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The First Film Version of Frankenstein, Newly Restored!

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Rarely has the arrival of a film at the Packard Campus occasioned as much anticipation as the day in April 2015 when the sole surviving nitrate print of the first cinematic adaptation of Frankenstein (Edison Manufacturing Company, 1910) was accessioned into our collection. It’s not because the film is all that revelatory—it’s most decidedly not—or because it’s especially rare, as a quick search on YouTube will attest. Rather, this is an instance in which the story of how this particular reel came to be in our collection is more interesting than the film itself.

Edison Kinetogram, March 1910

As an acquisitions officer, I work a lot with collectors and have a great deal of respect for them. If it weren’t for collectors, huge chunks of film history would have vanished forever and in many ways our Silent Film Project is a testament to them. But, sometimes, I have to explain to eager sellers that there’s a difference between rarity and value; just because there’s only one print of a particular film, that doesn’t mean the print has much monetary value if there’s no market for it. The nitrate print of Frankenstein does, however, have market value, one based not only on rarity since it truly does seem to be the single extant print, but also crucially on the cultural durability of Mary Shelley’s 1818 creation, whose bicentennial we celebrate this year. It also comes with a bit of notoriety because of its previous owner, Alois F. “Al” Dettlaff of Cudahy, Wisconsin. Dettlaff acquired the print as part of a larger collection in the 1950s, but he wasn’t aware of the film’s significance until the American Film Institute included Frankenstein on a list of “top ten most wanted lost films” in 1980.

I never met Dettlaff, but it seems like everyone in film collecting circles has a story. Often they’re about the “Father Time” character he enjoyed portraying at film conventions, compete with robe, scythe, and hourglass to complement his long white beard. He was exceptionally protective of the Frankenstein print, traveling with it to film festivals and monster conventions. He even took it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1986, where Academy President and famed director Robert Wise was unable to convince him to let the reel be properly preserved and archived. Eventually Dettlaff had the film transferred to DVDs he would sell at his appearances, and it’s rips from that DVD you can find on YouTube. Dettlaff died at home in 2005 surrounded by his film collection, including Frankenstein, still unpreserved.

Until now, that is.

The Library purchased the Dettlaff Collection in 2014 and while it is full of titles we are delighted to add to our holdings, we were especially interested to see Frankenstein, joking that perhaps it might arrive from Wisconsin on a bed of spun gold. While it came in a fairly nondescript can, it didn’t take us long to get the reel into our film preservation lab for a 2K scan in advance of photochemical preservation. From that 2K scan we worked on a digital restoration. The film’s head credits and the first intertitle were missing, but fortunately the Edison Historic Site in East Orange, New Jersey, had a copy of the head credit we could drop into place; the intertitle was recreated using the style of the other titles. We asked Donald Sosin, a highly regarded silent film composer and accompanist, to provide a score.

The newly restored version of the 1910 Frankenstein is also available on the Library’s YouTube channel and in the National Screening Room, our recently launched digital collection of films. And, like most films on the NSR, it’s freely downloadable in both ProRes LT and MPEG-4 formats, complete with the Sosin score.

Not long after creating the monster, Victor Frankenstein was consumed with regrets, exclaiming that he “had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” In our case, however, reanimating this notorious bit of cinema history was, and remains, a delight.

 

Comments (11)

  1. Actress who played Dr. Frankenstein’s bride, Mary Fuller, is buried in Historic Congressional Cemetery, Washington DC.

  2. that was cool. thank you.

  3. This is a wonderful resource. Thank you for the restoration & preservation work, as well as making these fascinating old films available again.

  4. What a wonderful surprise! I guess I’m one of the leftover lingering Famous Monsters that met Dettlaff story ridden crowd… if you like, the full story of the making of the film and the possession of it by Mr. Dettaff is told in my book “Edison’s Frankenstein” published in 2010 by BearManor Media… unplug the plug Frederick Wiebel, Jr.

  5. I’ve had a copy of Edison’s “Frankenstein” since buying the DVD in 2003, along with Fred Wiebel’s informative book, “Edison’s Frankenstein.”
    Nice to see the film again after the restoration, revealing more details of the set.
    Donald Sosin’s score works well with this short feature.
    Edison’s “Frankenstein” is unique since in this version, it can be argued that the monster, was actually created only in Victor Frankenstein’s mind. The final scene in the film suggests that.

  6. Doesn’t the original cue sheet for the music survive? Figured that would be the way to go when providing a score. New scan still looks beautiful.

  7. The film was very interesting to see how the original book from Mary Shelley was first made as a film. Equally interesting is to see how film technology has come so far today.

  8. This was indeed a silent film, give that era; however, a proposed musical score for the film was drafted and below is a link to one version of the recording. Phil Collins (composer of Metropolis) also recreated the score in 2013.

    https://lifetowardtwilight.bandcamp.com/album/edisons-frankenstein-2

  9. I’m surprised I found this-thank you LOC!

  10. Sometime in the 1990s, I saw this film on Halloween in a Milwaukee area theater, with a live organist contributing the score.

  11. There is no end to the ways libraries make me happy. Last week flutes, this week, Frankenstein WITH a fresh score. Nice work, LoC!

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