:30:00
He's the one seducing Frankenstein away
from, if I may say, the straight and narrow
:30:08
back into this very much
more twisted vision
:30:15
of what he should be doing with his life.
:30:17
I gather we not only did her hair,
:30:22
but dressed her.
:30:24
What a couple of queens we are, Colin.
:30:27
Yes, that's right.
A couple of flaming queens.
:30:30
Pretorius is a little bit in love
with Dr Frankenstein, you know.
:30:35
The gay sensibility responds to outsiders.
:30:38
Bride of Frankenstein contains several.
:30:41
Pretorius is an outsider.
:30:43
Frankenstein becomes an outsider
:30:45
by being seduced away
from marriage and the home
:30:50
to becoming the mad scientist again.
:30:53
And most obviously, most dramatically,
and most poignantly,
:30:57
the monster is an outsider.
:30:59
It's very tempting to assume
:31:01
that Whale identified with an individual
who is an outsider like this,
:31:07
that the average person
does not understand.
:31:11
I'm sure James Whale knew what
that felt like when he was a youth,
:31:17
as an artistically inclined person
in a factory town,
:31:22
in a factory family.
:31:25
He knew what that was like probably
well before he knew it as a homosexual.
:31:31
But it was also the artistry,
being an artist, being a sensitive person,
:31:36
being somebody who people made fun of,
for whatever reason.
:31:40
You find that in so many of the characters
in Bride of Frankenstein.
:31:44
The film also makes a serious comment
on the tensions, sometimes violent,
:31:48
between society
and the non-conforming individual.
:31:51
The monster is... the unleashing of the id,
that which must be kept under control,
:31:59
and when it's unleashed, this is a threat
to stability of society, of human nature.