|
Related stuff you might want!!!(commissions earned) |
|
|
|
Frankenstein (Gérard
Berner) wants to create life out of nothing - for which he gets thrown out
of university, is antagonized by the church and mountain wizard (and
former mentor) Melchior (Nicolas Silberg) alike, slapped on the fingers by
the local judge (Yves Brainville), and he's neglecting his fiancee and
foster sister Elizabeth (Karin Petersen). Only the village idiot Frobelius
(Gérard Boucaron) loves Frankenstein - for no discernible reason mind
you, as Frankenstein treats him like shit. Then though Frankenstein is
almost killed by Melchior, and it's Frobelius who saves him - after that
their relationship changes, and he becomes Frankenstein's sidekick.
Eventually though, Frankenstein is banned from his village for his
experiments, and he moves to the mountains with nobody but Frobelius -
whom he causes to die in a mountaineering accident, just to revive him
again - but when Frobelius is revived ... With Frankenstein gone,
Elizabeth has calls on his best friend Henri to keep her company.
Eventually, the both of them learn Frankenstein has disappeared, probably
died, and they learn about a monster terrorizing the region. The monster
is of course Frankenstein's, and after he has seen what he has created, he
turns back to God and walks the region unrecognized as a mendicant,
worshipping God wherever his creature has laid a path of destruction. Frankenstein's
mother (Francoise Lugagne) for some undiscernible reason, harbours the
creature - but then the creature finds out it wants to have its revenge on
Frankenstein (why exactly?) and kills mum. This enrages Frankenstein
enough to have a fit of rage that alerts Elizabeth and Henri to his
wherabouts. He is at first arrested for the murder of his mother, but then
in a weird turn of events welcomed back into his village as the repenting
prodigal son. By that time though, the creature has already broken him
free from jail and wants him to create a female companion for itself. The
creature even kills Henri on the eve of Elizabeth's wedding to either him
or Frankenstein (the film manages to stay surprisingly unclear about
this), just to make a point. Frankenstein is about to kill a woman to
create his creature's companion when Elizabeth interferes and Frankenstein
and the creature get into a fight that ends in both of them falling off a
cliff killing them both ... or wait a minute, was there ever a creature
even, was it not just a figment of Frankenstein's imagination to banish
his dark thoughts? Truth to be told, the audience never got an actual
glimpse of the creature ... A very weak adaptation of the
oft-adapted Frankenstein,
basically because it remains surprisingly static where the novel is quite
dynamic, leaves way too many plottwists out of the picture and a mere
subject of hinting at (including the creation scene as such) to not come
across as way too theatrical (even for a stageplay, which this film
apparently isn't), and the choice to leave the monster out of the picture
altogether is a poor one, expecially since the alternative explanation
that Frankenstein might quite simply have gone insane is never really
explored. On top of that, many of the characters lack motivation, and some
(like the mountain wizard) seem to not even belong to the story (not only
the story it's based on but also the plot of this movie). Add to this a
cast that's uniformly less than exceptional and a direction that's a bit
on the stale side, and you're left with one of the more disappointing Frankenstein-adaptations.
|