Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Helena Bonham Carter, Robert De Niro, Tom Hulce, Ian Holm, John Cleese, Trevyn McDowell, Aidan Quinn, Richard Briers, Robert Hardy, Celia Imrie, Cherie Lunghi, Ryan Smith. [R]

A couple years after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, we get Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a Gothic melodrama far more faithful in spirit to the book (if not so much in plotting) than any major film version to come before it. Branagh’s directorial hand is overwrought and frantic, full of actorly histrionics and unfocused visual energy, every gesture a strike of lightning; that technique may have worked for his sensationally stylish Dead Again, but its application here suffocates the understated, philosophical nature of Shelley’s source material. De Niro suitably brings pathos to his role as the doctor’s creation (he’s uneven but occasionally excellent) while Branagh swings for the fences and earns laughs, not sympathy; one of the only cast members to refrain from over-acting at some point is Cleese (in a small role), who sounds nothing like Basil Fawlty and looks an awful lot like Billy Connelly. Makeup effects and production design are top-notch—it’s a good-looking picture, to be sure, or at least it would be if the camera stopped soaring, swooping and spinning so often. The best scene by far is when De Niro helps a poor family and shares a gentle, thoughtful conversation with the blind patriarch; the second best is when Branagh scribbles down a passage in his journal and then immediately announces that he will be destroying said journal and all its contents in the morning (surely the page appreciated the attention paid to it prior to its execution).

42/100