Frankensteins

How have I never read/watched/experienced Frankenstein before now? The old film (1931) is great--overt and over-the-top, signaling what's going to come next at every moment.

But Young Frankenstein is truly great--hilariously mirroring the original in (almost) every way. Truly a joy to watch. (And the ending is even better than the book or the original movie--it is the reversal of the original.)

In the Bride of Frankenstein--the sequel to the original--a man who makes small people wants to make a (regular-sized) wife for the monster. So he coerces the original Frankenstein to join him. Of course, the woman Frankenstein creates wants him rather than the monster for whom she was intended. Here is the second half of the creation of man in Genesis--the creation of woman, and so of family and of a new race.

What is most moving and profound to me in this film and the original are the moments in which fear does not reign--in which the monk who is blind accepts the monster, shares with the monster, and teaches the monster to communicate. Rather than reject him, which leads to destruction--acceptance diminishes the difference between them and creates space for relationship.

And, of course, the book. I think it's better as a myth than it is as a literary masterpiece. Am I alone in that? Shelley has the monster speaking in such flowery Victorian that it's pretty hard to imagine he's a monster. Karloff's grunting portrayal is so much more horrific. Or maybe it isn't--I don't think anyone's made a film in which the monster is eloquent for comparison.