:28:01
Those kinds of feelings - both extremes -
weren't in the first film.
:28:07
Humour has never been so artfully
blended into a horror film as in the Bride.
:28:12
Very bizarre, this little chap.
:28:14
There's a certain resemblance to me,
don't you think?
:28:17
Or do I flatter myself?
:28:19
Hindsight tells us that Whale's
sense of humour is sort of camp.
:28:25
I'm not sure that that's really
quite how it was at the time.
:28:29
I think the camp and kitschy
elements of his humour
:28:33
may be something...
a gloss we're putting on it,
:28:36
some 60 years... 65 years
after the picture was made.
:28:40
The humour in Bride of Frankenstein
permeates much of the story line.
:28:46
It isn't in comedy-relief segments,
:28:50
but it is part and parcel
with the characters
:28:54
and what they do in the main story line.
:28:57
Pretorius is a comic figure because
of the way he stands outside of life,
:29:04
of the world, of Henry,
of his own existence,
:29:08
and comments on it, if only
in the irony of his perspective.
:29:15
He doesn't take existence seriously.
:29:19
So he makes comments about
his creations of these little people,
:29:24
he makes comments about himself
being like the devil or vice versa.
:29:30
He has an ironic twist to existence,
:29:35
which is, from what I can tell, something
that he shares - that character shares -
:29:40
and the actor who played him,
Ernest Thesiger, shared -
:29:44
with James Whale himself.
:29:45
Dr Pretorius is firstly
an archetypal old queen.
:29:49
I think we should fess up about that
right from the beginning.
:29:52
He is however also Mephistopheles
to Colin Clive
:29:57
as Frankenstein's... Faust, I think.