Tag: Colin Clive

Mad Love (1935, Karl Freund)

Not even halfway through Mad Love’s sixty-seven minute runtime it’s clear all the film’s going to have to do to succeed is not to fail, which isn’t going to be easy. The film’s about a brilliant surgeon (Peter Lorre) who’s sort of publicly stalking married stage actress Frances Drake. Now, he falls in love with her during her performance at a “theater of horrors” where an audience full of men get off on Drake being tortured for cheating on her husband. There’s a lot to unpack right off in Mad Love, it’s awesome.

Right at the end of her performance, it appears Drake—in character—confesses her lover’s name so the husband can go and kill him, having sufficiently literally branded his wife into place. That moment’s when Lorre gets the most excited.

Off stage, Drake has been married to successful pianist Colin Clive for a year and they haven’t been able to even honeymoon yet because he’s touring and she’s acting. It’s finally time for them to meet up, right after her cast party (the theater is closing for the season too) and getting to finally meet Lorre, after he’s rented out the most expensive box in the theater for almost fifty performances in a row.

Lorre—rather appropriately given he’s about to buy a wax dummy of Drake (without her knowledge)—creeps Drake out. But she’s got the medical connection when it turns out she’s going to need it because husband Clive has been in a train accident and his hands are mangled. Only Lorre can save him. And he’ll move heaven and earth for Drake’s gratitude.

He’ll even, maybe, cut the hands off a recently executed murderer to give them to Clive. After all, the murderer was an expert knife thrower; might come in handy for a concert pianist. Lorre has no way of knowing Clive has already met the “donor” (Lorre knows about their availability because in addition to watching women pretend to get tortured, he never misses an execution).

When the hands seemingly take a life of their own, Lorre sees another opportunity to get close to Drake, who’s still just trying to help suffering husband Clive, and, well, as they do… complications ensue.

There are a lot of constraints on Mad Love. A lot of impossible (thanks to the Production Code if not moral decency) outcomes and quite a few unlikely ones. So a satisfactory resolution is always in question. But the film gets there all right. It’s got some genuine humdingers of scenes—no other word—when Lorre all of a sudden pivots to another extreme and is fantastic in it. The whole movie rests on him.

Not to discount the other actors, who are all great—Mad Love’s got an amazing cast—but it’s the Peter Lorre show and no one can pretend otherwise.

Drake’s really good—she’s got an incredible suspense sequence to get through in the third act and nails it—Clive’s good, though he gets the least material of the three leads. Then there’s the supporting cast and it’s a doozy. Because even though Mad Love is set in Paris and tries its best to be (broadly) European, it’s also got some American flavor. Starting with Edward Brophy in a jaw-dropper cameo as the convicted murderer on his way to the guillotine. Brophy turns the Hollywood New Yorker to eleven and has a ball. It’s astounding director Freud is able to maintain it without just breaking the film in two.

While Brophy isn’t in the film for very long, the film moves the American bull in the Parisian china shop chores along to Ted Healy, who plays a pushy New York reporter in town to cover the execution (Brophy’s an American citizen being executed) and also to get famous philanthropist surgeon Lorre to write some articles for his paper. See, Lorre doesn’t accept any payment and instead uses his skills and develops these miracle procedures to help children and maybe soldiers. He’s a saint.

Who just happens to get off on torture and death, which none of the locals really notice since he’s such a saint but Healy thinks something hinky is going on.

It’s so good, so weird, so not.

Excellent direction from Freud, photography from Chester A. Lyons and Gregg Toland, and editing from Hugh Wynn. Wynn’s got some exquisite sequences, including a downright successful dream montage.

Just for being itself, Mad Love has a bunch of hurdles to clear and it sails over them, finishing better than one could hope given said hurdles. Its snaking to get through the Code is an achievement on its own, but Lorre, Freud, and Drake all score big by the end.

Lorre’s simply magnificent.

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, James Whale)

For The Bride of Frankenstein, director Whale takes a contradictory approach. It's either more is more, or less is less. More music, all the time. Franz Waxman's frequently playful music rarely fits its scenes, unless Whale is going for a melodramatic farce, which he really doesn't seem to be doing. I kept hoping he would be, because it might make the film more compelling.

More Monster–Boris Karloff is nonsensically running around the countryside, finding someone to accidentally kill or not. William Hurlbut's screenplay contrives connections between loose, if memorable, scenes and never pauses to explain why the Monster kills another little girl. Maybe he really liked doing it from the first one.

Of course, the Monster could explain since Karloff now has lines to deliver. But all of his lines are lame.

Poor Colin Clive has almost nothing to do. None of the characters in Bride have arcs running the whole film–not even the Monster–but Clive pops in at the beginning and then at the end. In one of Hurlbut's weaker moments, Clive goes from pro-mad scientist to anti-mad scientist at the snap of the fingers. It's ludicrous.

Ernest Thesiger's good as the villain. Valerie Hobson not as Clive's wife.

