FILM CHRONICLE
289
research physician, while the magic circle, the tetragrammaton, and the
full moon are replaced by test tubes, complicated electrical apparatus,
and Bunsen burners.
Frankenstein, like Faustus, defies God by exploring areas where
humans are not meant to trespass. In Mary Shelley's book (it is sub–
titled
A Modern Prometheus),
Frankenstein is a latter-day Faustus, a
superhuman creature whose aspiration embodies the expansiveness of
his age. In the movies, however, Frankenstein loses his heroic quality
and becomes a lunatic monomaniac, so obsessed with the value of his
work that he no longer cares whether his discovery prove a boon or a
curse to mankind. When the mad doctor, his eyes wild and inflamed,
bends over his intricate equipment, pouring in a little of this and a
little of that, the spectator is confronted with an immoral being whose
mental superiority is only a measure of his madness. Like the popular
image of the theoretical scientist engaged in basic research ("Basic re–
search," says Charles Wilson, "is science's attempt to prove that grass
is
green"), he succeeds only in creating something badly which nature
has
already made well. The .Frankenstein monster is a parody of man.
Ghastly in appearance, clumsy in movement, criminal in behavior, im–
becilic of mind, it is superior only in physical strength and resistance to
destruction. The scientist has fashioned it in the face of divine disap–
proval (the heavens disgorge at its birth) -not to mention the disap–
proval of friends and frightened townspeople-and it can lead only
to trouble.
For Dr. Frankenstein, however, the monster symbolizes the triumph
of his intellect over the blind morality of his enemies and it confirms
him
in the ultimate soundness of his thought ("They thought I was
mad, but this proves who is the superior being"). When it becomes clear
that his countrymen are unimpressed by his achievement and regard
him
as a menace to society, the monster becomes the agent of his re–
venge. As it ravages the countryside and terrorizes the inhabitants, it
embodies and expresses the scientist's own lust and violence.
It
is an
extension of his own mad soul, come to life not in a weak and inef–
fectual body but in a body of formidable physical power. (In a movie
like
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
the identity of monster and doctor is
even clearer; Mr. Hyde, the monster, is the aggressive and libidinous
element in the benevolent Dr. Jekyll's personality.) The rampage of the
monster is the rampage of mad, unrestrained science which inevitably
turns on the scientist, destroying him too. As the lava bubbles over the
sinking head of the monster, the crude moral of the film frees itself
from the horror and is asserted. Experimental science (and by extension
