A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935) A career resuscitation for the zany Marx Brothers (or 3/4 of them—Zeppo does not make the studio transition with brothers Groucho, Harpo, and Chico), this was the first film made with the boys under their new contract with M-G-M, under the tutelage of Irving Thalberg. It was Thalberg's bright idea to take the Vaudeville vets back to Square One—back to the hit-days of The Cocoanuts, as they play glorified Rosencrantz's and Guildensterns to a couple of love-crazy kids for whom life is throwing a cold shower. It rather douses the film, as well, and softening the brothers' hellz-a-poppin' approach of the latter Paramount films. Unlike their previous film, Duck Soup, anarchy does not reign, but merely drizzles a little, getting the floor wet enough to allow the "bad guys" and authority figures to slip and fall.

 

I prefer the "earlier, funnier ones" sandwiched in the middle, where the focus is on the insanity of the brothers intruding on the niceties of the real world, with only rare interludes into unmolested cinema "reality." It was a nice satiric touch to make them the heads of a small bankrupt nation who aspire to greatness (and economic recovery) by going to war,* and the send-up's of blind patriotism ring true in any decade.

Sadly, at the time, that didn't translate into boffo box-office. Thalberg's view of Duck Soup's drop in attendance was "there was no one to root for" (translation: anyone normal) so, starting with this film, the percentages were reversed. There are lulls of song between the comedy bits, appropriate given the opera background of the story, giving breathing spaces to let audiences catch their collective breath—the kinds of interludes that prompted Groucho (in the film Horse Feathers**) to break the fourth wall to turn to the cinema audience and grouse: "I have to stay, but that's no reason the rest of you can't go to the lobby for a quick smoke or something!"

A Night at the Opera (written by George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, Al Boasberg, and, reportedly choreographing a devising some bits, the great Buster Keaton) sees Groucho as false-impressario Otis P. Driftwood, under contract and slightly under-thumb of society-craving Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont). Chico is the manager of Riccardo (Allan Jones), who aspires to opera stardom and is in love with Rosa (Miss Kitty Carlisle—as she was known as a panelist on "To Tell the Truth"). Harpo is the dresser of Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), a gas-bag opera star, who also has designs on Rosa. Immediately it becomes a case of clashing egos, thwarted love and abuse of power and entitlement, perfect diva-size targets for the Marxes to lampoon. It's safe and sane, which is such a pity. But, there is enough rich material to satisfy Marx Brothers fans.

And, thanks to the wonders of technology, you can skip over the other parts if you so desire.***  Where's my remote? (Probably under Mrs. Claypool!).

Still, going in, one must be careful to lower expectations, not unlike a closing curtain. The music-breaks do tend to bring the house down, and the momentum to a screeching stop. Still, half a classic film is better than no classic at all.

 

* Mussolini took Duck Soup as a personal insult and had it banned in Italy.

** Did it ever occur to you that the titles for the first Marx Brothers films (except for The Cocoanuts)  could be euphemisms for "Bull-shit?" Well, it certainly occurred to me!

*** In his review of A Night at the Opera, Roger Ebert says that is exactly what he does.

The Informer (1935)

The Informer (John Ford, 1935) John Ford's first Academy Award for Best Director (of four, ultimately and specifically) was for this underdog of a movie that was a pet project for Ford. His studio, RKO, didn't like the idea; it had been filmed before without any box office success, and the "suits" worried that nobody would go see a depressing movie encompassing a "dark night of the soul" with an unsympathetic protagonist.

 

But, Ford promised to bring the film in on-time and on budget—20 days and $243,000—and was aided immeasurably by a joint conference of artisans (including composer Max Steiner, photographer Joseph H. August, set designer Van Nest Polglase and screenwriter Dudley Nichols) before any scripting was done. "This, to my mind", said Nichols "is the proper way to approach a film production-and it is, alas, the only time in 25 years I have known it to be done: a group discussion before a line of the script is written." Nichols wrote the first—and only—draft of the script in six days aboard Ford's schooner, The Araner.

