Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (film)

Frankenstein
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kenneth Branagh
Screenplay by	Steph Lady Frank Darabont
Produced by	Francis Ford Coppola James V. Hart John Veitch
Starring	Robert De Niro Kenneth Branagh Tom Hulce Helena Bonham Carter Aidan Quinn Ian Holm John Cleese
Cinematography	Roger Pratt
Edited by	Andrew Marcus
Music by	Patrick Doyle
Production companies	Japan Satellite Broadcasting, Inc. The IndieProd Company American Zoetrope
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date	November 4, 1994 (1994-11-04)
Running time	123 minutes
Countries	United States Japan
Language	English
Budget	$45 million
Box office	$112 million

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a 1994 horror drama film directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Robert De Niro, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hulce, Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, John Cleese, and Aidan Quinn. The picture was produced on a budget of $45 million and is considered the most faithful film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, despite several differences and additions in plot from the novel.

Plot

In 1794, Captain Walton leads a troubled, expedition to reach the North Pole. While their ship is trapped in the ice of the Arctic Sea, the crew discovers a man, Victor Frankenstein, traveling across the Arctic on his own.

Victor grows up in Geneva with his adopted sister, Elizabeth Lavenza, who will become the love of his life. Before he leaves for the university at Ingolstadt, Victor's mother dies giving birth to his brother William. Victor vows on his mother's grave that he will find a way to conquer death.

At university, Victor's interest in the works of alchemists make him unpopular with professors. He finds a friend in Henry Clerval and a mentor in Professor Waldman. Victor comes to believe that the only way to cheat death is to create life. Professor Waldman warns Victor not to follow through with his theory; he tested it once, but ended his experiments because they resulted in an "abomination."

While performing vaccinations, Waldman is murdered by a patient, who is later hanged in the village square. Victor breaks into Waldman's laboratory, takes his notes, and begins to work on a creation. Victor gives his creature dead body parts from various sources, including the body of Waldman's murderer and Waldman's own brain. He is so obsessed with his work that not even a cholera outbreak tears him from it. Victor finally gives his creation life, but he recoils from it in horror and renounces his experiments.

The creature escapes, running off to the wilderness with Victor's coat which contains Victor's journal. He spends months living in a family's barn without their knowledge, gradually learning to read and speak. He attempts to earn the family's trust by anonymously helping them with their failing farm, and eventually converses with the patriarch, an elderly blind man, after aiding him and his grandson against violent debt collectors. But when the blind man's family returns, they mistakenly think the creature committed the assaults against the patriarch and grandson, and chase the creature away and abandon the cottage. The creature reads Victor's journal, learning of the circumstances of his creation. He vows revenge on his creator.

Victor, who believes the creature has died of cholera, returns to Geneva to marry Elizabeth. He finds his younger brother William has been murdered. Justine, a servant of the Frankenstein household, is framed for the crime by the creature and hanged by a lynch mob.

Victor is approached by his creation demanding that Victor make a companion for him, promising that if Victor does, he will disappear with his mate. Victor begins gathering the tools he used to create life, but when the creature insists he use Justine's body to make the companion, Victor breaks his promise and the creature vows revenge.

Victor and Elizabeth are married. Shortly after, unknown to them, the creature silently kills Baron Frankenstein in his own bedroom. Victor takes every precaution to defend his wife on their honeymoon, but the creature gains access to their bedroom and tears out Elizabeth's heart, killing her.

Maddened with grief beyond measure, Victor races home to bring Elizabeth back to life. He stitches Elizabeth's head onto Justine's fully intact body, and she awakes as a re-animated creature. The two are briefly and happily reunited until the creature appears. Victor and the monster fight for Elizabeth's affections, but Elizabeth, horrified by what she has become, commits suicide by setting herself on fire, burning the mansion to the ground.

The story returns to the Arctic Circle. Victor tells Walton that he has been pursuing his creation for months to kill him. Soon after relating his story, Victor dies from pneumonia. Walton discovers the creature weeping over Victor's body. The crew prepares a funeral pyre for Victor, but the ceremony is interrupted when the ice around the ship cracks. Walton invites the creature to stay with the ship, but the creature insists on remaining with the pyre. He takes the torch and burns himself alive with Victor's body. Walton, having seen the consequences of Victor's obsession, puts his own obsession aside and orders the ship to return home.

