Focus Features

James Whale directing Boris Karloff in
Frankenstein

In 1998, the film Gods and Monsters was released. It won a clutch of awards, including the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was about the last days of the film director James Whale – the man who was responsible for making Frankenstein.

Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein re-animating his monster, the film brought back to life a filmmaker many had forgotten.

James Whale's biographer, James Curtis, has this to say about the director:

“James Whale was seated at a small antique desk. Before him were two sheets of paper. He handed both to his visitor. "I want you to look at this," he said. On the sheets he had written the titles of movies he had directed. The left contained the best known: Show Boat, The Invisible Man, Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein. The right contained the more obscure: Green Hell, Wives Under Suspicion, The Road Back, Sinners in Paradise. "Now, what do you think of that?" he asked.

Gavin Lambert studied the lists carefully. "Well," he said, " I haven't seen all the films in either column, but there certainly are, I think, more of my favorite films on the left-hand side than on the right-hand side."

Whale seemed pleased. "Quite right," he said, "In fact, most of them on the right-hand side, if you haven't seen them, you haven't missed anything."

"What it all came down to, "said Gavin Lambert, remembering meeting with Whale 42 years later, "was that the ones on the right-hand side had all been fucked up by the studio or by producers. He said, "The fucking producers – they wrecked this lot. The others I got my own way with."

James Whale, to his lasting misfortune, is pigeonholed as a specialist in the horror film, albeit its most respected practitioner. His work in other genres (which accounts for 80 % of his output) has been relegated mostly to obscurity. His films have been so widely imitated that few realize the modern horror film began with James Whale, and the best of today's films carry the sensibilities he alone established.

Whale's strength came from the fact that he had solid mainstream credentials when he made Frankenstein in the summer of 1931. Lacking an established formula, he proceeded to invent one of his own, applying mainstream values and instincts to subjects decidedly abnormal and grotesque. Had he made more films of this kind, he might well have established his own sub-genre (as did John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, and Alfred Hitchcock) for he placed an indelible stylistic mark on his films that made them impossible to imitate. In lesser hands, the same stories would have seemed routine and uninspired.

Whale applied the themes of his earlier films and plays – human stories of war and doomed love – to his films of the supernatural, and where others regarded their monsters as menacing plot devices, Whale considered his as fully-dimensional characters and invested them with the complexities of human emotion.

Tod Browning's Dracula predated Frankenstein by almost a year, and Bela Lugosi's suave Count was as evil and as single-minded as possible. At no time did one sense the horror of the eternal trap in which the vampire found himself. By contrast, Whale's Frankenstein monster – an infinitely more mechanical contrivance – was capable of anger, gentleness, remorse, and a sort of longing to understand his situation. By adding an unprecedented subtext to the story, Whale expanded and elevated the form to manipulate the audience on an entirely new level.

Soon it became de rigeur to invest monsters with a degree of sympathy, but by then Whale had advanced to a higher plateau, adding a streak of dry humor to his work and encouraging broad theatrical performances for the camera. With The Bride ofFrankenstein, he had stretched the form as far as he could and moved on to other subjects. He directed an admirable swashbuckler called The Man in the Iron Mask and made the definitive screen version of Hammerstein and Kern's groundbreaking musical Show Boat. But the time for such triumphs passed with the decade of the 30s, and his last film was a sad and unworthy programmer he was not even allowed to finish.

Whale directed his last film in 1941. In 1952 he arrived in England for a tribute at the BFI – the only archival tribute James Whale had in his lifetime. When he left his native England that fall, he had no projects, no purpose, and no future to speak of. In little more than 4 years, he would die a suicide at his home in California.”

Extract taken from James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters by James Curtis (Faber & Faber, 1998).

James Whale directing Boris Karloff in
Frankenstein

In 1998, the film Gods and Monsters was released. It won a clutch of awards, including the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was about the last days of the film director James Whale – the man who was responsible for making Frankenstein.

Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein re-animating his monster, the film brought back to life a filmmaker many had forgotten.

James Whale's biographer, James Curtis, has this to say about the director:

“James Whale was seated at a small antique desk. Before him were two sheets of paper. He handed both to his visitor. "I want you to look at this," he said. On the sheets he had written the titles of movies he had directed. The left contained the best known: Show Boat, The Invisible Man, Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein. The right contained the more obscure: Green Hell, Wives Under Suspicion, The Road Back, Sinners in Paradise. "Now, what do you think of that?" he asked.

Gavin Lambert studied the lists carefully. "Well," he said, " I haven't seen all the films in either column, but there certainly are, I think, more of my favorite films on the left-hand side than on the right-hand side."

Whale seemed pleased. "Quite right," he said, "In fact, most of them on the right-hand side, if you haven't seen them, you haven't missed anything."

"What it all came down to, "said Gavin Lambert, remembering meeting with Whale 42 years later, "was that the ones on the right-hand side had all been fucked up by the studio or by producers. He said, "The fucking producers – they wrecked this lot. The others I got my own way with."

James Whale, to his lasting misfortune, is pigeonholed as a specialist in the horror film, albeit its most respected practitioner. His work in other genres (which accounts for 80 % of his output) has been relegated mostly to obscurity. His films have been so widely imitated that few realize the modern horror film began with James Whale, and the best of today's films carry the sensibilities he alone established.

Whale's strength came from the fact that he had solid mainstream credentials when he made Frankenstein in the summer of 1931. Lacking an established formula, he proceeded to invent one of his own, applying mainstream values and instincts to subjects decidedly abnormal and grotesque. Had he made more films of this kind, he might well have established his own sub-genre (as did John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, and Alfred Hitchcock) for he placed an indelible stylistic mark on his films that made them impossible to imitate. In lesser hands, the same stories would have seemed routine and uninspired.

Whale applied the themes of his earlier films and plays – human stories of war and doomed love – to his films of the supernatural, and where others regarded their monsters as menacing plot devices, Whale considered his as fully-dimensional characters and invested them with the complexities of human emotion.

Tod Browning's Dracula predated Frankenstein by almost a year, and Bela Lugosi's suave Count was as evil and as single-minded as possible. At no time did one sense the horror of the eternal trap in which the vampire found himself. By contrast, Whale's Frankenstein monster – an infinitely more mechanical contrivance – was capable of anger, gentleness, remorse, and a sort of longing to understand his situation. By adding an unprecedented subtext to the story, Whale expanded and elevated the form to manipulate the audience on an entirely new level.

Soon it became de rigeur to invest monsters with a degree of sympathy, but by then Whale had advanced to a higher plateau, adding a streak of dry humor to his work and encouraging broad theatrical performances for the camera. With The Bride ofFrankenstein, he had stretched the form as far as he could and moved on to other subjects. He directed an admirable swashbuckler called The Man in the Iron Mask and made the definitive screen version of Hammerstein and Kern's groundbreaking musical Show Boat. But the time for such triumphs passed with the decade of the 30s, and his last film was a sad and unworthy programmer he was not even allowed to finish.

Whale directed his last film in 1941. In 1952 he arrived in England for a tribute at the BFI – the only archival tribute James Whale had in his lifetime. When he left his native England that fall, he had no projects, no purpose, and no future to speak of. In little more than 4 years, he would die a suicide at his home in California.”

Extract taken from James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters by James Curtis (Faber & Faber, 1998).