It tells the story of a night in the life of "Gypo" Nolan (Victor McLaglen—who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance), an Irish mug with nothing going for him. Out of work and kicked out of the IRA for not killing a targeted constabulary, he's more than a wee bit desperate and his mood is made any better when his streetwalker-girlfriend (Margot Grahame) trying to pick up a customer. He man-handles the "john" and only gets grief from Katie because she wants to get out of Ireland and just needs 10 pounds to book a steamer to the States. A chance encounter with Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) on the run from the Black and Tan and trying to make it home to his wife and sister, gives Gypo the idea that turning in his friend could solve all his problems; £20 could book passage to the States for both him and Katie Madden.

 

When the RIC go to his mother's house to arrest him, Frankie is killed while resisting arrest.

Gypo picks up his blood money from the contemptuous police and the first thing he does his buy a bottle of whiskey and tells a suspicious Katie that he got the money from rolling a sailor. But, at Frankie's wake, his drunkenness makes him less careful, spilling coins and handing pound notes to patrons, and the IRA begin to suspect that the newly-flush Gypo may not be so innocent after all, if only they can find the proof.

It is a through-line of Irish literature that desperation and temptation can turn a St. Peter into a Judas (because the Bible tells us so), and as twee and leprechaun-y as the culture can be, there is also the darkness of the guilt hangover, which can drive even the most self-righteous Irishman to his penitent knees. Director Ford knew full well the cycle, enjoying his grog and cursing his weakness, especially when he'd done someone wrong (and it was a tradition on a Ford set that every day one actor would be designated in "the barrel" for abuse—usually John Wayne whose complex father-son relationship with "Pappy" Ford made him a frequent target*). Then would come the regretful tears if reprimanded and the self-imposed penance of humiliation. And then...after a time...the cycle would start again. One reads Maureen O'Hara's autobiography ("Tis Herself," published in 2004) with horror regarding Ford's mood swings. "Love/Hate" are two sides of a coin, but despite that, it was currency that Ford's circle never wanted to toss.

It may be hard to understand. But, then one looks at the craftsmanship of The Informer, impeccably composed, draped perpetually in a fog of war, with its rawness of emotion and understand why his collaborators would always keep that lucky coin and never let it go. They knew, with Ford, they potentially could be doing their finest work, and doesn't one always suffer for art? Loyalty is, after all, earned (not given), but it is also a contract of endurance and the greatest and hardest lesson to learn of it is to whom you bestow its precious gift...and to whom it is valued. It is a trust and to betray it invites eternal damnation.

One watches The Informer contemplating these things and how life can inform art—the issues of loyalty and betrayal must have haunted Ford during this while he pushed for the project, making it personal, as if making a guilty trip to a confessional and paying some form of emotional penance.

 

For his part, when Ford was cooperative enough to provide an interviewer a straight answer, he would suggest that The Informer "lacked humor."

 

In 2018, The Informer was voted into The National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

 

It has been reported that it is the favorite film of director Samuel Fuller.

 

St. Patrick's Day, 2022
 

 

* Ford was always in "command" of his sets and Wayne owed his career to Ford and suffered his humiliations out of respect for the "Old Man," even after tables had turned and Ford depended on Wayne's box-office draw to get projects made at the studios.

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown, 1935) The 1933 Eugene O'Neill play adapted by the wife-husband team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, who also wrote The Thin Man, Father of the Bride, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Diary of Anne Frank (play and adaptations). Just the collective writer credits is reason enough to watch the film, which (I've read in some film circles, incorrectly as it turns out) inspired the "Andy Hardy" series at M-G-M. 

 

"Inspired" as in as loose an interpretation of the term as possible. They're both about families and have Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney in the credits. But, the "Hardy" series never dealt with alcoholism, sloth, and the revolutionary pangs of rebellion and first love that can raise the roof of any American domicile, until it is planed down to respectability (or some form of it). It may be the lightest of O'Neill's plays and so not threatening to the "American values" of M-G-M head Louis B. Mayer. But, the O'Neill name would have appealed to M-G-M production head Irving Thalberg (who had cut back activities after a 1932 heart attack) and his replacement David O. Selznick.

