Storytelling is a concept embedded in the fabric of humanity as both a species and an idea, an ever-malleable form of communication, entertainment, and cultural preservation that has endured since humankind’s dawn. It’s long been—and remains—one of our few universal customs; whether it be prehistoric cave paintings, the works of Homer, or modern Hollywood blockbusters, every culture throughout human history has used story as a means to express a myriad of ideas and produce emotion, the intrinsic value of storytelling, thus, not viewed as a question, but rather a societal axiom. Story, as a human constant and arguable necessity, predates the inception of civilization, in its most basic form serving as a way to recount factual events, and in its most ambitious, a tool to convey narratives wholly fictional on their face while remaining relevant to the human experience; and in the exhaustive pantheon of lasting stories, The Bride of Frankenstein‘s standing is relatively new, but it’s a status that, through several iterations, has been cemented over a holistically short period, and it’s one that figures to only strengthen over time.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is the latest film to draw overt inspiration from James Whale’s 1935 Gothic masterpiece, with Academy Award nominee Jessie Buckley taking on (a version of) the role first portrayed by Elsa Lanchester some nine decades ago. Described as a “Gothic romance” reimagining of its primary influence, The Bride! joins an extensive list of stories inspired by and iterating on that first presented in the Golden Age film, which was itself a sequel to 1931’s Frankenstein and an expansion on ideas alluded to in Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Whale’s film has, in many ways, become a sort of modern myth, its substance, characters, and themes serving as a consistent influence of new interpretations, both direct and indirect, over the last 90 years; ‘The Bride’ herself, though present for just five of her eponymous film’s 75-minute runtime, is a character whose image has become almost emblematic of horror as a genre, an icon of the medium that has transcended its proverbial barriers to become a culturally recognizable figure removed from her origin.
And at the core of the Bride’s status as a character worthy of consistent reinterpretations—and of the broader film’s sustained relevance nearly a century later—is the question of why? Why do creatives—whether it be Gyllenhaal, Kenneth Branagh, or Guillermo del Toro—continuously feel compelled to craft their own version of the character and narrative, despite countless iterations already existing? What is it about ‘the Bride,’ as character, film, and concept, that so demonstrably and abidingly speaks to our sensibilities? In an era in which Universal Pictures released a deluge of horror—specifically monster—features, what, precisely, is it about Bride of Frankenstein that’s allowed it to endure?
In order to effectively answer these questions, we must first explore why the character came into existence.
The Origins of The Bride
Whale’s 1930s film adaptations of Shelley’s Frankenstein novel have long been criticized for their deviations from the original text, of which there are several; among the changes not generally ridiculed, however, is the realization of the Bride as a physical character as opposed to an idea, a pivotal figure around which the narrative is built as opposed to a passing subplot. Frankenstein was an immediate success for Universal following its November 1931 release, with the company promptly commencing development on a follow-up; Whale, however, was categorically uninterested in returning as director, even quoted as saying to fellow English writer R.C. Sherriff, “I squeezed the idea dry in the original picture, and never want to work on it again.”
Whale would go on to direct six additional films following Frankenstein‘s release (including 1933’s The Invisible Man) before becoming more open to the idea of a Frankenstein sequel, formally boarding the then long-gestating follow-up in 1934. Universal, in the meantime, had been developing a sequel sans Whale, with one version of the project—conceived by playwright John L. Balderston—including the Bride as a character; this particular beat took inspiration from a section of Shelley’s novel in which the Monster pressures his creator, Victor Frankenstein, into creating a companion for him. Frankenstein, disgusted by the horrors he’s already ushered into the world and eager not to repeat his mistake, halts his work mid-construction and dismembers the body, discarding its remnants into the sea. There are centuries’ worth of literary analysis delving into the meaning of Shelley’s decision to leave the ‘Bride’ as an allusion as opposed to a realized creation, but it’s the latent character’s relation to Shelley herself that’s perhaps of paramount importance with regard to the Bride of Frankenstein film; in a 2015 piece for Film Quarterly, scholar Erin Hawley holds the female monster’s unfinished nature and resulting silence as a mirror to Shelley, positing that the Frankenstein novel is “implicitly autobiographical” before arguing that “the female monster may well represent a darker aspect of ‘the experience of writing Frankenstein'” and “acts as a reminder of something Shelley was unable to write.”
