SOURCE: "James Whale," in Film Comment, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring, 1971, pp. 52-7

It certainly is becoming harder and harder to keep track of the auteurs, especially now that more and more lost films are reaching present-day screens. Directors who once existed solely as names without identity now must be evaluated on the basis of a body of work long unknown. James Whale is one such filmmaker. Even though a few of his films—Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein—show up fairly often on television, these works are only a fraction of his output; and the fact that they are all horror films causes him to be typed as an effective but limited genre specialist. Some of his films are still out of reach and others are rarely screened (this writer is particularly indebted to William K. Everson for privileges in this area), but many are now available and enough is known about the others to warrant educated guesses.

Actually, Whale's decade-long career encompassed an impressive variety of styles and subjects. He has viewed war from the trenches (Journey's End) and from London during an air raid (Waterloo Bridge), and he has followed some youthful German soldiers home when the war ended (The Road Back, Erich Maria Remarque's sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front). He made the second version of Kern's and Hammerstein's Show Boat, a biography of actor David Garrick (The Great Garrick), a feature based on Marcel Pagnol's Fanny trilogy (Port of Seven Seas), an adaptation of Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask, and a version of John Galsworthy's last novel (One More River). To these can be added a jungle picture (Green Hell), a Lubitsch-style sophisticated comedy (By Candlelight), a comedy-romance set in a hospital (Impatient Maiden), a comedy-mystery (Remember Last Night?), a courtroom drama (The Kiss before the Mirror, which he also remade as Wives under Suspicion), and a shipwrecked-on-an-island story (Sinners in Paradise). Clearly, Whale's career is quite a bit more varied than might at first be assumed.

But a wide variety of subjects does not assure a director of individuality; indeed, it could easily be a sign of an eclectic personality with no real interests of his own. Yet despite considerable differences, Whale's films do contain consistencies of content and technique that should encourage any auteur-seeking critic. Other difficulties may arise because Whale, though an Englishman, directed all his films within the Hollywood studio system and never received a screen-writing credit. Yet there is considerable evidence that he at least "conferred" a great deal with his writers, and since he entered the field a successful stage director whose first movie was also successful, he no doubt had considerable say as to what projects he would undertake. (One need only recall Whale's winning of Frankenstein from Robert Florey to realize the extent of his influence.)

One indication that Whale exerted substantial creative control over his films is the fact that he tended to work with the same people more than once. He didn't have a stock company in the Ingmar Bergman sense, and he didn't work with any single writer as closely as Frank Capra did with Robert Riskin, but there is enough overlap to confirm that when he found someone with whom he could work he made it a point to keep him around. The best illustration is that of R.C. Sherriff, the playwright for whom Whale directed the stage and screen versions of Journey's End. Later, Sherriff worked on the scripts of The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, One More River, and The Road Back, as well as a few unfilmed projects. While Whale was working on Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels, he met Joseph Moncure March, the dialogue writer on that air epic. Deciding that March knew his job, Whale and production supervisor George Pearson went out of their way to obtain his services in adapting Journey's End to the screen. Similarly, playwright Benn Levy worked on the scripts of both Waterloo Bridge and The Old Dark House. Arthur Edeson photographed five Whale films, John Mescall five, and Karl Freund three.

As for performers, certain ones turn up with interesting frequency. Colin Clive was leading man in four films, and E.E. Clive provided comedy relief for four. Mae Clarke, Gloria Stuart, and Lionel Atwill appeared in three films each, while quite a few others can be seen in at least two: John Boles, Frederick Kerr, Paul Lukas, Ernest Thesiger, Reginald Denny, Frank Morgan, Warren William, Joan Bennett, Andy Devine, and (unfortunately) Una O'Connor. From a look at other Universal films of the period, it seems that this consistency is less a case of studio contract players being injected into films than of a director making as many personal choices in casting as he could.

Perhaps the most difficult kind of auteur to be is one whose films rely a great deal on their scripts, which are written by others. Whale's career in particular has an unabashed literary tone to it: his films are almost always adaptations of plays or novels by respected authors like Robert E. Sherwood, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Sherriff, Galsworthy, Remarque, and Pagnol; and when a man like Sherriff provides a script it is usually equipped with adroit and witty dialogue. What, then, makes Whale's handling of these scripts different from or better than anyone else's?

For one thing, the mere fact that he could select this sort of script, and could film it with a sensitivity to its virtues, sets Whale apart from many of the other directors working in Hollywood. His British restraint produces a style best described as refined, graceful, well-bred; his directorial technique refuses to draw attention to itself, yet is extremely confident and competent. All the mechanical devices of cinema are used—cutting, moving camera, composition—yet with a civilized discretion and an emphasis on subtle character revelation.