It's not all Currier and Ives at the Miller household in 1906 New England, where father Nat (Barrymore) is a newspaper publisher, sagely juggling the traumas, large and small, happening under his roof, with wife Essie (Spring Byington), children (in order of birth) Arthur (Frank Albertson), Richard (Eric Linden), Mildred (Bonita Granville), and youngest Tommy (Mickey Rooney) and Nat's brother Sid (Wallace Beery) and Essie's sister Lily (Aline MacMahon). Sid is living in his brother's house because he can't hold a job, largely due to his constant drinking. Lily is there out of charity for a spinster, which Sid would love to change, if not for her constant rejection due to his drinking and questionable past.

Then, there's Richard, about to graduate from High School and suffering the pangs of first love, two things that can puff out a guy's chest and mess with his head—as the saying goes "you can tell a Senior, but you can't tell him MUCH."*

With his mind swimming with Oscar Wilde, G. B. Shaw, Marx and The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, and mooning over the girl next door (Cecilia Parker), he thinks himself a man of the world, bound for Yale, and is itching to prove himself, when, frankly, he's still living under his father's roof and hasn't even kissed a girl (or "the" girl, as she's afraid of kissing). The influences and urges set him up to become a failure like his Uncle Sid—although Sid, for all his talk and self-conceit (and self-deception) does have his uses—so, the faltering steps the kid takes to manhood have to be monitored and negotiated.

That includes not citing Marxist tracts in his graduation speech, learning how to drive the family's Stanley Steamer, his passionate love letters to his girl, Muriel, which are intercepted by her father and found to contain passages from Swinburne, leading to the parent storming the Miller residence and threatening to cancel advertising in father's newspaper. Muriel is forced to write a farewell letter to which man-of-world Richard can only blurt "Geewhillickers!" and bust out in tears.

 

To say nothing of his getting roaring drunk and getting rolled by a floozy.

Growing up is tough. And one is reminded of that other dramaturge John Wayne who when assured that that the immaturity of an opponent is a temporary thing and "will learn" usually replied "...if he lives." Nobody learns anything getting killed in the process.

But, O'Neill—and Goodrich and Hackett—makes sure the kid survives long enough to go to Yale. It's a sweet movie, sometimes painful, but everything promises, if not happiness, continuity, and maybe an upward trajectory from the fates of so many in O'Neill's plays, whose foibles and self-delusions are given a light dusting of sugar in Ah, Wilderness!

 

* “You can tell a freshman by his silly, eager look / You can tell a sophomore ’cause he carries one less book / You can tell a junior by his fancy airs and such / You can tell a senior, but you can’t tell him much.”

Mad Love (1935)/The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Oh. Yeah. It's October. Guess I better start paying attention to Horror films.

Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935) It's been filmed many times since the silent era—most recently in 1958 starring Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee, and another in 1962 as The Hands of a Stranger—but the most famous version of the 1920 French novel (by Maurice Renard) "The Hands of Orlac" is this 1935 version by German director Karl Freund.*  Well, "most famous" is a relative term—this one was pretty much forgotten until Pauline Kael exhumed it in her essay "Raising Kane" as an example of what she considered Orson Welles' derivative direction of Citizen Kane. There are similarities, but vague ones—Peter Lorre's mad doctor bears a very slight resemblance to the elderly Charles Foster Kane, and his maid carries a pet cockatiel on her shoulder.**

Big deal, that. Oh, and, of course, it's a deep-shadowed black-and-white film with deep-focus—a bit standard when dealing with low light levels in black-and-white (especially when the cinematographer is Gregg Toland, who worked on both films). Beyond that, Mad Love is a completely different proposition than Citizen Kane and comparisons between the two are desperate and tortured, (as the writer could be at times).

