Frankenstein, page to screen
No screen version of Frankenstein made between 1910 and 1994 is faithful in the way readers of the novel mean by the word, and the versions across that span fail in the same place. Mary Shelley's book is built in 3 nested layers, and the middle layer, in which the creature takes over the narration and tells his own life in his own words, is the part that kept getting cut. That is the thing to check first in any version, including those released since: does the creature speak for himself, at length, and does the film let him make his case. In the run this page measures, most do not. The plot survives all of them. The argument rarely does.
Frankenstein: the book and movie differences, in short
The book and movie differences in Frankenstein are one difference repeated across most of a century. The book is Mary Shelley's novel, first published in 1818 and revised for the edition of 1831, built in 3 nested narrations: Robert Walton's letters home, Victor Frankenstein's account inside them, and the creature's own account inside that. The films are many, from the Edison Company's short of 1910 through James Whale's Universal film of 1931 to Kenneth Branagh's version of 1994. The central difference is that the innermost layer, roughly a fifth of the book, in which the creature narrates his own education and states his case, is the part almost every screen version in that range removes.
What Mary Shelley's novel actually contains
Shelley's novel contains three narrators, not one, and the order they arrive in is the design. The outermost is Robert Walton, an explorer writing letters home from a ship trapped in Arctic ice. He takes aboard a dying man, Victor Frankenstein, and records Victor's account. Inside Victor's account sits the creature's own, delivered face to face on a glacier, and that inner section is roughly a fifth of the book. Everything most people know about the story comes from the outer two layers. Everything the book is arguing comes from the inner one.
The creature's section is a story of education. Hidden in a lean-to beside a cottage, he watches the De Lacey family through a chink in the wall for the better part of a year, learns French from their lessons, teaches himself to read, and works through 3 books he finds abandoned: Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and Goethe's novel of Werther. He then goes to the family, is beaten out of the house on sight, and reasons his way from that rejection to a demand: Victor must make him a companion. Victor agrees, begins, and destroys the half-finished second creature. The murders that follow are the creature keeping his word.
The half that kept going missing, from 1910 to 1994
The half that kept going missing had been going missing since the first screen version. The Edison Company's short of 1910, directed by J. Searle Dawley with Charles Ogle as the creature, runs a few minutes and has no room for any of it. James Whale's Frankenstein for Universal in 1931 made the decision that shaped the next 90 years: it gave the creature no speech at all, replaced his education with the surgical mistake of an abnormal brain, added an assistant who is not in the book, renamed the scientist Henry, and ended at a burning windmill that Shelley never wrote. Boris Karloff's performance is the reason the film works, and it works by pity rather than by argument. A creature who cannot speak cannot be answered, only feared or mourned.
Later versions have restored pieces of the missing half without restoring its function. Whale's own Bride of Frankenstein in 1935 gave the creature speech and made the second creature the centre of the film, which is closer to the book's crisis than the first film managed. Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, directed by Terence Fisher with Peter Cushing as Victor and Christopher Lee as the creature, moved the interest wholly onto the maker and made the creature a consequence. Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1994 went furthest back towards the text: it kept Walton, kept the Arctic, kept the glacier meeting, and cast Robert De Niro as a creature who talks. It also invented a sequence in which Elizabeth is brought back after her death, which is exactly the kind of addition the source refuses.
The creature is the most articulate person in the novel. He reasons, cites what he has read, and puts a case that Victor cannot refute and answers only by breaking his promise.
In the versions most people have seen, the creature groans, reaches, and is hunted. Sympathy is transferred from what he says to how he looks, and the moral weight moves off the argument and onto the face.
The change that mattered most: the monster loses the right of reply
The change that mattered most is not the neck bolts and not the windmill. It is that the creature loses the right of reply. Shelley wrote a book in which the wronged party gets to state his case at length, in the middle of the text, in his own voice, and where the reader is left holding a judgement the narrator will not make for them. Remove that section and the story collapses into a warning about scientists, which is the version that entered popular culture and the version most adaptations are actually adapting. The name transfer follows the same logic: audiences call the creature Frankenstein because on screen he has no self of his own to be named.
How faithful can any Frankenstein film be to the 1818 novel?
A Frankenstein film can be faithful on plot with little effort and faithful on voice almost not at all, which is why the question needs 4 answers rather than 1. Apply the axes in turn. Plot is the cheap half: the creation, the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval and Elizabeth, and the pursuit into the ice are durable, and most versions keep the sequence. Character is mixed, since Victor survives adaptation intact and his creation usually does not. Voice is where every version in the ledger below loses, because 3 nested first-person accounts have no ready screen equivalent and the obvious substitute, voice-over, is the device most directors refuse. Theme follows voice, since an argument the audience never hears is not an argument the film is making. The practical form of the question is therefore not how faithful a given film is, but whether the glacier meeting is in it and whether the creature is allowed to finish speaking.
Where the adaptations land on plot, character, voice and theme
On the site's four-point scale the adaptations cluster tightly: short distances on plot, long distances on voice, with everything else depending on whether the glacier scene is in the film. The table below measures distance travelled from the 1818 text, not quality: Whale's 1931 film is a better film than several of the versions that sit closer to the book.
| Work | Book | Film | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Edison short, dir. J. Searle Dawley | 1818 | 1910 | |
| Frankenstein, dir. James Whale | 1818 | 1931 | |
| Bride of Frankenstein, dir. James Whale | 1818 | 1935 | |
| The Curse of Frankenstein, dir. Terence Fisher | 1818 | 1957 | |
| Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, dir. Kenneth Branagh | 1818 | 1994 |
Plot travels least, because the sequence of deaths is durable and every version keeps most of it. Character travels moderately, since Victor survives adaptation better than his creation does. Voice travels furthest of all 4 axes, because the nested letters and the first-person testimony have no cheap screen equivalent and the obvious substitute, voice-over, is the device most directors refuse. Theme travels as far as voice does, and for the same reason: an argument the audience cannot hear is an argument the film is not making.