Clearly excellent.
James Whale, as every schoolchild knows, made a terrific film when he directed the 1931 Frankenstein. However, the movie bears scant resemblance to the novel by Mary Shelley (referred to in the credits as "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley"). Two years later, he directed the film version of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, and this movie surpasses Frankenstein because it is closer to the source material, and perhaps closer to the filmmaker's heart.
The 1998 film Gods and Monsters focuses on Whale's sexual orientation decades after the completion of his most famous work, but it is reasonable to assume that in 1933 he was himself an invisible man of sorts.
Arguably, Wells' 1897 book is the first mad scientist story. Doctors Frankenstein and Jekyll aren't insane. Frankenstein is repulsed by and fears his creation; Jekyll merely releases his bad side. Neither is Wells' Dr. Moreau. insane. All he does is experiment with genetics. But the Invisible Man is a scientist whose experiments physically alter him and, particularly so in the film, specifically cause insanity. To this extent The Invisible Man, both as book and film, appropriates a character akin to that associated with the best works of Edgar A. Poe.
It's the story of a man named Griffin desperate at first to find a way back to normalcy, who then eventually changes this plan and decides to teach people a lesson and ultimately rule the world.
What makes the movie visionary is the lack of anything pre-existing on which Whale could draw. Frankenstein lifts bits and pieces from Paul Wegener's The Golem (1920)--makeup artist Jack Pierce got his inspiration for the monster's look largely from a sketch by Goya--and Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935) plunders movie graves including The Magician (1926) and Metropolis (1927).
Probably second only to King Kong (1933), The Invisible Man also boasts the best special effects of any film from the 1930s, a time when filmmakers prized their secrets, and could not rely on the all-purpose magic of computer animation to do their work for them.
On one level, it's also the story of a guy having an absolutely fabulous time taking off his clothes in front of other men. Quoth Griffin to a dirty little coward named Kemp: "If you raise a finger against me, you're a dead man. I'm strong, and I'll strangle you."
Look carefully and you can see the film is packed with invisible men of all kinds. From a player piano which seems to operate by unseen hands, to the omnipresent voice of authority conveyed by radio, to Christian crosses built into the windows and doors of a drawing room laboratory referencing the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit, Whale's film revels in superlative cinema. The Invisible Man even subtly touches on gender issues by showing the women of the story shunted to a separate room to drink their beer invisibly.
To achieve notoriety by being invisible is automatically an interesting premise. The appearance of the enigmatically bandaged stranger in the boarding house pub of the English village of Iping as portrayed by the inimitable Claude Rains in his first film role, relying primarily on the sheer power of his voice, only further compounds the film's intrigue.
Looming imperceptibly over the entire affair, the vast shadow of Nikola Tesla. The greatest inventor--indeed, the greatest genius--the world has ever known inspired one of the world's most formidable literary minds. The cinematic effect of which remains undiminished to this day.
Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE
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