This was the first screen adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, putting the doctor’s creation amongst the earliest of movie monsters. In the film’s 9 scenes it shows a severely abridged and altered version of the original story, beginning with Frankenstein (Augustus Phillips) leaving for college and later discovering the ‘mystery of life’.
He creates a human by the mixture of alchemical ingredients thrust into a large furnace and is horrified by the result. He abandons the creature (Charles Ogle), returning home to wed his fianceé, Elizabeth (Mary Fuller).
When the creature appears at the estate and attacks Elizabeth, he is fended off and retreats to another room where, sighting his own reflection in a mirror, he bizarrely disappears.
Director J. Searle Dawley
This film was written and directed by James Searle Dawley, who in the same year directed silent versions of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables.
The year before he followed Méliès by making Bluebeard and one of several adaptations of the Brothers Grimm tales in Hansel and Gretel. He would later also make Snow White (1916), a two-part feature of The Three Musketeers (1911), and the Charge of the Light Brigade (1912).
Frankenstein 1910 Summary
There’s a lot to admire about this film that can now be seen on Youtube in two parts Here).
While not matching the sophistication of Méliès’ Trip to the Moon made 8 years earlier, a lot of credit must go to Charles Ogle and his own design for the creature, which is truer than most later depictions (though no film has followed the descriptions laid out in the novel). Ogle’s physique, however, is less than ideal for a ‘perfect human being’ and there’s a priceless botch in one scene as he tries to fling open some doors, only to be thwarted by his oversized feet.
The 5th scene of the film also shows something that later versions would lack, namely the sight of Frankenstein collapsed on his bed, when he first sees the monster on it’s feet, peering through the bedside curtains.
The creation of the monster in scene 4 provides a quite unforgettable effect, as the monster’s flesh seems to be 'burned' onto a skeletal frame. Whether that’s the deliberate design here or not, it’s well-executed for it’s time and effective.
Yes, there’s real value to Dawley’s Frankenstein as a film. However…
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) 1818
It should be said that this is a second draft. The first draft was written by a cynical dog and the result couldn’t be published here.
It should also be said that it's unacceptable to hit out at something that has historical value like these neanderthals of films - unless, it’s in defence of something with greater historical value, because a classic is still being butchered even if what’s being made will one day be a classic of its own.
For all the film’s endearing antiqueness, it should not merit everybody’s adoration and in-depth conjecture. For instance, Wikipedia’s entry tries it’s best to justify the final scene via an interpretation of it’s underlying meaning, citing Frankenstein’s pure love as the source of dispelling his creation, while another site notes that the 'genius' of the scene has never been matched!
It’s difficult to let cynical sleeping dogs lie when there’s such a distinctive scent of something foul in the air. Sorry folks, but there is no underlying meaning to the final scene – it was, and is, just a quick wrap-up whose only real meaning was to help the film end. The film, ultimately, is little more than a puerile presentation of the source material.
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851) was just 19-years-old when she began writing Frankenstein in 1816. She proved to have a mind and imagination which frankly far-outstripped most of her contemporary writers. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published some 80 years later and equally famous today, cannot hope to match Frankenstein as a work of literature.
Here is the definitive story of the man who created life and unless films could recreate the novel's narrative then the result was always going to be a monumental injustice to Shelley’s work. The harsh truth here is one of commercialism – exploiting one of the world’s great pieces of literature to ensure the success of their product.
Simply put, there is no justifying this kind of treatment of a classic and no picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to words like this, beginning Chapter 5 of Frankenstein:
“It was on a dreary night of november, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eyes of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?”
Or how about the monster’s pleading with Frankenstein:
“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good, misery made me a fiend.”
And the words “tip of the iceberg” spring to mind.
- Director: J. Searle Dawley
- Screenplay: J. Searle Dawley
- Starring: Augustus Phillips, Charles Ogle, Mary Fuller
- Released: 1910 by Edison Manufacturing Company
- Running Time: 16 minutes
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