Sutherland is better, but again the character appears only occasionally, though his final confrontation with the monster - expressed as a moral argument - is quite moving. I will never forget the image of the monster as he walks into the arctic mist carrying the body of his creator, to disappear together in the ice.
Recommended. This is one of the best versions I have seen.