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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (film)

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a 1994 film about a brilliant but unorthodox scientist Victor Frankenstein who artificially creates and gives life to a humanoid being. When he abandons his creation, it escapes, is shunned for its ugliness and later swears revenge.

Directed by and Starring Kenneth Branagh. Written by Frank Darabont.
Be warned. It's alive.  (taglines)

Dialogue

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I busied myself to think of a story — which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature — and awaken thrilling horror. One to make the reader dread to look around, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.
-Opening line taken from the introduction of the novel
Victor Frankenstein: Do you share my madness?
Robert Walton: No, not madness.
Victor Frankenstein: What, then?
Robert Walton: There is a passage to the North Pole. And I will find it!
Victor Frankenstein: At the cost of your own life and the lives of your own crew?
Robert Walton: Lives come and go. If we succeed, our names will live on forever. I will be hailed as the benefactor of our species.
Victor Frankenstein: You're wrong. I of all men know that.
Victor Frankenstein: I haven't got time to argue!
Elizabeth: Oh, isn't it convenient? Or doesn't it fit in with your plans? Don't you ever think of anything or anyone than yourself?
Krempe: The foolish and vain force their views by their brawn. But knowledge is power only through god, our motto, easily forgotten by you young men in a hurry... . But perhaps the greatest mistake that all students make during their time here is to suppose that they can ever have an original or creative thought. We have all imagined that in our time. But gentleman you have not come here in order to think for yourselves. You are here to learn how to think for your patients. You must learn therefore in the first place, to submit yourselves to the established laws of physical reality.
Victor Frankenstein: But surely, Professor, you don't intend we disregard more philosophical approaches.
Krempe: Philosophical?
Victor Frankenstein: Those which stir the imagination as well as the intellect. As in Paracelsus, for example.
Krempe: Ah, Paracelsus. An arrogant and foolish Swiss.
Victor Frankenstein: Albertus Magnus.
Krempe: His nonsense was exploded 500 years ago!
Victor Frankenstein: Cornelius Agrippa.
Krempe: A sorcerer, an occultist. What is your name?
Victor Frankenstein: Victor Frankenstein sir. Of Geneva.
Krempe: Oh-ho. Another Swiss. Mr. Frankenstein here at the University of Ingolstadt, we teach and indeed hope to advance the science of medicine. Chemistry, biology, physics. We study hard science.
Victor Frankenstein: But surely professor the greatest possible advances lie in combining these things.
Krempe: We do not study the ravings of lunatics and alchemists hundreds of years in their graves because they're kind of amateur, fanatical, fantastical speculation does not heal bodies or save lives! Only science can do that. Now have we your permission to continue.
Krempe: Once and for all, Frankenstein. Life is life, death is death. These things are real. They are absolute... .
Victor Frankenstein: That is rubbish and you know it. The premise has been repeatedly challenged by members of your own staff! to Waldman Yes you sir! We don't know where life ends or death begins. Hair continues to grow after what we choose to call death, so do fingernails! We know that a man's brain may die, but his heart and lungs may continue to pump and breathe. Now you know that!
Krempe: Mr. Frankenstein of Geneva, I warn you what you are suggesting is not only illegal, it is immoral.
Victor Frankenstein: Rubbish!
Professor Waldman: You! Explain yourself!
Victor Frankenstein: Professor I'm sorry. Listen I came here to learn all about the new science. I'm Galvanism, Franklin's experiments. The combination of modern disciplines with ancient knowledge in an attempt to protect and create...
Professor Waldman: To create what?
Victor Frankenstein: So we can change things. We can make things better. Now you know that. We're on the verge of undreamt of discoveries, if we only have the courage to ask the right questions. Now you must help me. Please.
Professor Waldman: Come on.
Professor Waldman: Now for thousands of years, the Chinese have based their medical science on the belief that the human body is a chemical engine run by energy streams.
Victor Frankenstein: That's fascinating, then how do they explain... .
Professor Waldman: Henry is looking through his journals Don't touch that! Their doctors treat patients by inserting needles like these into the flesh at various key points to manipulate these electric streams
Victor Frankenstein: I see! So electricity is the key.
Professor Waldman: And that is why the central nervous system and it's crowning achievement the brain, are as complicated and mysterious a set of organs as you are ever likely to encounter. Handing a scalpel to Frankenstein Professor Waldman: Mr. Frankenstein the incision is yours. Excellent. Mr. Clerval you may remove the cranial lid.
Henry faints
Victor Frankenstein: No I'm serious. You take vaccine for instance. 30 years ago the entire concept of vaccine was unheard of, and now we save lives every day. But that isn't the whole answer.
Henry Clerval: What do you mean?
Victor Frankenstein: That sooner or later the best way to cheat death, will be to create life.
Henry Clerval: Now you've gone too far. There's only one God, Victor.
Victor Frankenstein: No. Leave God out of this. Listen. You love someone they have a sick heart. Wouldn't you give them a healthy one.
Henry Clerval: Impossible!
Victor Frankenstein: No, it's not impossible. We can do it. We're steps away. If we can do that if we can replace one part of a human being. We can replace every part. And if we can do that we can design a life. We can create a being that will not grow old or sicken. One that will be stronger than us, better than us, one that will be more intelligent than us, more civilized than us.
Henry Clerval: In our lifetime?
Professor Waldman: No!
Victor Frankenstein: How close did you get, Professor?
Professor Waldman: Too close.
Victor Frankenstein: Professor, I beg you, let me see these notes!
Professor Waldman: No! My work now and it's application, lies exclusively in the preservation of life. I abandoned my researches many years ago.