Whale doesn't have enough coverage so Ted J. Kent's editing is usually bad. Except the finale, which is wondrous and is so tightly edited, one has to wonder why the rest of the film is so loose. Probably because there has to be a story.

It's a trying seventy-five minutes.

Frankenstein (1931, James Whale), the digest version

The eight millimeter digest version of Frankenstein removes all but three main characters. Colin Clive gets the most time, though loses all subplots and character, with Boris Karloff probably coming in second. It’s odd to watch Frankenstein and have the monster make so little impression but it’s clearly possible.

Dwight Frye, for a while, makes the greatest impact, but only because he’s present in most the background of the establishing scenes.

The digest also retains the drowned little girl, Maria, though she’s barely there too. It’s strange to see what the editors thought was the most resonate, but the little girl’s drowning does lead to the manhunt, which does feed the finish. I guess it makes sense.

The little edits are bad. Reaction shots are cut, the film’s just generally sped up. Frankenstein loses top much personality when s drastically cut.

Even the fiery windmill sequence suffers in this abbreviation.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by James Whale; screenplay by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Ford, based on an adaptation by John L. Balderston of a play by Peggy Webling and a novel by Mary Shelley; directors of photography, Arthur Edeson and Paul Ivano; edited by Clarence Kolster; music by Bernhard Kaun; produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.; released by Castle Films.

Starring Colin Clive (Dr. Henry Frankenstein), Boris Karloff (The Monster), Dwight Frye (Fritz), Lionel Belmore (Herr Vogel) and Marilyn Harris (Little Maria).

RELATED

Frankenstein (1931, James Whale)

I’m trying to imagine how Frankenstein looks on the big screen–maybe on one the size of Radio City Music Hall; James Whale fills the screen upward. He directs the viewer’s attention always up, starting with the first scenes in the tower laboratory. The frames are obviously filled with extensive detail, which video certainly does not preserve. This style–tall screen (versus wide screen)–amplifies the watered-down Expressionist sets.

The film’s set design is stunning. Again, to complement Whale’s tall screen shots, the Frankenstein manor has cavernous rooms. The actors frequently occupy corners, making me wonder if theatrical audiences had to search for them in the expansive shots. But when the film’s sets are for the outdoors–the film’s famous graveyard opening for example–Whale uses the frame much differently. The painted backdrop, the endlessly murky sky, is Frankenstein‘s suspension of disbelief on-switch. Opening with it, Whale gets the viewer to accept he or she is no longer on familiar ground. Edward Van Sloan’s opening warning probably contributes as well.

Without a musical score, with incredibly delicate sound design and occasionally jarring cuts, Frankenstein is a strange dream. The first scene with Boris Karloff is the best example of this dream state. The nearly silent introduction to the monster, combined with the perspectively challenged sets, distances the viewer from Colin Clive and Van Sloan. This approach to the narrative–it being distant from the characters and more objective–really plays out in the last scene. As the Monster burns in the windmill, it’s hard not to feel sorry for him, but the film doesn’t encourage any sympathy. The lack of music really makes the narrative perspective indifferent.

That indifference only applies to the story of Clive and Karloff–and to some degree to Clive’s romance with Mae Clarke. The film’s very strange for the first act–with the grave-robbing, followed by Dwight Frye robbing the medical college (the lecture in the medical college is also worth some examination, which I’m not going to make time for here), then the rather frank scene between Clarke and John Boles. The friendship between Boles and Clive’s characters hardly gets any screen time, yet it’s present and important to the film. Frankenstein takes a lot of filmic shortcuts, usually to good effect, and that conflicted friendship is successful.

But it isn’t the most successful… the strangest thing about Frankenstein is the place of Frederick Kerr as Clive’s father. As it plays out, Kerr is the film’s main character. Even with all the conflict stemming from bringing a monster to life, the real focus is Clive and Clarke’s wedding, specifically what Kerr’s great scenes related to it. When Kerr first appears, Frankenstein changes direction–it goes from being uncanny to a bent traditional–and each of his scenes is better than the previous.

His performance isn’t the film’s best–all the principals are great, with Clive somehow turning that field day for overacting into one of Hollywood’s greatest portrayals of insanity. But in Whale’s detachment, Clive becomes even more removed in his recovering sanity. Boles and Clarke occasionally seem like they’re in a melodrama, but both have some great moments. Van Sloan’s great, as is Frye.

Karloff’s performance is singular.

Only in the end–like with most Universal horror films–does Frankenstein begin to show its stitches. The lack of content, of actual story, comes out as everything begins to run together (the Monster’s off screen rampaging, the attack on Clarke) and logic hops out the window. Around the same time, men in 1930s dress appear alongside the guys in lederhosen, which might give logic a shove.

It doesn’t really matter much, because by that time, Frankenstein‘s already established itself. Whale’s technically superior hunt through the mountains and the windmill finale, as narratively problematic as they are, still work great.