One review of Journey's End expresses this quality:

The man who directed the stage productions in England and in this country also directed the picture—James Whale. With almost the first shot you get the feeling that he knew just what he was doing and just how to do it: you can surrender yourself without any fear that fumbling and uncertainty and inadequacy are going to bob up and spoil things. He has not done anything revolutionary or even novel in technique—in fact the production may easily be made a theme for argument among those who like to discuss the relative merits of stage and screen. For myself I find that the screen brings the characters closer to me …

Even though Journey's End was officially Whale's first film, and that should be soon enough to expect this kind of praise, his skill was actually illustrated even earlier. In 1929 Whale had been hired by Howard Hughes to supervise the numerous dialogue scenes of Hell's Angels, and supposedly it was he who had the story changed and who directed these parts. (His credit line reads: "Dialogue staged by James Whale.") These scenes, viewed today, have a surprising quality of conciseness which is consistent with Whale's handling of Frankenstein and One More River Many scenes last for little more than a minute and contain very little dialogue; overtly, not much seems to happen, but a great deal is revealed nonetheless. The direction is fluid, with a considerable number of long, medium, and close shots—with the latter two dominant. There is even counterpoint between sound and image, and some tracking shots during delivery of lines. Among sequences shot in 1929, these stand out as not microphone-inhibited, as looking like "normal" scenes or even somewhat better, as lacking self-conscious speaking and pausing.

In one such vignette, from Hell's Angels a hand in close-up delivers a letter to one of the main characters, a German youth named Karl. This is followed by a medium shot of three boys standing around a lamp as one of them, Karl, reads the letter to himself. One of the others asks, "Someone ill?" The now-drafted Karl hands him the letter; the friend reads it, then exclaims, "Karl!" Fade out.

An earlier scene introduces the two British heroes, still students at Oxford; it gives us needed information about the personalities and social situation in a natural, casually indirect way. Two young men in a room are prompted by a newspaper headline to discuss the war. A third, Monte, sits reading on a couch, occasionally interrupting to tell the others to be quiet. The first two continue talking. Eventually, Monte interrupts to ask how to spell "ecstatic." Fade out.

Probably the shortest, most concise episode has Roy rush excitedly into the students' room. "I've enlisted, Monte—Royal Flying Corps!" Monte replies, "You're a fool, Roy." Fade out, and on to the next scene.

In this fashion Whale goes to the heart of a narrative without wasting time or space. And yet, this ability is combined with his obvious pleasure in a leisurely pace, and a fondness for observing the small details of person and place that might not be needed to tell the story, but which do give social and psychological texture to it. By saving time on the narrative, Whale is able to provide these "extras" while still making an efficient, short film that encompasses a great deal of character interaction.

Probably the best example of this is One More River, which brings in a governmental crisis, the gold standard, an election, comments on British divorce laws, a trial, and numerous characters the relationships between whom must be clearly established. In the midst of all this, Whale is still able to digress by showing how a cloakroom attendant remembers which hat belongs to which customer, or by having the stiffly polite Reginald Denny get slightly (unspokenly) irritated at the many women who stop at his restaurant table to greet the recently returned Diana Whynyard, since he has to stand up each time. At their best, Whale's films offer many such bonuses.

Apparently Whale was quite aware of this aspect of his work, and consciously aimed to achieve it. Speaking of Journey's End in one interview, he noted that

the suspense was made up of very small things. But the audience cared so much about the actors in it; whether one of them drank tea or wanted coffee mattered enormously.

Earlier he had said:

When it comes to human emotions people are the same … and the simpler a big situation is presented to them the harder it strikes. The whole foundation of Journey's End, to my mind, is that it presents an unusual situation in a most appealing way. Some critics have said that it violates the ethics of the drama. It does not, because the essential element in all drama is truth …

The feeling that truth is most convincingly presented through simplicity might be seen as a guiding principle in Whale's work. Recall, for example, that the success of Henry Frankenstein's original experiment is presented solely by showing the Monster's hand moving. This in itself is unimpressive, but because the characters are people we believe in and care about it functions as a dramatically charged moment, whereas having the Monster get up and stumble about would be pushing credibility too far.