Victor Frankenstein: Why?
Professor Waldman: Because they resulted in abomination.
Murderer: You're not sticking that in me? Got a pox in it, I hear.
Woman: Pox? They're giving us pox?
Murderer: That's right, pox.
Professor Waldman: It's not pox. It's a vaccine that will prevent a plague in this city.
Woman: What's that?
Professor Waldman: It's a tiny harmless amount of anti-smallpox serum.
Murderer: You just said "pox"!
Professor Waldman: I said it was harmless. It's a necessary precaution, about which, this godforsaken city would be immediately put under quarantine.
Murderer: You doctors kill people. I don't care what you say you're not stickin' that in me!
Professor Waldman: Yes I am. It's the law! Now sit him down, someone.
Murderer: You're not stickin' that in me! You're not stickin' that in me!
Pulls out knife and fatally stabs the professor
Victor Frankenstein: Come on, Henry.
Henry Clerval: I can't help you, Victor. I can't help you.
Victor Frankenstein: You won't. What are you frightened of?
Henry Clerval: Everything! What do you think? And what if the authorities--?
Victor Frankenstein: Will do this in secret. I've got the raw materials, I've got Waldman's journals. Together we know more than Krempe's whole staff
Henry Clerval: You stole Waldman's journals?
Victor Frankenstein: We owe it to him to complete this work. He was one step away.
Henry Clerval: He never wanted this.
Victor Frankenstein: He couldn't face it, there's a difference.
Henry Clerval: Even if it were possible, and even if you had the right--which you don't--to make this decision for us... can you imagine for one second that there wouldn't be a terrible price to pay?
Victor Frankenstein: I think for the chance to defeat death and disease to let everyone on this Earth have the chance of life, sustained, healthy life, to allow people who love each other to be together forever... For all of that, I think it's a risk worth taking.
Henry Clerval: Victor? Victor! Victor, open the door! Victor, please!
Victor Frankenstein: What do you want?
Henry Clerval: There's cholera. It's an epidemic! The city's been placed under martial law. Are you listening to me, Victor?
Victor Frankenstein: Yes. And?
Henry Clerval: The militia's arriving to quarantine the city. Most of us are getting out while we still can. Krempe knows you're here. What if he tells the authorities?
Victor Frankenstein: Goodbye, Henry.
Elizabeth: Victor, it's me. Elizabeth. Can you hear me? Victor, I have to see you.
Victor Frankenstein: Go away.
Elizabeth: Please, Victor! I won't leave here until you see me.
Victor Frankenstein: Come in the side door. Alone!
Elizabeth: What's happened to you? How can you live here like this? And that stench.
Victor Frankenstein: Don't go in there!
He shuts the doors
Elizabeth: We have to leave. It isn't safe.
Victor Frankenstein: No, I have to stay.
Elizabeth: Even if it means you'll die?
Victor Frankenstein: Yes.
Elizabeth: Well, let me help you.
Victor Frankenstein: No, that's impossible.
Elizabeth: We made a promise. Victor, I beg you.
Victor Frankenstein: Look, I know that this is difficult for you to understand..but I cannot abandon this work now. It is too important. Not just for me, but, believe me, for everyone. And it must come first.
Elizabeth: Before us?
Victor Frankenstein: Elizabeth... I love you so much, but...
Elizabeth: Goodbye.
She runs out
The Creature: There are people, but they do not know me.
Grandfather: Why do you not go to them?
The Creature: Because I am so ugly, and they are beautiful.
The Creature: You gave me these emotions, but you didn't tell me how to use them. Now two people are dead, because of us. Why?
Victor Frankenstein: Something at work in my soul, which I do not understand...
The Creature: What of my soul? Do I have one? Or was that a part you left out? Who were these people of which I am comprised? Good people? Bad people?
Victor Frankenstein: Materials, nothing more.
The Creature: You're wrong. [picks up recorder] Do you know I knew how to play this? In which part of me did this knowledge reside? In these hands? In this mind? In this heart? And reading, and speaking. Not things learned so much as things remembered.
Victor Frankenstein: Trace memories in the brain, perhaps.
The Creature: Did you ever consider the consequences of your actions? You gave me life, and then left me to die. Who am I?
Victor Frankenstein: You? I don't know.
The Creature: And you think that I am evil.
Victor Frankenstein: What can I do?
The Creature: There is something I want. A friend.
Victor Frankenstein: A friend?
The Creature: A companion... a female. Someone like me, so she won't hate me.
Victor Frankenstein: Like you? Oh God, you don't know what you're asking...
The Creature: I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
Krempe: You fool, Victor Frankenstein of Geneva, how could you know what you had unleashed? How was it pieced together? Bits of thieves? Bits of murderers? Evil stitched to evil stitched to evil. God help your loved ones.
Victor Frankenstein: Go on, kill me now!
The Creature: That is too mild. If you deny me my wedding night, I will be with you on yours!
Victor Frankenstein: I have done something - so terrible, so evil, that I am frightened that if I tell you the truth, that I will lose you.
Elizabeth: You'll lose me if you don't.
[Walton finds the Creature weeping over Frankenstein's body]
Captain Robert Walton: Who are you?
The Creature: He never gave me a name. [continues to weep]
Captain Robert Walton: Why do you weep?
The Creature: He was my father.
[Reading from the Bible at Frankenstein's funeral]
Robert Walton: "And yea, I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly, and I perceived that all is vanity and vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief, and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. For God shall bring every work and every secret thing into judgment, whether it be good or whether it be evil."
[The Creature continues to weep]
Crewman: Captain, we--
Robert Walton: He has a right to bear witness!
[The Creature falls into the freezing water as the ice fractures]
Captain Robert Walton: [offering his hand] Come with us!
The Creature: [shakes his head] I am done with Man! [swims towards Frankenstein's pyre with a torch]

Taglines

[edit]
  • Be warned. It's alive.
  • It's Alive.
  • Be warned.

Cast

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[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia


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