And this implicit connection is given further weight in Whale’s film, which would retain the Bride as a character despite otherwise starting from near-scratch. Bride of Frankenstein opens with a prologue in which Mary Shelley, her husband Percy, and famed poet Lord Byron recount the events and themes of the 1931 film, with Shelley informing her peers that the story didn’t actually conclude at the burning windmill (this idea, too, was a remnant of Balderston’s draft). The framing device, while practical in the sense that it reminded audiences of necessary information in a pre-home video age, ultimately has thematic merit, as Elsa Lanchester portrays both Shelley and the titular Bride; a deliberate creative choice on behalf of Whale, this was done as a means to showcase the “duality of imagination” while also underscoring the inherent link between Shelley and the female monster, with Lanchester herself writing in 1968 that “James Whale felt that frustration and wrath in a woman often lay under an excess of sweetness and light.“
Whereas the companion’s lack of animation—and the broader characterization of the women present—in Shelley’s novel have since been interpreted as part of the author’s overarching critique of gender roles and man’s ambition, the Bride, within the context of Whale’s film, serves as what Hawley, in the aforementioned Film Quarterly article, refers to as a “boundary creature,” a character in constant encroachment of the taboo and a physical embodiment of internal quandaries of eternal relevance to humanity. She appears in but one scene, a brief climax that immediately ushers in the story’s conclusion, but in those fleeting moments, her appearance—and scant actions—compel the audience to consider the, at times contradictorily overlapping, dichotomy between beauty and monstrosity, natural and unnatural, nature and science, genuine and artificial, etc.; she, in a five-minute scene in which she does not speak, makes us question everything we know and accept about what it is to be human, all of this while herself making a decision that effectively resolves the entire narrative.
Imperative to Universal’s initial marketing of the film was the mystery surrounding the Bride’s physical appearance—the words “The monster’s bride in the making! What will she look like?” were superimposed over the original trailer, leveraging cinema’s standing as a visual medium to pique audiences’ curiosity regarding what such a creature may look like. While effective in generating interest, the tactic (perhaps unintentionally) emphasizes the character’s status as an object of desire, an expectation Whale masterfully subverts in the film’s closing moments. The Bride, within the context of the narrative, is plainly positioned as an object of desire; she functionally exists as a prospective companion for the Monster, with Hawley making note of the fact that her reveal is itself presented as a climactic moment that provides time for the film’s primary male characters to study her appearance. The scholar writes that the Bride is “an object to be gazed upon and thus worked into cinematic narratives of desire, whereby the female body is subjected to the male gaze.” Whereas other films of the time and/or genre may have been content in keeping such a character in naive subservience to her male counterparts, Whale, in the Bride’s brief screentime, gives her supreme agency; she rejects the Monster, defying expectation to communicate to the viewer that she, though a ‘product’ of man and burdened by his will, has autonomy. It’s in this way that Whale revisits the criticism of gender roles as first explored by Shelley in her original text, doing so through an unabashedly feminist lens: the Bride is not an unsophisticated damsel concerned with the expectations of man, but instead a complex individual willing to act in accordance with her own interests and desires, regardless of the potential outcome.
And without delving into overt spoilers, it’s in this moment that the entire film is tied together, its condemnation of man’s ambition to alter and interfere with natural cycles—i.e., to play God—made clear. This is just one of several coalescing themes woven into the fabric of Bride as a broader film, as the movie, despite barely eclipsing an hour runtime, is teeming with thematic merit; the film, in addition to its aforementioned commentary on femininity, gender roles, and man’s ambition, touches on the societial role of religion, the power of empathy, and the very nature of ‘monsters’ as a concept—is it their appearance that defines them, or rather their actions, their intent? Who, in the film, is truly the biggest monster? Some analysts, from the mid-20th century onwards, have also purported that the film has a homosexual subtext, this interpretation primarily stemming from the relationship between Henry Frankenstein and his mentor, Dr. Pretorius, and given a level of credence by Whale’s standing as one of his era’s few openly gay directors.
All of these ideas are explored, either explicitly or implicitly, in what is, visually, a macabre oasis, an atmospheric masterwork boasting eerie Gothic production design and a symphonic Franz Waxman score that remains one of the horror genre’s most esteemed. The makeup and character design remain wholly effective over 90 years removed from the film’s original release, and the performances are memorable across the board; Bride features what is arguably Boris Karloff’s finest turn as the character who would go on to define his career, the subtleties and nuances of his performance imbuing the Monster with a level of pathos that audiences can’t help but empathize with, despite his actions. Colin Clive is, again, excellent as Henry Frankenstein, and Ernest Thesiger’s despicable take on the sinister Dr. Pretorius remains one of horror’s finest performances nearly a century later.
The Bride of Frankenstein endures, functionally, because of the excellence of its craft; it holds up well despite showing obvious indicators of its age, and it’s, generally speaking, still approachable for contemporary audiences. It’s the film’s myriad of themes, however, that make it a source of continued reinterpretation; Bride is, in this way, a modern myth, a fantastical story with memorable—now archetypal—characters that, more broadly, serves as an allegory relevant to the genuine human experience. The film, and its ideas, are a canvas to be painted upon, a clear framework that’s ever applicable to new stories as cultural concerns and sensibilities evolve.
And the Bride, as an individual, is paramount in this sustained relevance, her existence as the physical embodiment of the seemingly impossible overlap of inherently conflicting concepts making her an ever-interesting and pertinent character to whom we can continuously apply our new societal fears. Hawley argues that it’s the Bride’s “ability to disturb the boundaries that grants her such cultural power, and consequently, bestows upon her a life beyond the confines of Whale’s narrative;” it’s this—combined with the mythic nature of the film, as a whole—that makes The Bride of Frankenstein an ever-relevant picture that has, and will continue to, inspire new iterations.