Whale's commitment to truth and to good humored British restraint also robs his films of the impure and simple villain, since even characters who do bad things are rounded and human enough to be somehow sympathetic. This is obviously true of the Monster and scientist in Frankenstein. In Bride of Frankenstein, the satanic Pretorious has charm, wit, and some justification for his bitterness. The inhabitants of The Old Dark House are quaintly eccentric, and even the homicidal maniac is helpless-looking and ingratiating, while Karloff 's butler only gets violent when he is drunk. Arrogant and dangerous individuals like Griffin in The Invisible Man or the husband in One More River usually have other sides to their personalities to make them fuller figures, and the personal dignity and charm of their actors (Claude Rains and Colin Clive, respectively) aid in creating this effect.

These virtues no doubt originated, or at least found support, in the theatrical milieu of which Whale was a part before (and after) entering films, and other aspects of his work also indicate a sense of "theatricality" that gives the films a distinctive tone. His occasionally perverse sense of humor is seen in bits of business that are straightforward, unexpected coups de théâtre. Fritz's pause on the stairs to pull up his sock (in Frankenstein) and Horace Femm's tossing of his sister's flowers into the fireplace (The Old Dark House) fall into this category.

A penchant for pointing out the roles and poses of characters also indicates a sensitivity to the "phoneyness" of performing. The clearest example of this is in Frankenstein, when the scientist explains to his visitors what he is about to do. In Whale's own words:

He deliberately tells his plan of action. By this time the audience [in the laboratory and in the movie theatre] must at least believe something is going to happen; it might be disaster, but at least they will settle down to see the show. Frankenstein puts the spectators in their positions, he gives final orders to Fritz, he turns the levers and sends the diabolic machine soaring upward to the roof, into the storm. He is now in a state of feverish excitement calculated to carry both the spectators in the windmill and the spectators in the theatre with him.

Clearly, Whale viewed Henry Frankenstein as a director-performer manipulating his dual audiences. In a letter to Colin Clive about the character, he notes that "in the first scene in his laboratory he becomes very conscious of the theatrical drama." Frankenstein is even given the following dialogue, "Quite a good scene, isn't it? One man, crazy; three very sane spectators," and the scene is staged to emphasize this performer-audience division.

Other illustrations of this side of Whale are less obvious, but grouped with the above they do seem consistent. Ernest Thesiger must have aroused Whale's interest, because after directing him in The Old Dark House he put him in Bride of Frankenstein, thus establishing the film's overall outre tone. Yet Thesiger's style is totally mannered and quite unrealistic; he is obviously acting, with this exaggeration partially justified by making it the character who is speaking in this artificial, ironic style. Interestingly, the "eccentric" aunt played by Mrs. Patrick Campbell in One More River is an only slightly less extreme female version of Thesiger, which points up the stage origin of this entertaining style. Similar is Whale's fondness for the broad playing of British character actors like Frederick Kerr and E.E. Clive (and the fatal fascination with Una O'Connor), as well as Americans like Andy Devine. Conveniently, Whale's discrete and gentle handling of these performers often managers to blend them smoothly into the rest of the film.

Other elements of Whale's films deserve a closer look for what they might reveal about the director's awareness of artificiality and poses, and occasionally of the things they cover up. A "truth game" is played in The Old Dark House, forcing the visiting characters to be honest about themselves, and there is a considerable contrast between the weak and gentle appearance of the Femms and their very real, and quite dangerous, insanity. The Kiss before the Mirror and its remake Wives under Suspicion hinge on whether or not a seemingly "normal" man might be driven to commit murder; and the appearance-reality contrast of the Frankenstein Monster is well known. Reflections, usually in mirrors but occasionally, as in Bride, in a pool of water, keep turning up to emphasize someone's external "image."

Whale's ability to handle the visual side of his films is often taken for granted, because it isn't flamboyant, yet it should be discussed since it is totally under control and unusually expressive. His background as a newspaper cartoonist, and as a theatrical set and costume designer, equipped Whale for supervising the appearance of whatever he planned to photograph, and helps to explain his fondness for a semi-expressionistic vision of characters silhouetted against a stark sky, as though standing on a hilltop with no visible land in the background. This is of course important to Whale's Frankenstein films, but it also can be seen in the laborer shots in Showboat's "Old Man River" number. Whale also had a well-developed sense of camera movement, yet he was never so fond of a tracking shot that he wouldn't cut away from it before completion if it seemed to have served its purpose.

It is the editing that gives Whale's best pictures their quite special flow and grace. However, his cutting is not noticeable unless a viewer is looking for it, since its purpose is to support and reveal the content rather than to distract from it. Whale's secret is simply that he is willing to go to the extra trouble of securing multiple camera set-ups—not from different angles, necessarily, but from different distances. As a result, he will cut from a medium shot (mid-groin to top-of-head) to a medium-close shot (mid-chest to top-of-head) during a character's speech; the shots are similar enough to each other that the cut goes unnoticed, but they are not so similar that a jump-cut results.

