Monday, April 26, 2010

Differences between film and book


There are more differences between the movie and book than there are similarities. This is because the movie is largely based on the 1920s play by Peggy Webling rather than the original Shelley text.
A notable difference between the book and film is the articulation of the monster's speech. In Shelley's book, the creature taught himself to read with books of classic literature such as Milton's Paradise Lost. The creature learns to speak clearly in what appears in the novel as Early Modern English, because of the texts he has found to learn from while in hiding. In the 1931 film, the creature is completely mute except for grunts and growls. (In the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, the original creature learns some basic speech but is very limited in his dialog, speaking with rough grammar and still preferring at times to express himself gutturally. By the third film, Son of Frankenstein, the creature is again rendered inarticulate).
In Mary Shelley's original novel, the creature's savage behavior is his conscious decision against his maltreatment and neglect because of his inhuman appearance, whereas in the 1931 film adaptation states that his condition is largely due to the mistake made by Frankenstein's assistant Fritz, who provides a "Criminal Brain" to be used for the creature.
The deformed (hunchbacked) assistants of the first two films are not characters derived from the novel. In the original text, Frankenstein creates his monster in solitude without servants.
In the novel, how Frankenstein builds the creature is only obscurely described, references being made to a long slow process born from a combination of new scientific principles and ancient alchemical lore. Whereas the movies precisely depict the methodology by which their version of the monster is created, showing Frankenstein robbing graves of the recently dead and using the organs and body parts to reconstruct a new human body. This process culminates with the harnessing of a lightning bolt to awaken the creature, a scene famously depicted with great spectacle in the 1931 film. Despite their at best limited presence in the original novel, the idea of the patchwork body of dead flesh and massive discharges of electricity being key to the genesis of the monster have become commonly associated with the Frankenstein story.
Another part of the book that is entirely unmentioned in the movie is the Monster's request that Frankenstein make a female companion for him. The Monster threatens Frankenstein, and Frankenstein submits and begins to create another creature. Halfway through the procedure, Frankenstein is overcome with guilt and destroys his work, saying that he would not form another being as hideous and demonic as the first one. This enrages the Monster and causes him to vow that he will be with Frankenstein on his wedding night.
In the novel, Frankenstein's name is Victor, not Henry (Henry Clerval was the name of Victor's best friend) and he is not a doctor, but rather a college student. Elizabeth is murdered by the Monster on her wedding night. The Monster also murders Henry Clerval and Victor's young brother William. Victor's father dies heartbroken after Elizabeth's murder and Victor begins his pursuit of the monster, which eventually leads to his death from an illness aboard a boat en route to the North Pole. The Monster, finding Victor dead, vows to travel to the Pole and commit suicide, although it is not revealed if he does so.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(1931_film)#Differences_between_film_and_book

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