For Maggie Gyllenhaal, the director, writer, and co-producer of “The Bride!,” it all started with a tattoo.
Gyllenhaal was at a party in Los Angeles when she spotted the Bride of Frankenstein — as portrayed by Elsa Lanchester in the 1935 sequel directed by James Whale — tattooed on a man’s forearm. Realizing she had never actually seen the movie before, she watched and was surprised to discover the film was really about Frankenstein’s monster, not his supposed bride, who only appears at the very end.
That viewing got her wondering: What might a Bride of Frankenstein film look like if it actually centered the Bride?
“I thought it was an interesting puzzle,” Gyllenhaal said in a video interview from London. “What about that person who’s brought back from the dead without anyone asking what she wants? And what if she’s got major needs? Then what happens? Then we have a problem.”
In Gyllenhaal’s version, Frankenstein’s monster — aka “Frank” — is just another lonely guy looking for love. He hasn’t had much luck, though, so Frank (Christian Bale) goes to Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a groundbreaking scientist, to conjure up a mate for him.
This Bride, played by Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”) is equal parts romantic heroine — “this is a total love story,” the director said — and avenging angel. Buckley, who also starred in Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter,” leads a star-filled cast that includes a singing, dancing Jake Gyllenhaal. There are shootouts and bar brawls, one horrible monster (not Frank), and nods to Herman Melville and the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde.”
Between the 1935 original and this latest reimagining, which opens on March 6, there have been a host of other cinematic Brides, most revivified to mate with some guy they just met. Here are some of the most memorable.
1935
Elsa Lanchester in ‘Bride of Frankenstein’
The mother of the Brides. This sequel to the 1931 classic stars Boris Karloff as the lovelorn Monster and Lanchester, a little- known British actress at the time, in the dual role of Mary Shelley, the writer of “Frankenstein,” and the Bride.
“Friend?,” the Monster sheepishly wonders, as he rests his heavy-lidded eyes on his would-be mate. Judging from Lanchester’s extended shriek, that would be a no.
Lanchester only appears onscreen as the Bride for around four minutes, her entire performance limited to a few screams, hisses and goggle-eyed stares. Even so, “Elsa Lanchester is so formidable,” Gyllenhaal said. “Even in those few minutes, she makes such an impact without saying any actual words.”
Between her mesmerizing, wordless performance and towering, white-streaked bouffant, Lanchester (and the pioneering makeup artist Jack Pierce, who also fashioned the film’s Monster) created what continues to be the most immediately recognizable Bride of the bunch. Her iconic look has inspired countless Halloween costumes, as well as loving nods in everything from “Young Frankenstein” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to “The Simpsons.”
1973
Jane Seymour in ‘Frankenstein: The True Story’
In this lavish made-for-TV movie, the Bride, played by Jane Seymour, is a vision of beauty named Prima (“an angel,” the clearly smitten Dr. Frankenstein declares). The only way of knowing that Prima is actually a reanimated corpse is by her chilly body temperature (“how cool your hands are,” one dance partner remarks) and the long scar across her neckline that she keeps demurely hidden under a black choker.
Like Lanchester’s Bride, Prima wants nothing to do with the Monster, who, although once lovely like herself, is now covered from head to toe in open sores. Prima only has eyes for Dr. Frankenstein and soon goes about trying to seduce him — odd, since he’s sort of her father — and tormenting his understandably rattled fiancée. At a fancy party held in her honor, Prima is the belle of the ball, until the Monster comes and wrecks it all in a scene that is as horrifying and unexpected for viewers as it is for the party’s guests.
1994
Helena Bonham Carter in ‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’
In this Kenneth Branagh-directed outing, Helena Bonham Carter plays Elizabeth Lavenza, Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s adopted sister — true to the 1831 edition of Shelley’s novel — and would-be bride (his own, not his monster’s). In many ways, Bonham Carter is one of the most independent of the Brides, pushing back at Victor when he insists on spending so many hours in the lab, and proposing marriage to him at a time when proper ladies waited to be asked.
After Elizabeth has her heart ripped out by the Monster, played by Robert De Niro, a disconsolate Victor tries to reanimate her by stitching her head and hands onto the torso of a recently lynched family servant. It’s a rush job, and it shows. For her post-reanimation scenes, Bonham Carter spent five hours a day having her faux stitches applied; the film secured an Oscar nomination for best makeup, owing in no small part to that team’s rendition of Bonham Carter’s patchwork bride.
1985
Jennifer Beals in ‘The Bride’
Sting is Frankenstein! Jennifer Beals is the Bride! In this Frankenstein retelling for the MTV generation, Eva (Beals, fresh off “Flashdance”) is created by the good doctor as a female companion for the misshapen Monster. Before long, however, Frankenstein falls for his own creation and sets about trying to make Eva into the perfect woman and mate, this time, for himself. It all works until Eva, charming one and all in polite society, sees a cat for the first time and freaks (“I thought it was a tiny lion,” she explains). The whole spectacle points to one of the more cringe-worthy aspects of the Bride and her allure: While she might look like a grown woman, in many ways, she’s often only a few days or months old.
Unlike past Brides, Beals didn’t have to endure hours in a makeup chair as stitches and scars and elaborate hairpieces were applied. Nor does she meet a tragic end, like so many of the others. In this version, the Bride and the Monster bond after realizing they both share the same dad, sort of; the film ends with the two heading off to Venice for a well-deserved getaway.
2026
Jessie Buckley in ‘The Bride!’
As in the 1935 original, Buckley plays both Mary Shelley and the Bride, with Shelley acting as the film’s de facto narrator and, as the Bride’s true creator, the controlling mom.
Buckley’s Bride has a keen mind, a sharp tongue — stained a dark blue from vomiting up her crystalline solution IV drip — and a wicked sense of humor. The relationship between her and Frank is a non-marriage of equals: While she’s The Bride, she’s not Frank’s bride, or anybody’s.
She becomes increasingly independent — and, as it turns out, homicidal — so much so that she ends up igniting a feminist revolution.
“The movie starts with a murder, and you see who the Bride was before she gets brought back,” Gyllenhaal said. “She’s someone who was muzzled, who was silenced.”
“But when she comes back, her superpower is that she can’t be silenced,” she continued. “She doesn’t have the same filter most of us have. I found that she was such an exciting vessel to speak through because she can’t help but say all the dangerous things that none of us are supposed to say.”
The post The Many Brides of Frankenstein appeared first on New York Times.
