The Invisible Man (1933)

Oh. It's October (still). Guess I need to pay attention to Horror Films.

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933) There have been so many versions of "The Invisible Man"—in movies and television, including a version released this year just as the COVID-19 virus started emptying theaters directed by Leigh Wannell and starring Elisabeth Moss—but, this one, directed by the ingenious James Whale (he of the classic Frankenstein and The Old Dark House and portrayed in Gods and Monsters) hews very closely to H. G. Wells' original novel (sub-titled "A Grotesque Romance" and both serialized and published in 1897), both in circumstance and (and this is crucial) in tone. I'm reading Wells' story now (and so can you here) and, although there is always a sense of the fantastical with Wells, it is apparent that in this one Wells was having a bit of a jape at the village-life residents among whom he grew up. With the exception of the demented Griffin ("The Invisible One" he's called in the film's credits), the other characters are bumpkins and simple folk, who fall about themselves in states of slapstick buffoonery at the sight and pranks of the one who can't be seen.

It's less a novel of horror or of adventure as it is a sadistic comedy. The Invisible man, Griffin, comes to the village of Iping, having finished his experiments, completed them on himself, and emboldened with his power to be a covert agent of destruction, made his way to the village to try and find the process to reverse the change. Swathed in bandages, bulky stolen clothes, a floppy hat, dark glasses and a prosthetic nose, he's a mummified presence as he makes his way through a snow-storm (the better to see him with when he's invisible later in the film). It's a stark sight as he bursts through the door takes a sitting room with his notebooks and flasks, demanding privacy for his task. To pay his way, he resorts to thievery, shedding his clothes and invading a local vicar's home to steal the funds. He is confronted by the constabulary and town officials, he dis-robes and, in naked invisibility, tweaks and thwarts his would-be captors who are helpless to defend themselves from his attacks. 

This must have seemed like a gaudy feast for Whale, who was fond of combining the horrorific with a giddy, satiric chauvinism towards "the others" of whom, as a closeted gay man, he felt apart from, hid from, but also could feel superior to for hiding in plain sight with his secret. It's certainly a delicious visual opportunity for Whale to portray Griffin's mummified presence as he makes his way through a snow-storm (the better to see him with when he's invisible later in the film) then bursts through the door of an Inn—with the same progressively closer jump-cuts he employed in Frankenstein and The Bride of.... Whale (and his screenwriter R.C. Sherriff hewed close to the book—Wells was still quite alive and visible enough that he had script approval—but inserted a sympathetic mentor with a daughter enamored of the mad-man (had they ever talked?) and turned the novel's colleague, Kemp into a spurned rival for his affections.

Whale ramps up the comedy—there is a lot of slapstick of rabble being tossed about with mocking color comedy from the unseen Griffin. Dis-embodied bicycles run through the street and gets thrown at the chasing mob (one of whom is supposedly Walter Brennan, although you can't recognize him in the film). Whale-favorite Una O'Connor is encouraged to play her "shocked" scenes to a delightfully strident hysteria, and the villagers portrayed as yokels—swear to god, the initial arresting bobby walks into the room and "Python's" "Wot's all this, then?" The giddiness reaches a peak when a room runs down the street pursued by a skipping pair of pants while Griffin sings "Here we go gathering nuts in May..." It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, and Whale features a couple on-screen murders—Griffin bashes a policeman's head in with a chair—and a train sabotage ensures that the Invisible Man wins the body-count tally of the Universal monsters.

He's helped immeasurably by the on-screen non-presence of Claude Rains—making his American film debut and he was cast when Whale, in an adjoining room, heard his voice in a failed screen-test for another role. Rains had grown up in a theatrical family, had enjoyed stage roles and was a well-regarded teacher at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Good Lord, he taught Olivier, Gielgud and Laughton!) and it's a tour-de-force of acting without expression, as you don't see Rains' face until the final shot. Where Whale's other actors in the film sometimes act as if they're still in silent films, Rains has the best of both worlds, acting by mime and the sound of his vibrant voice (and he can over-act because he's playing crazy, but without any betraying mugging)!

Whale knew talent and high up in the cast are two actors who would burn brightly and not fade: Henry Travers—who played the angel Clarence in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and the unsuspecting father in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt—is a bit stifled (that we're used to, anyway) as Griffin's mentor and Gloria Stuart, who appeared in Whale's The Old Dark House, but is most well-known for playing "Old Rose" in James Cameron's Titanic (and, yes, she was "a bit of a dish") plays the ingenue/love interest for audiences who were looking for some kind of normalcy amidst the madness—her and Travers' characters do not appear in Wells' narrative.

In the interest of transparency (*cough*), one should say the special effects of the Universal house-technicians run from some ingenious wire-work and primitive "blue-screen" (actually black velvet) opticals to some dodgy miniature work for that train derailment. And there are some shots that you just look at and wonder "how'd they do that?"—even 87 years on. It makes a little thrill that, even in the era of CGI's Uncanny Valley, makes even un-seeing believing.

Claude Rains makes his only appearance in The Invisible Man.