Frankenstein (1910) - J. Searle Dawley

Frankenstein (1910)
Director: J. Searle Dawley
Writers: J. Searle Dawley (Screenplay), Mary Shelley (Novel)
Starring: Mary Fuller, Charles Ogle, Augustus Phillips

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus has been one of my favorite stories since I first read the novel in the tenth grade. I can't exactly put my finger on it but there is just something about the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creation that really pulls me into the story. These are two extremely complex and well written characters that drive an amazing story.

In spite of how much I love this story it had been years since I had either read the book or seen any of the films based on the book. When it comes down to it, the only film versions of the story I had seen were the 1931 film with Boris Karloff and the 1994 film with Robert De Niro. I had never taken the time to see Bride of Frankenstein (1935) or any other adaptation of the story.

Recently I have taken to listening to audio books during my commute back and forth to work and while looking through the library's collection I came across Frankenstein and decided it was high time to give the story another read (or listen, as the case may be). The story did progress a little slower than I remembered it but not in a bad way. Mary Shelley masterfully created a kind of slow, brooding tension that really worked for the story. I absolutely loved the characters just as much as I had remembered.

I really enjoy how at times you feel sorry for Victor Frankenstein and sympathize with the hell he is going through while at other times you completely understand the motivations of the creature that Victor has created and feel that Victor has brought all this trouble down onto himself. His creation is no more a monster than Victor himself and I think that is a lot of what makes me love the story. It isn't like Dracula where you have an evil creature that must be destroyed, there are levels of subtly about who it right and who is wrong in the story and at time both characters deserve the sympathy of the audience.

Since I enjoyed the book again this time around I decided that I should check out a few more of the film versions of the story. The best place to start, I thought, would be the very first film adaptation of the story. J. Searle Dawley's Frankenstein (1910) produced by Edison Studios. I actually can not believe I waited until this long to see this version. Considering how much I love the story and how much I enjoy seeing films from such an early era I probably should have seen this one long before now especially since it is so readily available on YouTube.

The film itself only runs 12 minutes so their really isn't a whole lot one can say about it. It is incredibly well done and extremely innovative for a film made it 1910. It doesn't follow the story from the book very closely at all but it does do one thing that no other version does. This is the only filmed version that I have seen where the creature is not assembled from body parts but is actually created through some chemical means. The book never tells how the monster is created but it never gives any mention of using body parts from dead bodies. The sequence in the film showing the creation of the monster is amazingly well done and sufficiently creepy. I probably doesn't come across as scary now but I am sure that in 1910 it would have been.

The rest of the film is also quite good for such a short film. It is of course a silent film and as such the acting is a bit over the top but that was the style at the time since most film actors were actually stage actors. Since it is so short a lot of the story is cut out and the ending it a bit strange. It seems a bit more existential than other versions of the story, I don't want to spoil it for anyone though. The ending does also seem to cut off before it is actually done though so I could be completely off base on the ending. Since the IMDB has the running time listed as 16 minutes it may be that the last four minutes of the film have been lost, since the entire film was thought lost for some time.

Overall I would say that it is an excellent short film and a fairly decent adaptation of Shelley's story. I would say that the story does lack just a bit but that is mostly because of how quickly it moves and how much it glosses over. It is very well made and shows a lot of ingenuity on the part of the film maker. I very much enjoyed being able to see this wonderful piece of history but now I am ready to move on to the true classics of Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and hopefully I should have reviews up for both of them soon.

Rating: 7/10