The Bride’s Influence
Horror, as a cinematic genre, has a rich history of (perhaps disproportionately) contributing to the zeitgeist, of producing characters who become culturally relevant even when removed from their source material—figures like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Ghostface are recognizable even to individuals who have never seen a Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, or Scream movie. And this history traces back to Universal’s monster pictures of the 1930s and 1940s, as the films would offer to the proverbial cultural canon the definitive iterations of now-omnipresent characters like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man.
The Bride, who, too, rose to prominence during this era, is akin to her Universal brethren in that she transcends her source film and has relevance as a general cultural figure, with Lanchester’s original turn as the character remaining the most enduring. Her iconic design plays a significant role in this phenomenon; her Nefertiti-inspired hair, bandaged arms, and noticeably unnatural height coalesce with Lanchester’s natural beauty to create a character that is simultaneously alluring and uncanny, emphasizing her status as an embodied paradox. You’ll consistently see the character on decorations and merchandise around Halloween, and her appearance has been referenced ad nauseam across film and television over the last century; these instances are superficial examples of her cultural resonance, and while they’re undoubtedly factors in her enduring relevance, they’re perhaps secondary to what the character represents in a more abstract sense.
It’s, again, the Bride’s ability to embody seemingly contradictory concepts that perhaps most pertinently allows for and inspires continued reinterpretation. The character is, in this way, malleable and is capable of being molded to the needs of the specific iteration’s narrative while still being fundamentally recognizable; the Bride’s role within The Bride (1985) may differ from her function in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), but it’s their shared standing as the physical embodiment of conflictions and dichotomies—or, has Hawley describes it, as “boundary creatures”—that makes them definitively the Bride.
And while several iterations and interpretations have been overt in their influence (with Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! being the latest example), some adaptations are more spiritual in nature. In Guillermo del Toro’s recent Netflix rendition of Frankenstein, Mia Goth’s Elizabeth is, functionally, the Bride, narratively serving as a potential companion for the Monster while thematically embodying the dichotomy between fear and acceptance, between disdain and empathy, between displacement and belonging. The director described Goth’s Elizabeth as “a creature that is out of place in the world,” her status as the film’s Bride proxy reaffirmed by her dress on the night of her wedding when she is, by definition, a bride of Frankenstein (in this case, William); the white strips of fabric wrapped around her arms are a deliberate nod to Lanchester, the costume brilliantly serving as both a visual homage to a lauded predecessor and a thematic tool.
What The Bride of Frankenstein, as both an individual character and broader film, represents is eternal, ever applicable to new scenarios and quandaries as they manifest. Perhaps the most recent example of a filmmaker transposing the Frankenstein formula onto a distinctly modern dilemma is Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2014), a pensive sci-fi thriller in which a programmer is asked to put an artificially intelligent humanoid robot through the Turing test; a loose amalgam of Frankenstein and Bride with many of its own quirks, Ex Machina approaches the timeless issue of man wanting to skirt nature and play God through an updated technological lens, with antagonist Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) creating his own unnatural progeny not through re-animation, but AI. Said robot, Ava (Alicia Vikander), functions as both the Monster and Bride of this story, like Lanchester’s character occupying the small space overlapping the dichotomies between natural and unnatural, nature and technology, genuine and artificial.
Not every iteration or re-interpretation of the Bride has presented her as a physical paradox, but that’s, perhaps, to be expected when a character reaches such uncontrollable heights. Versions of the character, today, exist as the lead of a Warner Bros. blockbuster, a DCU superhero, and as a theme park meet-and-greet option; there’s obviously going to be some dichotomy in their characterization based on the specifics of their narrative and setting, despite all of them having the same root influence. Hawley, in her article, mentions a work penned by academic Will Brooker about characters losing some of their intended meaning as their popularity and influence widen, referencing Batman, Robin Hood, and Dracula as “figures ‘whose meaning long ago escaped the anchorage of whatever the original text brought them into being, and whose identity . . . exists somewhere above and between a multiplicity of varied and often contradictory incarnations, both old and recent across a range of cultural forms from computer games to novels.'”
This is a notion applicable to the Bride; there have been so many disparate incarnations of the character—across film, television, novels, comics, theme parks, etc.—that it’s now difficult to glean one definitive meaning or intent. That is, however, precisely why the Bride endures; she’s a character who provokes an inherent, and perhaps implicit, emotional reaction within us all, her ability to, as Hawley writes, “confirm and/or disturb our conceptions of what it means to be human” contributing to her eternal relevance. The Bride, given her ability to flawlessly wear the fears and issues of any particular era and embody the dichotomy between concepts so sensitive to us, is a canvas, a character whose relevance will persist as long as humanity remains curious.
