godsandmonsters

The title, Gods and Monsters, is a quotation of a line in James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein, and the Condon film in many ways is a retelling of the Bride. In the final sequence, as we see Whale dead in the pool, violin music plays and then the two films collapse into each other as we see the scene from Bride in which the old man is playing his violin.

Boris Karloff as the monster.

Elsa Lanchester, then married to gay actor Charles Laughton, and Karloff.

For info on The Bride of Frankenstein, click here. For a fan website, click here.

James Whale.

For info, click here, and, for related links, here.

Ian McKellen as James Whale. http://www.mckellen.com/

Benshoff, Harry M. 1997. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
AC/Main PN1995.9.H55 B457 1997

Curtis, James, 1998. James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters. Boston; London: Faber and Faber. PN1998.3.W5 C87 1998

Fussell, Paul. 1975. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York : Oxford University Press. PR478.E8 F8

Gatiss, Mark. 1995 . James Whale, a Biography, or, The Would-be Gentleman. London: New York: Cassell. PN1998.3.W5 G38 1995

Manguel, Alberto. 1997. Bride of Frankenstein. London: British Film Institute. PN1997.B73 M36 1997

Norden, Martin-F. 1986. "Sexual References in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein." In Palumbo-Donald (ed.). Eros in the Mind's Eye: Sexuality and the Fantastic in Art and Film. New York: Greenwood, 141-150. PN1995.9.S45 E68 1986

Rickels, Laurence A. 1999. The Vampire Lectures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. PN1995.9.V3 R53 1999

Young, Elizabeth.1996. "Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein." In Grant-Barry-Keith (ed. and introd.). The Dread of Difference. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 309-37. PN1995.9.H6 D74 1996

The opening shot of the film is a quotation from a shot in the Bride, and Brandon Faser is walking across as the monster. The same shot repeats midway in the film as Whale falls asleep and dreams of Clayton as Frankenstein (Colin Clive) operating on him and replacing his brain. In this case, it is McKellen walking across like the monster, as he is in the dream, which quotes the set and the series of shots when the bride comes to life in the Bride. The final instance of the same shot has Whale and the monster, who turns out to be Clayton, walking across.

The shot above recalls the earlier shot of Clay taking Whale by the arm to pull him out of the rain at the end of the Cukor party.

The opening shot also sets up parallel between the monster and Clayton, quickly followed up as we see Clayton in his trailer in a series of close ups, all body parts: his face, a hand, his back, his boots, which he ties.

Like the monster, Clayton is inarticulate, and the parallel is also made in the scene in which everyone watches the Bride on t.v in the bar, a series of close ups of Clayton and of the monster make the parallel.

At the Cukor party, we see Karloff and Clayton in the same shot, the one going out of focus as the other comes in, and then both in focus.

Similarly, we see Clayton enter the room the first time we see Whale's sketch (an invention) of the monster, and the two images are right next to each other.

The shot of Clayton looking in the water of his sink the morning after he picks up the woman in the bar alludes to the shot in Frankenstein when when the monster first sees himself in the water.

And the parallel is explicit at the end when the back of the monster sketch by Whale says "friend" on it and we see Clayton smoking as the old man playing the violin and the monster smoke cigars, recalling as well the earlier scene with Clay and Whale smoking cigars.

At the very the, in the storm, Clay imitates the monster with his arms and walk.

Clay does say "I am not your monster" when he refuses to kill Whale. Clay also doesn't get along with women too well, as the scene with barmaid makes clear, but he is happily married at the end and has a son.

Clayton is "surrounded" by gay images throughout the film. In Whale's living room, there are small-scale British Museum Elgin marble reproductions (see below) in the background. And in the studio, the painting of the nude male (full frontal) is actually a copy of a painting by Whale, perhaps a self-portrait.

Later, when Clayton goes to the library, we see behind him a WPA mural with half-naked men making a bomb on in a factory assembly line.

Even the actress who played his wife at the end is lesbian, Condon notes. After the film, she got the part as Ellen Degeneres' girlfriend on Ellen.

Director Bill Condon combines shots drawn from 1950s Hollywood films, using widescreen and broad lighting, drawing on a style used during the time in which the film is set.

He also draws on a style that Whale knew and practiced in the 1930s called Expressionism.

German film led the way in horror film, largely as the result, some film critics argue, of the horrors of WWI (See the DVD documentary on Gods and Monsters. German horrors film were part of a style called Expressionism (also in literature and painting). The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari and Nosferatu are most famous examples. Expressionism is marked by odd camera angles and weird lighting. For a useful site, go to German Expressionist Film. For a good example of Condon's use of Expresisonism, see the camera rocking back and forth when Whale and Clay enter Whale's home after Cukor's party.

As God and Monsters progresses the film alternates between the two styles, gradually making the film more and more Expressionist to suggest Whale's mental disintegration.

To similar effect, the costume director made McKellen's clothes larger and larger as the film goes on, so that by the time of the Cukor party, he seems quite frail.

Condon makes the connection between Whale's traumatic war experiences and the Bride in the falshback sequence that follows the flash bulbs popping when a photoraph is taken of Whale, Karrloff and Lanchester. Shots of the trenches are part of a montage with shots of the bride.

In preparation for her role as the housekeeper, Lynn Redgrave copied some of the gestures of Una O'Connor in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.

The housekeeper is Mexican in the novel, but Condon thinks it is fitting she is German in the film as it fits in with in the importance of Germany in Whale's life.