Film: FRANKENSTEIN ("It's alive!")

IT'S ALIVE!

    The "It's Alive!" scene from Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) is one of the most famous in movie history (click on slide show, left, to view). The phrase ("It's Alive!") ranked high on a recent list of the most famous dialogue in movie history. A book was written titled It's Alive and a movie was made with the same title.
    In terms of mise-en-scene (that is, the action within the shot), notice actor Colin Clive's erect posture and his look upwards, because the film is very much about finding superior power within himself and therefore reaching above himself, to the heights.
    The set design (the tower; the windmill; the laboratory table that is raised up), as well as camera movements (the tilt shots) emphasize this upward motion.
    Nor is this theme at odds with the other theme pointed out in handouts: the flight from normal sexual relations (namely with his intended bride, Elizabeth). In fact, the two themes go together.
    At the end of the film, the monster throws Frankenstein down from the windmill, and the two last shots we see of him are shots of him laying down, first on the ground below the windmill, then in the family's bed, semi-conscious, perhaps on his wedding night. But even if it is not on his wedding night, since this sequence directly follows the windmill sequence (with no indication of time in between), it is as if it were on his wedding night.
    This is the way the classical Hollywood cinema produces meanings, in elliptical or indirect ways. This is due mainly to censorship problems (no major studio would have released the film with an explicit sexual theme), commercial pressure (audiences would have avoided a film with such a theme), and also artistic economy (it is the nature of the artist to hide as much as to show).
    The ending itself is ambiguous. In one sense, Frankenstein has failed; this illustrates the biblical proverb, "Pride goes before a fall." In another sense, his failure is his success; he has avoided normal sexual relations with his intended bride, the motive for his mad doctor experiments in the first place (experiements which, tellingly, he revealed to Elizabeth on the night of their engagement).
    Is it any wonder that the sequel to Frankenstein was The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935), with even more explicit sexual imagery?

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