:27:02
to provide an expressionistic
forest of the dead -
:27:05
dirt, rocks, leafless trees
like upright telephone poles,
:27:09
all the better to play
the monster's crucifixion.
:27:12
Whale is often
incorrectly called expressionistic -
:27:15
Whale used expressionism
when it suited him,
:27:18
as in this sequence and the "OI' Man
River" number in Show Boat.
:27:21
Bride, if anything, is rococo,
:27:23
a robust co-mingling of baroque,
gothic, the decorative,
:27:26
the expressionistic and the derivative.
:27:35
Dwight Frye, body snatcher to the stars,
is first glimpsed leaning against a tree.
:27:39
David Lewis's sister
is again kibitzing with the rabble.
:27:42
There's Dwight.
:27:45
Mr Levy, wearing spectacles
and leaning on his cane,
:27:47
has just darted behind EE Clive.
:27:56
The point is not that the monster is Christ.
:27:59
In Christian theology,
Jesus is the redeemer.
:28:01
His death and resurrection
contain the promise of eternal life.
:28:05
The monster is the son of man,
a gross parody of all that is human,
:28:08
lacking the divine spark
and therefore a mockery of the divine.
:28:13
Whale was an ironist, not a parodist.
:28:15
He doesn't crucify the monster to suggest
that Golgotha was a cosmic joke,
:28:19
he punches our buttons by inverting a
fundamental tradition of Western culture:
:28:24
The monster, the son of man, is
resurrected from the dead, then crucified.
:28:29
Strangely enough, the film would open
on Good Friday, 1935.
:28:38
Everything about the look
of the film is stylised.
:28:40
Nowhere do we see a natural sky.
:28:42
With glowering, painted skies, it's as if
a thunderstorm is always looming.
:28:46
Here, the sky is filled
with an architectural matte painting
:28:50
by Jack Cosgrove and Russell Lawson.
:28:52
These are the only
back-lot exteriors in the picture,
:28:55
tightly composed on the German village
set from All Quiet on the Western Front.