But, that madness aside, Mad Love is a late version of German Expressionism from the silent era of film, and a direct descendant of:

The Hands of Orlac (Robert Weine, 1924) the silent version, re-teaming the director and star of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Weine and Conrad Veidt. Both stories involve the maiming of a brilliant concert pianist in a train wreck. His fiancée, in a desperate attempt to save his career—implores a surgeon to perform a radical double-hand transplant that—by rule of thumb— has unforeseen circumstances. The difference between the two is motivational—in the latter version, the surgeon performs the surgery, not just for the sake of music, but also for his desperate love of the fiancée, an actress in a theater macabre that he devotedly attends every night, going so far as to buy the waxwork figure of her in the lobby as an object of adoration.

The operation is a success, but on the other hand, it isn't. There's just one hitch, the same one that befell Dr. Frankenstein (coincidentally, the pianist in Freund's version is played by Colin Clive, the doctor in James Whale's version)—be careful where you shop for spare parts. In this case, Orlac's hands are replaced by those of a murderer—a strangler in the silent version, a master knife-thrower in Freund's. Before long, the composer is struggling to do his five finger exercises, and working on other handiwork, as well. Before long, he is implicated in a murder, and beset by nightmares that his hands are out of his control (they are, after all, the devil's playground).

The two diverge at this point, with Mad Love concentrating on the insane machinations (literally in one instance) of Lorre's insane Dr. Gogol—in the silent version, the surgeon's role diminishes significantly at this point—and Orlac's new talents become even more literally "handy."

Both versions weigh heavily on the psychological, as Orlac and his new hands lose their grip on reality, but the first one is quite satisfied with taking the macabre elements so far. The later version, post-Frankenstein and Dracula relishes the more twisted elements of the subject, going places that the original finds fanciful and, frankly, superstitious. Mad Love embraces the possibility that the murderer's hands will, actually, assert their sense memory allowing Orlac to throw pointy things very, very accurately...and the difference between the two films is only a span of seven years. Interesting how an audience's capacity for the weird and supernatural—and Hollywood's willingness to deliver it—could become so prevalent. 

* Freund was the German director/cinematographer whose most enduring influence came in the early days of television production when his 3-camera recording technique revolutionized filmed comedy shows (before a live audience)—a concept that started during his days with "I Love Lucy" but continues to be used today.

** Welles used a super-imposed shot of a cockatiel during what he considered a "rough transition" that didn't have enough dramatic impact, and later joked that he did it "just to wake people up."

Sylvia Scarlett

Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935) This one can't be considered a movie of the libertine, free-and-wheelin' "Pre-Code" era of movie-making, but it takes mild chances (if only teasingly), but hardly enough to account for its reputation as one of the most financially disastrous movies on the 1930's despite a good script, solid direction by George Cukor and the pairing of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn (though it being their first—Hepburn had met Grant at Paramount and recommended him to Cukor—no one could anticipate their subsequent chemistry). The film's lack of success labeled Hepburn as "box-office poison" and she didn't become bankable again until she bought herself the rights to "The Philadelphia Story" and revived her career with it...also with Grant in the movie version.

But, it looks tame today, even quaint. And it wouldn't so much as cause a pursed lip among the blue-haired old ladies who went to see Victor, Victoria or Shakespeare in Love. It was just before its time, although Cukor—who was euphemistically esteemed throughout his career as "a woman's director"—enjoyed depicting the sexes in sometimes challenging ways, often as satire, often as comedy. Sylvia Scarlett is a light-hearted drama (until it turns dark) and a comedy of manners (if those manners only tease but don't commit, and Judith Martin would certainly not call that "manners"). It's a little bit of everything, but more soufleé than stew. 

In Marseilles, when the seamstress wife of Henry Scarlett (Edmund Gwenn) dies, he becomes desperate to flee the country from French officials. He's been embezzling funds from the lace factory where he was employed as a bookkeeper, and lost all the funds to gambling. With some lace that he has stolen, he decides to head back to England to start anew, but tells his daughter Sylvia (Hepburn) that he will go alone and send for her later. She will have none of that, and so cuts off her hair and tells him that if she travels with him as a boy, the police will be confounded in their search for a man and his daughter.