Cast

• Robert De Niro as The Creation, the product of an experiment with corpses and electricity.
  • De Niro also portrays Professor Waldman's killer whose body was used for the creature.
• Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with conquering death.
  • Rory Jennings as young Victor
• Tom Hulce as Henry Clerval, Dr. Frankenstein's best friend from medical school.
• Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth, Frankenstein's fiancée and adoptive sister.
  • Hannah Taylor Gordon as young Elizabeth
• Ian Holm as Baron Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein's father.
• John Cleese as Professor Waldman, Frankenstein's tutor and colleague who shares his interest in creating life. His brain is later used for the creature following his death.
• Aidan Quinn as Captain Robert Walton, the commander of the ship which picks up Frankenstein in the Arctic Circle.
• Richard Briers as Grandfather, an elderly blind man who is kind to the Creation.
• Robert Hardy as Professor Krempe, a university tutor of medical sciences who condemns Frankenstein's theories of life beyond death.
• Trevyn McDowell as Justine Moritz, a worker in the Frankenstein household who is close friends with Elizabeth.
  • Christina Cuttall as young Justine
• Celia Imrie as Mrs. Moritz, the head servant in the household who often fights with Justine.
• Cherie Lunghi as Caroline Frankenstein, Victor's mother who dies during the birth of his younger brother, William.
• Ryan Smith as William Frankenstein, Victor's younger brother.
  • Charles Wyn-Davies as young William
• Hugh Bonneville as Schiller
• Jenny Galloway as Vendor's wife
• Patrick Doyle (uncredited) as Ballroom orchestra conductor
• Alex Lowe as Crewman
• Stuart Hazeldine (uncredited) as Man in crowd scene
• Fay Ripley (deleted scenes) as Whore

Reception

Frank Darabont

Original screenwriter Frank Darabont later called the film "the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen." He elaborated:

There’s a weird doppleganger effect when I watch the movie. It’s kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote. It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for the quiet moments. It has no patience period. It’s big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn. Cumulatively, the effect was a totally different movie. I don’t know why Branagh needed to make this big, loud film…the material was subtle. Shelley’s book was way out there in a lot of ways, but it’s also very subtle. I don’t know why it had to be this operatic attempt at filmmaking. Shelley’s book is not operatic, it whispers at you a lot. The movie was a bad one. That was my Waterloo. That’s where I really got my ass kicked most as a screenwriter... [Branagh] really took the brunt of the blame for that film, which was appropriate. That movie was his vision entirely. If you love that movie you can throw all your roses at Ken Branagh’s feet. If you hated it, throw your spears there too, because that was his movie.

Critical response

Critical reviews were mixed; the film currently holds a 39% "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 41 reviews with the consensus: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is ambitious and visually striking, but the overwrought tone and lack of scares make for a tonally inconsistent experience".

Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, writing: "I admired the scenes with De Niro [as the Creature] so much I'm tempted to give Mary Shelley's Frankenstein a favorable verdict. But it's a near miss. The Creature is on target, but the rest of the film is so frantic, so manic, it doesn't pause to be sure its effects are registered." Janet Maslin wrote, "Branagh is in over his head. He displays neither the technical finesse to handle a big, visually ambitious film nor the insight to develop a stirring new version of this story. Instead, this is a bland, no-fault Frankenstein for the '90s, short on villainy but loaded with the tragically misunderstood. Even the Creature (Robert De Niro), an aesthetically challenged loner with a father who rejected him, would make a dandy guest on any daytime television talk show."

Conversely, James Berardinelli of Reelviews.net gave the film three out of four stars, writing: "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein may not be the definitive version of the 1818 novel, and the director likely attempted more than is practical for a two-hour film, but overambition is preferable to the alternative, especially if it results—as in this case—in something more substantial than Hollywood's typical, fitfully entertaining fluff."

Box office

The film fared poorly upon its U.S. theatrical release, grossing only $22 million, but did well in global markets where it grossed $90 million.

Accolades

Award	Category	Recipients and nominees	Result
Academy Awards	Best Makeup	Daniel Parker, Paul Engelen, Carol Hemming	Nominated
British Academy Film Awards	Best Production Design	Tim Harvey	Nominated
Saturn Awards	Best Horror/Thriller Film		Nominated
	Best Actor	Kenneth Branagh	Nominated
	Best Actress	Helena Bonham Carter	Nominated
	Best Make-up	Daniel Parker, Paul Engelen	Nominated
	Best Music	Patrick Doyle	Nominated
	Best Supporting Actor	Robert De Niro	Nominated
	Best Writing	Steph Lady, Frank Darabont	Nominated

Other media

The film had a pinball table made based on it, as well as a video game adaptation produced by Sony Imagesoft and released for the Super NES and Genesis, which follows a platform-style format. A Sega CD version was also produced by Sony Imagesoft that has a more adventure-based format that would sometimes switch to a fighting game.

See also

• Frankenstein in popular culture
• List of films featuring Frankenstein's monster

External links

• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at IMDb
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at Box Office Mojo
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at Rotten Tomatoes