This Master’s thesis looks into the Gothic elements of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and how they have been adapted into film form. The essence of the thesis lies in the examinations of the adaptations in order to find out whether or not the Gothic elements were amplified from or added to the original story. The specific films I have chosen for the analyses are: James Searle Dawley’s Frankenstein (1910), James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Jack Smight’s Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) and Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). This thesis also looks into the Gothic genre in literature versus the genre in film and considers how differences in mediums affect the adaptations. The purpose is to see whether Shelley’s work is growing more Gothic over time in cinema and if other elements, such as science fiction ones, were left behind. The themes of morality, the occult, sublime nature and the use of the “uncanny valley” effect are also looked into as they are important in Shelley’s novel. For the purpose of analysing the films, the thesis first analyses the two main characters: Victor Frankenstein and the Monster. For more thorough examinations, this paper uses The Theory of Adaptation by Linda Hutcheon as well as other essays and theory works based on Frankenstein, such as Joseph Kestner’s Narcissism as Symptom and Structure: The Case of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
|
