Lightning burns the night sky. Strange equipment sparks and sizzles. Thunder rattles the stone walls of the old watchtower. And beneath a sheet on a gurney, a figure stitched together from the flesh of dead men twitches, stirs and comes to life. Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), the progenitor of this bizarre experiment, is triumphant: “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” The declaration is as blithe as it is blasphemous. Frankenstein has harnessed the divine power to create life, without sparing a thought to the responsibility that entails.
“Frankenstein” (1931), directed by James Whale and written by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh (based, of course, on Mary Shelley’s famous novel), is a haunting parable about the dangers of playing God. The moody gothic sets and bold camera movements had an enormous impact on the horror films that followed, but perhaps the most iconic element of the film was Boris Karloff’s performance as the frightening but ultimately tragic Monster.
The film follows the broad strokes of Shelley’s novel: Dr. Henry Frankenstein, obsessed with creating life, assembles a body by robbing graves and stimulates it with electricity. The resulting creature is a nonverbal giant with the innocent curiosity and sudden rages of a toddler. When he realizes that he cannot control the Monster, Henry decides to destroy it. But the Monster escapes and staggers across the Bavarian countryside, leaving a path of destruction as it fumbles for a sense of purpose. Eventually it reaches the village where Henry is preparing to marry his fiancee, Elizabeth (Mae Clark), leading to a final confrontation between creator and creation.
While the Monster is the film’s ostensible source of terror, all of the creature’s sins grow from Henry’s hubris. For Henry, conquering death is an exercise in intellectual vanity, an irrefutable counterargument against anyone who ever doubted his genius. It becomes clear, almost immediately, that Henry never considered how he might care for or guide his creation beyond that first fluttering of a pulse. Instead he keeps it in darkness, introducing it to sunlight only to study its reactions. The Monster raises its hands towards the light and the warmth, experiencing the sublime for the first time only to have it snatched away. When it panics, Henry responds with violence: the first lessons the creature learns from its creator are deprivation and pain.
But God, whose role Henry hopes to usurp, creates out of love, an infinite, self-giving love that fills the creation with dignity. Our creator not only gives us life, but calls us to greater purpose, guides us and comforts us, opens to us the possibility of eternal life. Scripture depicts God as a loving parent, a gentle shepherd. We make terrible, even monstrous, mistakes, but our creator always offers us reconciliation, a chance to make things right. In Psalm 139, God’s creativity is described as an act of great tenderness: “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made” (Ps 139:13-14).
That image finds a cruel parody in the Monster’s body, sewn together with coarse black thread. There was no tenderness in the Monster’s creation, just crude utility. The Monster was not made for love; it was made simply to be made.
None of us ask to be born, anymore than the Monster asks to be cobbled together and reanimated. We come into this world vulnerable and unprepared, and it falls to our parents to give us what we need to survive, grow and flourish. Even if our parents fell short, as Christians we believe that we have an ultimate Creator who loves and cares for us. We are made in the imago Dei, and even in our fallen state we are marked by dignity, beauty and grace. The Monster, likewise, is made in the image of its creator: a creator who harms, neglects and ultimately abandons it. It’s a Monster, but only because it’s also a mirror.
“Frankenstein” is streaming on Peacock and the Criterion Channel.
