DVD/150: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)

86 years on, James Whale's film re-generates with every viewing, just like his iconic Bride...

The greatest of all the Universal horror films crackles with invention, wit and a deliciously perverse subtext - all the more remarkable that James Whale wasn't interested in making the sequel.

The script went through seven writers before Whale was satisfied.

We start with Mary Godwin, Byron and Shelley discussing her novel followed by a FRANKENSTEIN montage to pick-up the storyline, swirling through to the final cataclysm - Elsa Lanchester playing both Mary and The Bride provides a wonderful symmetry.

Boris Karloff and Colin Clive return as monster and maker. Whale refused to give up on his alcoholic friend Clive who died two years afterwards from TB.

Karloff built on his performance to suggest the soul within the monster, oddly he disliked the idea of the monster learning to speak.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN lives....

Shelf or charity shop?  It's what shelves were made for... One of the rare sequels that outshines the original, Universal gave James Whale full artistic control after the success of FRANKENSTEIN and his vision was brought to vivid life by cinematographer John C Mescall, production designer Charles D Hall, costume designer Vera West, make-up artist Jack Pierce, Kenneth Strickfaden's electric laboratory props and composer Franz Waxman. Whale cast UK actors in all six lead roles: apart from Karloff, Clive and Lanchester, the film benefits from the lip-smacking eccentric campness of Ernest Thesiger's Doctor Pretorius, Henry's former professor who lures him back to the dark side. 17 year-old Valerie Hobson was cast as Elizabeth when Mae Clarke was too ill to reprise her role - Hobson is quite wonderful especially considering her age, and finally Belfast-born Una O'Connor plays the bustling, shrieking maid Minnie.  Australian actor OP Heggie is marvellous as the blind hermit who provides the monster with a few hours of understanding, while FRANKENSTEIN'S scuttling servant Dwight Frye returns to play another sniveling underling.  Elsa Lanchester's Bride is onscreen for only 3 and a half minutes but in that brief time a screen icon was born: swaying, imperious, scared and disdainful..

...and The Bride made a memorable reappearance at The Retro Bar in 2005...

DVD/150: GREAT EXPECTATIONS (David Lean, 1946)

There had already been two films of Dickens' novel but David Lean's version has reigned supreme ever since, despite two more screen adaptations and six TV versions.

Lean had only seen a 1939 stage version, written by Alec Guinness who also played Herbert Pockett.  Seven years later, Lean cast him in the same role; he also cast that production's Miss Haversham, the wonderful Martita Hunt.

Lean wrote the film script with his producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, other writers included Cecil McGivern and Lean's actress wife Kay Walsh who wrote the final scene.  It's a text-book adaptation.

Academy Awards deservedly went to Guy Green's cinematography and John Bryan's art direction; they deliver a believable world with a wonderful sense of place, the desolate Kent marshes of Pip's unhappy childhood, the bustling Chancery Lane of his life as a 'gentleman', the gothic decepitude of Miss Haversham's crumbling mansion.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper - it's a classic for a reason.  Lean's subtle direction works wonders with his wonderous cast: Guinness (in his first major screen role) is delicious as Herbert Pockett while John Forrest is perfect as teenage Herbert, Martita Hunt's magnificent ruin of Miss Haversham, Finlay Currie's scary but dignified Magwitch, Francis L Sullivan's Jaggers, the conceited spite of Jean Simmons' young Estella and Anthony Wager's sad young Pip.  Valerie Hobson is well cast as the brittle older Estella while John Mills - although too old for the role - is a personable Pip.