Whale often used this cutting when introducing a character, as in the long shot-medium shot-close shot-extra close shot series as the Monster backs into the laboratory and turns around in Frankenstein. A variation on this occurs when the butler (Karloff) in The Old Dark House gets dangerous and Whale cuts from a close-up of the face to tight close-ups of just the eyes and the mouth. Other examples are Griffin's entrance into the pub in The Invisible Man and the deserted husband's arrival in One More River. The agony of the Monster's semi-crucified position when captured by the mob in Bride is emphasized by this style of editing, while a conversation between Dr. Pretorious and Henry Frankenstein in that film cuts between several different but very similar camera angles.

The opening thirty shots Mary Wollstonecraft-Percy Shelley-Lord Byron episode of Bride is a lengthy illustration of how this technique can be used in a dialogue scene as a cinematic equivalent of a stage director's attempt to analyze a line and "point up" the more significant parts, and direct the audience's attention to the subject of the line when appropriate.

1. long shot of building; camera tracks in.
2. dissolve to exterior of window: Byron is seen looking out, the other two sitting within.
3. dissolve to long shot of interior: characters are in same positions, but seen from the side. Camera tracks in.
4. dissolve to right side of room: Byron in center, Shelley on left, window on right.
5. dissolve to medium long shot of Byron as he says: "How beautifully dramatic! The crudest, savage exhibition of Nature, at her worst without, and we three, we elegant three, within." While talking Byron walks to the left; camera pans to follow, and final shot includes all three.
6. cut to medium shot of Byron: "I should like to think that an irate Jehovah was pointing those arrows of lightning directly at my head—"
7. cut to close-up of Byron: "—the unbowed head of George Gordon, Lord Byron, England's greatest sinner."
8. cut to medium long shot of Byron standing on the left, Shelley sitting on the right: "But I cannot flatter myself to that extent. Possibly those thunders are for our dear Shelley—"
9. cut to medium close shot of Shelley: "—Heaven's applause for England's greatest poet."
10. cut to slightly different medium close up as Shelley replies: "What of my Mary?"
11. cut to medium close up of Mary, sewing. Byron's voice: "She is an angel." Mary: "You think so?"
12. cut to medium long shot of Byron and Shelley. Byron: "You hear? Come Mary, come and watch the storm."
13. cut to medium close up of Mary: "You know how lightning alarms me—"
14. cut to close-up of Mary: "—Shelley darling, will you please light these candles for me?"
15. cut to long shot of the three as Shelley crosses in the background. Byron: "Astonishing creature!"
16. cut to close-up of Mary: "Aye, Lord Byron?"
17. cut to medium shot of Byron: "Frightened of thunder, fearful of the dark, and yet you have written a tale—"
18. cut to close-up of Mary. Byron's voice: "—that sent my blood into icy creeps." Mary looks up and laughs.
19. cut to medium shot of Mary on the left, Byron on the right. Byron continues: "Can you believe that bland and lovely brow conceived of Frankenstein—"
20. cut to medium shot of Byron: "—a monster created from cadavers out of rifled graves?"
21. cut to long shot of the three, as Shelley returns to his original position. Byron continues: "Isn't it astonishing?"
22. cut to medium shot of Mary: "I don't know why you should think so."
23. cut to medium shot of Byron. Mary continues: "What do you expect?"
24. cut to close-up of Mary. Mary continues: "Such an audience needs something stronger than a pretty little—"
25. cut to close-up of Shelley. Mary continues: "—love story."
26. cut to close-up of Mary. She continues: "So why shouldn't I write of monsters?"
27. cut to long shot of the three. Byron: "No wonder Murray's refused to publish the book; he says his reading public would be—"
28. cut to close-up of Mary. Byron: "—too shocked." Mary: "It will be published, I think."
29. cut to medium shot of Shelley. Shelley: "Then, darling, you will have much to answer for."
30. cut to close-up of Mary in profile: "The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson, of the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God."

Byron then recalls certain parts of the story, as we are shown short sections of the first film. Soon after, Mary starts to tell the rest and we are into the main body of the film.

This complicated but smooth editing technique is something that only the director could have imposed on the film; there is no indication of it in the original shooting script. It is in this way, as well as in the others already described, that Whale deserves to be classified as a director of personal films, despite the fact that he used scripts credited to others. As for his career as a whole, it is still impossible to say for sure just how many of his films are good, and how many reveal his individuality. It is enough, for the moment, to conclude that in general he reveals a maturity and sensitivity of content and style that should assure him of our continued respect.