While ferrying across the channel, they make the acquaintance of one Jimmy Monkley (Grant), a charming Cockney con artist and grifter, who uses his acquaintance with the Scarlett's to throw suspicion off himself when they go through customs (he rats out Henry's lace so as to distract from the diamonds he's smuggling in his shoe). Despite the seeming betrayal (and the £100 Monkley gives the Scarlett's for their trouble), the three decide to hook up as con artists using Monkley's contacts in London. The living arrangements are a bit problematic, as Monkley can't seem to figure out while "Sylvester"—the name Sylvia goes by in her disguise—is nervous about sharing a room with him, and gets downright agitated about dressing down for the night. What is wrong with the boy?

The first scam attempt involves Maudie Tilt (Dennie Moore), a lady's maid whom Monkley tries to seduce to steal her lady's expensive pearl necklace. The escapade doesn't pan out but it does manage to hook Maudie up with the band, partially because she's attracted to "Sylvester" which worries Sylvia, but not as much as when her father starts to fall for Maudie. Sylvia/Sylvester, having a crisis of conscience, insists they give up the dangerous grifter life, and instead become travelling show-people, "The Pink Pierrots," a cavorting harlequin troupe caravaning from small town to small town entertaining the villagers.

In one town, they meet bohemian artist Michael Fane (Brian Aherne), who is enchanted by the group, but, curiously, most by Sylvester—who, in turn, is attracted to him—prompting Fane to gasp the most famous line to pass the censors: "I say, I know what it is that gives me a queer feeling when I look at you..."

pause for effect

"...There's something in you to be painted!" 

Of course. That must be it. Artistic inspiration. While Sylvia Scarlett (the movie) flirts and teases with the gay mystique, there is nothing beyond girl-on-girl pecking (mistaken or otherwise) that produces something akin to horror in Hepburn's character. Even Aherne's outburst is provincially couched in Sylvia's subterfuge—he's attracted to her because she's a woman, though dressed as a man. Safe enough. And when "Sylvester", smitten with Fane, borrows ladies' gear to appear all flowery and girly, he is charmed but ultimately dismissive once learning the truth of Sylvia, going back to his un-British—in fact, Russian-European—mistress.

The sexual politics is flummery—just a tease—because once things settle—and people settle—things are safely hetero, but, at least, they take one chance: the pairings are not based on Hollywood archetypes of who should be with whom (we've all seen disastrously mis-paired types in many a final fade-out), but rather in personality types; the romantics are together and the churlishly cynical are as well, being matches of the soul, rather than the romantic heart.

At least that is a bit different; the couples deserve each other, for good or ill. It's not much of a revolution, certainly not enough to inspire a reprisal at the box-office. In fact, it's merely common sense, but that's something rarely found in romantic films.

Or in romance, for all that.

Mark of the Vampire

Mark of the Vampire (Tod Browning, 1935) Oooh! Here's a Hallowe'en nugget! Bela Lugosi as a vampire in a film directed by the original director of Dracula, Tod Browning? What could be better than that?

Well, just about anything, but all is not lost. The film is full of Browning's atmospheric touches—which made Dracula so creepy—and he does himself better here with extensive fog effects, a "real" flying vampire, and a hot she-vampire that's creepier than Lugosi, himself.

A remake of Browning's London After Midnight (a Lon Chaney silent film classic considered lost), this version is re-set in Prague. Plans for the wedding of Irena Borotyn (Elizabeth Allan) and Fedor Vincenti (Henry Wadsworth) are dampened when her father, Sir Karell Borotin (Holmes Herbert) is found murdered, two holes in his neck and his body drained of blood.  The police are baffled, but not the townspeople, who blame it all on Count Mora and his daughter Luna (Bela Lugosi and Carol Borland), who the locals think reside in the Borotyn castle near town, despite being dead for many, many years. 

The marriage is postponed, the case, being investigated by Inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwell), goes cold and Irena goes to live with her guardian, the Baron Otto van Zinden (Jean Hersholt). And, wouldn't you know it?  Right before the wedding can occur again, another attack occurs—this time Fedor turns up double punctured after walking by the Borotyn castle. Then, Irena is attacked. Things are getting to be a real pain in the neck, so the inspector brings in noted vampire specialist Professor Zellen (Lionel Barrymore), who suggests a two pronged attack (naturally), they'll dig up the body of Sir Karell to see if he in thrall to the vampire, and they'll search the Borotyn castle for Mora and Luna.

