The Rise of Vocal Sound in Cinema

Unlike documentary style films that were created from 1895 to 1905, the film Bride of Frankenstein created diverse editing, makeup, scenery and vocal and musical sound. When Hermit, the lone blind man, realized that he had someone to keep him company he stated with pleasure,“Come in, my poor friend. No one will hurt you here. If you’re in trouble, perhaps I can help you. But you need not tell me about it if you don’t want to. What’s the matter? You’re hurt, my poor friend… I have prayed many times for God to send me a friend. It’s very lonely here. And it’s been a long time since any human being came into this hut.” The correlation of Jesus Christ and Frankenstein was prominent in the treatment of the monster being an outcast to the society although he was created for the betterment of humankind. From the lighting to the angles to the repetition of phrases made this film extremely monumental and various scenes and quotes are used in current media projects. 

Tom Gunning talks of the film creation ability to allure the audience, “To summarize, the cinema of attractions directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle–a unique event, whether fictional or documentary, that is of interest in itself. The attraction to be displayed may also be of a cinematic nature, such as the early close ups just described, or trick films in which a cinematic manipulation (slow motion, reverse motion, substitution, multiple exposure) provides the film’s novelty” (384).  Bride of Frankenstein implemented the majority of these cinematic features to engage with the viewers’ attention span.

A personal favorite scene with the perfect use of lighting, sound and imagery for the creation of Bride of Frankenstein

The use of the lights, kites, mirrors, lightning, fire, music and ‘advanced’ technology in the scene above of the actual creation of the bride of Frankenstein had me entranced by how trendsetting the set was for it to be made in 1935. The loud slamming and the light and shadow contrasts on the faces of  Dr. Pretorius and Victor Frankenstein gave a more thriller theme to let the viewers see that the process of creating such a creature takes a lot of hard work and may have even had people on the edges of their seats in anticipation of if the creation was going to be a success.

When I heard the phrase “It’s Alive!”, a childhood memory immediately linked the phrase to one of my favorite television shows at the time called Robot Chicken. The opening theme concept of Robot Chicken was a doctor creating a literal robot chicken in symbolism with the creation of Frankenstein although the show related nothing toward the opening theme.There are most definitely more classic films from the 20th century that are used in pop culture that I may not know of yet. I am excited to delve deeper into more classic films to find more references. Were you able to catch any other references that are heavily used in pop culture today as well, if so what was it?