The Bride of Frankenstein / Elsa Lanchester

SPIEGEL ONLINE Forum: Lieblingsfilme - was ist "großes Kino"?

September 2010

Eine der schönsten Szenen der Filmgeschichte: Elsa Lanchester als "die Braut, erschaffen von Frankenstein", als Karloff erscheint und sich ihr mit klumpiger Zärtlichkeit nähern will: wie sie sich, kaum zwei Minuten in der Vertikalen, schon ganz enragierte Lady, Colin Clive / Frankenstein zuwendet mit diesem "Was soll das heißen! Was hast Du dazu zu sagen? Rechtfertige Dich!"-Blick... grandios, einfach brillant.

Cugel:

Sehr schön beobachtet und beschrieben!
Ich habe mich noch immer nicht ganz erholt von der Erheiterung über den theatralisch-pathetischen Ausbruch des den ganzen Film über ja eher düster-grummeligen Dr. Pretorius ein paar Augenblicke zuvor: "THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN".

Ja, auch wunderbar! Thesiger war auch so ein Exzentriker vor dem Herrn, ich liebe diese Anekdote über ihn, als er in einer Londoner Bustür eingeklemmt dem Fahrer zuruft: "Stop! Stop! You're killing a genius!" - Whale wollte zuerst keinen "Frankenstein"-Nachfolger machen, hat ihn dann doch gemacht, weil er ihn zu seinen Bedingungen machen konnte. Und das beinhaltete dann, bei all der bestechenden Qualität, die auf jeder Ebene in diesem Film zu bewundern ist, auch eine beträchtliche Lust, over the top zu gehen - vielleicht genau das, was den Film unter all den bezaubernden Universal-Klassikern nochmal hervorhebt.
 

Elsa Lanchester hat sich zu ihrem legendären swan hiss tatsächlich von mißgelaunten Schwänen im Regent's Park inspirieren lassen. :)

Cugel:

Eben zufällig beim Stöbern herausgefunden: Elsa Lanchester spielte auch die Miss Marbles in "Murder by Death" (Eine Leiche zum Dessert), meine Allzeitlieblingskrimikomödie und der erste Film, den ich in den 80ern auf Video aufzeichnete. Nach einem runden dutzend Mal Anschauen habe ich irgendwann aufgehört zu zählen, interfamiliäre Konversation fand nur noch mittels Dialogzeilen aus dem Film statt.

"How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, twelve hours sleep a night and lots and lots of make up!"

Gerade fällt mir noch ein: als Dick Charleston alias David Niven nach der Ankunft mit seiner Frau Dora das Gästezimmer betritt, ergreift er eine vermeintliche Spielzeugmaus, um dann erschrocken auszurufen: "Sie lebt!" (Kann mich leider nur an die Synchronfassung erinnern, die Originalszene finde ich nicht im Netz) Ich fresse einen Besen, wenn das keine Anspielung auf Elsa Lanchester war! 

Ah! Ich liebe sie auch als Miss Plimsoll, die Nurse für Sir Wilfrid / Charles Laughton in "Zeugin der Anklage", wo sie mit ihrer unerbittlichen Fürsorge den ohnehin schon grummeligen Real Life-Husband in Verzweiflung stürzt, grandiose Dialogsequenzen galore. - Die Frau war ja nur knapp über 160 cm, aber als "Bride" wirkt sie ca. 2 m groß. :)
 
Diese B-Filme haben permanent auf allen möglichen Ebenen ziemlich wagemutige Dinge getan, schon dafür liebe ich sie. Ich meine, Dr. Pretorius in "Bride of Frankenstein": "... if you like your bible stories." - 1935 war das ein ziemlich blasphemischer Punch.

Elsa Lanchester, Herself, New York 1983, p. 133 ff:

There were two parts for me in The Bride of Frankenstein. In the opening scenes, I played Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, dressed extremely elegantly, sweeter than sugar.

In this prologue, Mary Shelley's dress was the most fairy-like creation that I have ever seen before or since in a film. It had a low neck, tiny puffed sleeves, and a bodice that continued in a long line to the floor and onto a train about seven feet long. The entire white net dress was embroidered with iridescent sequins - butterflies, stars, and moons. It took seventeen Mexican ladies twelve weeks to make it.

It was James Whale's idea that, later in the film, Dr. Frankenstein's second creation, the strange and macabre female monster, should be played by the same actress. Quite a contrast to the sweet and dainty Mary Shelley. We shot the prologue first, and it took only two or three days. Then I worked another week or ten days as the Monster's Bride.

I think James Whale felt that if this beautiful and innocent Mary Shelley could write such a horror story as Frankenstein, then somewhere she must have had a fiend within, dominating a part of her thoughts and her spirit - like ectoplasm flowing out of her to activate a monster. In this delicate little thing was an unexploded atom bomb. My playing both parts cemented that idea.

Charles had the definite theory that very, very sweet women were tough bitches underneath, and he'd often say in semifun, "Don't be frightened of Elsa if you find her too honest and she seems bitchy. She's really, you know, very nice inside."

Apart from the discomfort of the monster makeup and all the hissing and screaming I had to do, I enjoyed working on the film. I admired Whale's directing and the waiting-for-something-to-happen atmosphere he was able to create around us. He and Jack Pierce, the makeup man, knew exactly what they wanted, so I didn't have to do many makeup tests. They had Queen Nefertiti in mind for the form and structure of the Bride's head.

I've often been asked how my hair was made to stand on end. Well, from the top of my head they made four tiny, tight braids. On these was anchored a wired horsehair cage about five inches high. Then my own hair was brushed over this structure, and two white hair pieces - one from the right temple and the other from the left cheekbone - were brushed onto the top.

I was bound in yards and yards of bandage most carefully wound by the studio nurse. I didn't particularly want to be seen by anyone. Nor did Boris Karloff. We weren't trying to be secretive. We just didn't want to be stared at. Poor Boris Karloff! When he ate in the studio commissary, he would cover up his head and shoulders with a piece of butter muslin, lifting it quickly like a curtain to pop some food into his mouth.

Sometimes members of the cast would have tea. After all, many English actors were in the cast. I may have been seen drinking tea, but I drank as little liquid as possible. It was too much of an ordeal to go to the bathroom - all those bandages - and having to be accompanied by my dresser!

 

A word about the screams and that hissing sound I made to show my anger and terror when rebuffing my groom. Actually, I've always been fascinated by the sound that swans make. Regents Park in London has lots of them on the lake. Charles and I used to go and watch them very often. They're really very nasty creatures, always hissing at you. So I used the memory of that hiss. The sound men, in one or two cases, ran the hisses and screams backward to add to the strangeness.

The poet Shelley had written that "poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed." James Whale seemed to carry out this thought, giving his monsters spiritual beauty and pathos, over and above the horror.

Samuel Rosenberg observed that drownings ran throughout Mary Shelley's lifetime. Her husband's first wife, Harriet, having lost Percy to Mary, drowned herself in the Serpentine Lake in London's Hyde Park. Mary tried "to drown herself in a 'leap from the Putney Bridge into the Thames', but the voluminous air-entrapping garments ... kept her afloat..." Then "Shelley was drowned during a severe electrical storm while sailing in the Mediterranean." And then, in 1957, James Whale was found dead "under mysterious circumstances" - floating in his large pool at the foot of his hillside garden behind his Brentwood home.

  

Elsa Lanchester, Charles Laughton

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