There's more to this than meets the eye, and far less with a twist ending that makes horror fans see red. 

Still, before they stake these vampires, Browning's atmospherics are fun, effective and slightly risible and although it disappoints for toying with the audience (and for the many 20/20 hindsight "but if..." questions after), it's genuinely creepy.

Don't Make a Scene: The Bride of Frankenstein

The Story: This is either the best sex scene in horror movie history, or simply the worst first date in horror films. Depends on how deep you want to read it—as allegory or as reality.

For the reality, we have this: the child-bride of Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) and Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is awakened from her lightning birth and immediately rejects her intended, the monster Henry created in the first film (Boris Karloff). The Monster can now talk, albeit with a limited vocabulary, though he gets by. Like most men, he communicates by grunts and groans, usually. But when he sees The Bride, he immediately becomes a simpering wreck, forlorn and love-sick, a parody of the romantic male, offering tender caresses initially, but eventually, when he can't get what he wants, violence. The Bride can't stand to look at him, emitting first a strangled shriek and then when it's obvious what his intentions are, a blood-curdling full-throated scream.

Director James Whale shoots her the way he introduced Frankenstein—full-length, then a series of jumping close-up's until we're right in her goggle-eyed face. Whale spends a good deal more time on film examining her than he did Karloff's Monster (who got only three shots), giving her more than a once-over, lingering over her, showing her from many angles. Karloff made an appearance on "The Entertainers" once (with Carol Burnett) where he comically lamented the new horror movies: "In the old days, they lovingly applied every stitch." Whale provides more than a chance to examine Jack Pierce's subtle (the dainty jaw-line stitches) and not-subtle touches (do we dare call it a "shock" of hair?)

Elsa Lanchester who played "The Bride" based her characterizations on swans--graceful, lovely, but spitting-mean. That's why the quick, unnerving head-pivots she makes, as she takes in her new surroundings. If she looks unstable on her feet (and Whale choreographs an unnatural wobble that nearly plummets her into Dr. Frankenstein's arms), it's because the 5' 4'' Lanchester is standing on stilts strapped to her legs to appear 7' tall.

Messages in horror films burble up subterraneously from approximately six feet under and take root in our subconscious. You may think there's something very disturbing, even radical about Bride of Frankenstein without being able to rationalize what it is about it.* It's certainly different in sensibility than Whale's first Frankenstein film—this one abounds with camp humor, and plays with religion at the same time it sees compassion and companionship as a Holy Thing. It mocks matters sexual between men and women with its foppish poets and a boyish Mary Shelley in the prologue, the over-sexed miniature people of Thesiger's experiments and the rejection of "The Bride" to "The Monster." Given carte-blanche on his Frankenstein sequel, director James Whale, gay and ostracized, made a continuation of The Outsider shunned by society, and subjected it to more rejection of a humiliating variety. That the story is of two men, Pretorius and Frankenstein, who conspire against God and Nature to create children is right there on the surface, a homosexual sub-text.

So, when it comes to this scene of "Bride" and "Monster" squaring off between a phallic "lever" that he "mustn't touch," and choosing "death" that produces an orgasmic reaction from the "Bride" and the collapse of a tower...well, you see where I'm going with this—this sexual act leads to "Death" and not just "the little death" of French culture. That the Monster allows the "breeder" couple to flee, tears running down his face in sorrow, while he blows everybody to atoms (to use Pretorius' phrase), puts the tragedy into perspective**

In looking for an on-line script for "Bride of Frankenstein," I noticed one of the writers calling it a "straight sequel." "Denial's not a river in Egypt, honey."

Camp, over-the-top, melancholy, but stylish to a fault, The Bride of Frankenstein is one of the greatest of Horror films as well as the sub-category of Gay Cinema.

