I was watching the 1931 James Whale/Boris Karloff Frankenstein a while back, and noticed something I never had before. During the scenes where they’re chasing the Monster through the mountains of Ingolstadt (shortly before the Windmill sequence), the painted backdrop of the moody overcast sky is pretty badly wrinkled. Once you notice you, you can’t really ignore it – it’s incredibly obvious.
How could they let a gaffe this bad pass? It’s not as if you couldn’t fix it – you could stretch the canvas. You could probably have wet it down without imperilling the painting on it. It doesn’t seem to appear in any other scenes in the movie, or in nany of the other Universal horror films?
I’m just surprised it’s there – this must have shown up to anyone looking through the viewfinder, or at the sets. Once it’s on the film, of course, in the pre-CGI era, you’re stuck with it. But it shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I’ve looked, but i can’t find a good image of this on YouTube or elsewhere. But look at the film, and you can’t miss it. Or at least, you can’t now that it’s been pointed out. You can thank me later.
Because people didn’t go to films looking for flubs, because they didn’t watch them over and over, and because if they watched more than once, they were concentrating on the story, not the sets.
People in 1931 thought differently than people today. Your question is based upon the assumption that people back in 1931 had exactly the same concerns when watching a movie that you do now.
Filmmakers in 1931 thought about flaws in their films. I’ve seen plenty of discarded photos and footage to know that they threw out stuff that didn’t appeal to them, even if they thought the aufdience wouldn’t notice.
I know that peoplre’s sophisticatioon increases with time, but your answer shows a disdain for the past that isn’t warranted.
It’s a freakin’ wrinkled backdrop, not new cinematic technology – people had been looking at theater backdrops for a couple of hundred years by that point. Saying that “they wouldn’t notice it because it’s new technology” won’t wash.
Besides, the fact that it shows up in no other scenes (and in no other movies) argues strongly against the “we can leave it in, because the rubes won’t notice it” school of thought.
You are talking about a James Whale film. He incorporated parts of the theatre for stylistic touches. The back drop is used no different than the back curtain of the theatre.
I mean it is obviously a sound stage… He doesn’t try to distract from that because he didn’t want to. (look at actual location shots in the film compared to soundstage “exteriors” vastly different looking mostly due to the technology) Watch Bride of Frankenstien when he was given freer reign on the project and see his theatrical touches that don’t make a lick of sense logically but work stylistically (The telephone pole forest for example)
Also we are looking at a film that is just a few years from the highly stylized silent era where somethimes the sensibilities of stage and film merged for effect or out of necessity.
Besides you think that’s bad, try 35 years later when on more sophisticated cameras and in colour they do the same thing in the movie Batman… watch the sky in the back ground in the climactic Batfight on the sub… yep that’s a painted blue sky…
In Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, some of the villagers talked with American accents and some with British – and then in Son of Frankenstein Igor showed up talking in a Russian accent or something . . . That kind of thing bothers me a lot more than wrinkled scenery.
I don’t have a problem with a painted sky. They’ve used it throughout film history, not just James Whale (and as you’ve pointed out). It can be perfect effective. But Not If It’s Wrinkled!
All they have to do is stretch the damned thing tight, as they evidently did in every other scene. Then it wouldn’t call attentio n to itself.
Well as an alternate explaination why others wouldn’t have called attention to the scene:
The filmakers don’t expect you to stare at the background during the action sequence, and considering in those days you’d only watch the thing once and supposedly never again they could have assumed they could get away with it.
Throwing out a wild guess I’d say they missed it initially and back then you couldn’t fix it in post.
Alternatively, it may have been the best take but the backdrop was wrinkled and they had to choose to go with the technically better version or the one where the acting was better.
I just re-watched Frankenstein the other day, and the wrinkled backdrop STILL bothers me.
Now I’ve got another thing bugging me.
I followed it up by watching The Bride of Frankenstein. Great flick. Ernest Thesiger as Doctor Pretorius steals the show, and they finally sprung for some dramatic music.
But…
I know that the timeline of Bride is really screwed up*, what with the prologue of Mary, Percy, and Lord Byron talking, all set in Switzerland in 1816 at the notorious “Haunted Summer” (although the house they’re staying in is freakin’ huge and much more impressive than Villa Deodato). Then she goes and tells a story that really would be science fiction to her, because it’s evidently set circa 1931, when the first film was made. (The clothing, the styles, the ease of getting the electric equipment, and so on). But then, near the end, after The Monster kidnaps Elizabeth so that “Henry” Frankenstein will cooperate on making the Monster’s Mate, Pretorius offers to let Henry talk to Elizabeth on what is evidently a device of his own construction. It’s a weird-looking telephone. He doesn’t call it by that name, and Henry seems amazed by the device. So this puts the date of the story back to pre-Graham Bell days. Prior to 1876, that is, unless you count the circa 1860 Reis Telephone. In any event, well after Shelley’s time but also well before the 20th century.
What time was this supposed to be taking place?
It’s probably better if you just turn off your brain and don’t worry about it too much.
*If you want a really screwed-up time line, try making sense out of the 1940s “Mummy” movies. If you add up the years, it takes something like 50 years from start to finish, and inexplicably changes locales from Massachusetts to Louisiana.
I have ALL the Universal horror flicks on DVD, but am missing the cable that connects the player to the screen. Come over and hook me up and I’ll cook you a boeuf bourginonne with cantal dumplings and haricots vertes and we’ll watch them all through.
I got to see this “wrinkled sky,” which I never noticed before.
Here, this YouTube clip has the relevant chase scene. After 2:40 you get good looks at the wrinkled backdrop that is the sky, although it’s not as clear as on my TV at home:
I'll discuss Mummy timelines with you, but not right now. I'm at work.
IMDB trivia for “The Mummy’s Curse” has this summing up of Mummy Chronology:
It’s actually even worse than that – The Mummy’s Tomb, even though set 30 years after The Mummy’s Hand (and this circa 1970) keeps making references to an ongoing WWII, with the hero rushing off at the end to join the fight. This is as bad, in its way, as H.G. wells’ movie [Things to Come, with its war that goes on from before 1940 into the 1970s.
