frankenstein (1931)

cinema as assemblage

Frankenstein’s monster is cinema itself.  Just as the monster is constructed from an ungodly conglomeration of lifeless limbs and organs, cinema is zapped into life by electricity and given a body through the stitching together of shots. As such, the monster functions as a perfect analogy for the way cinematic meaning is created from the assemblage of images. In re-watching this, I was struck how lifeless the editing is before the monster comes to life - it’s as if the film is actively demonstrating the way shots have been clinically amalgamated together to generate the sacrilegious recreation of reality that is cinema.