The Set-Up: After coercion, blackmail and the threat of his own Monster (Boris Karloff) being set loose upon him, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) agrees to co-operate in another experiment in regenerating dead tissue with the insane Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger). Their co-creation: a mate (Elsa Lanchester) for Frankenstein's original Monster.

Action!

Note: I've tried to approximate the dialogue between The Monster and The Bride to the best of my ability, but the vocal subtleties of such lines as "Aa..!" and "N-gah!" get a little lost.

Frankenstein and Pretorius remove the Bride's bandages, allowing her to stand on her feet.
Dr. Pretorius: The Bride of Frankenstein!
The stunned "Bride" takes a tentative couple of steps forward, her gaze darting about the room in quick "takes."
Unstable on her feet, the now-living woman wobbles and sways back and forth.
The Monster returns from the Tower, and is aware of another presence in the laboratory.
As if by instinct, the Bride reacts to the Monster's presence, but he approaches warily and tentatively asks:
The Monster: Friend?
At the sound of his voice, The Bride turns to look at the Monster and a strangled shriek escapes her throat...
The Bride: ....Aa...!
The Monster: Friend?
The creature extends his burned, melted hands to The Bride, who acts repelled by him, and then...
...when he reaches out to touch her arm.
...She emits a full-throated terrified shriek.
The Bride pulls away, and turns to Frankenstein, who takes the Bride and sits her down. Pretorius, meanwhile, tries to calm the Monster, who insists on following The Bride.
Pretorius: Stand Back! Stand back!!
The Monster: Gnah!
The Monster brushes Pretorius aside and sits next to The Bride.
He takes her hand and caresses it,
...The Bride reacts in horror and emits another more intense scream.
Frankenstein pulls her away. The Monster is hurt, then angry, realizing:
The Monster: She hate me. Like others.
Broken-hearted, the Monster goes berserk, determined to destroy everything around him in a rage.
He stops at a control panel, one that contains a handy (and very large) "Destroy Everything" Switch:
Henry: (yelling) Look out! The lever!
Pretorius: (warning) Get away from that lever.
Pretorius: You'll blow us all to atoms.
Dr. Frankenstein's betrothed, Elizabeth, manages to escape from her bonds and runs to the tower door which she pleads for Henry to open the laboratory door.
Elizabeth: Henry!
Elizabeth: Undo the door! Henry!
Henry: Get back! Get back!
Elizabeth: I won't, unless you come! Henry!
(Henry opens the door and embraces Elizabeth.)
Henry: I can't leave them, I can't.
Frankenstein must choose: his work or his life. The Monster, however, makes the most compelling argument, giving Frankenstein and his bride a chance to escape.
The Monster: Yes, go!
The Monster: You live!
The Monster: Go!
The Monster: (To Pretorius) You stay!
The Monster: We belong dead!
The Bride throws a passionate hiss at him.
A final tear rolls down the Monster's sorrowful face.
The Monster grasps the lever and pulls it down, starting a series of explosions that destroys the lab and everything in it.
***

The Bride of Frankenstein

Words by William Hurlbut and John L. Balderston

Pictures by John J. Mescall and James Whale

The Bride of Frankenstein is available on DVD from Universal Home Video.

* The gay aspects of Bride of Frankenstein have become a part of the culture, due mostly to Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters—his bio-pic of Whale—but I'll always remember the film-class where this theory was first laid out. The Rosetta Stone for the discovery for the instructor was the peculiar Una O'Connor's line describing Pretorious: "And a very queer-looking fellow he is..." The instructor went through his dissertation and when he was through, he found himself no longer in the usual room of unforthcoming students "with attitude," but a bunch of open-mouthed geeks, stunned, like "The Bride" at her unveiling. "I've shocked you into silence," he said. "Well," one of the students meekly offered, "It's kind of a mind-blowing theory." And with exquisite comic timing and a professor's active restraint said, under his breath: "...I'm glad you said mind-blowing..."

** Presumably, after the tower collapses, everyone smokes (sorry).

*** Notice in this shot of the collapsing lab, it is Dr. Frankenstein who is the fellow cringing against the wall. "Saved by a re-write..." and possibly studio insistence.