Just The Caffeine Talking

Mysteries of the Bride

Last week a much-reduced Crack Team of moviegoers went to the endearingly ramshackle Greenfield Garden Cinema to watch a special showing of the original The Bride of Frankenstein. It's still my favorite of all the classic Universal black-and-white monster movies. Maybe The Invisible Man is in the same league, but the rest of the pack is well behind them both.

Two things struck me while watching this showing. The first is how rushed the movie seems. There's no slow buildup, no rising tension, no mysteries to be resolved. It almost feels like James Whale wanted to blow past all the boring townsfolk-with-pitchforks parts and get to the big Animating the Bride set piece at the end as quickly as he could. Despite this, the beginning scenes of the movie are a little boring, especially since Una Merkel isn't as funny as James Whale apparently thought she was. But once Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius shows up, the movie rolls right ahead on rails and is a joy to watch.

The second thing which struck me is when the movie is supposed to take place. We begin with a frame story of Mary Shelley (played by Elsa Lanchester, who of course is also the titular Bride), telling her story to Percy Shelley and Lord Byron (played by Gavin Gordon hamming it up to the nth degree). Now, we know that this literary evening took place in 1816, and the actual novel Mary wrote is set some time in the previous century.

But the movie . . . isn't. It's hard to pin down when it's happening. The police have revolvers (post 1850s), there are recognizable electric filament bulbs in Frankenstein's laboratory (post 1870s), and the one date mentioned is the plaque on a coffin from the 1890s. But it's not 1935, nor is it any time during or after World War I. There are no telephones (except for an experimental device Pretorius uses to keep in touch with the Monster), no motor vehicles, no battling gangs of veterans. I'll tentatively place it in the Edwardian era, maybe 1910 or so. 

So how is Mary Shelley in 1816 telling a story which takes place a century later? Well, she's not called the First Science Fiction Writer for nothing. I don't know if this was a deliberate choice by the moviemakers or a happy accident, but the film The Bride of Frankenstein is literally a movie about a science fiction story. This even means any anachronisms can be explained away as Mary Shelley's fault, since she couldn't predict the dawn of the 20th century with perfect accuracy. 

Anyway, it's a cracking good movie, perfect to watch on Halloween. Highly recommended.

 

 

Auction Action!

Today the Friends of Deerfield are launching an online auction to raise funds for Deerfield's 350th anniversary celebration in 2023. Items for sale include antiques, sports memorabilia, gift cards, and artworks. But my readers may be especially interested in the books.

We've got signed collections of first editions by Western Massachusetts SF and fantasy authors: Elizabeth Bear, me, John Crowley, Paul Park, and Allen Steele. If any of you are collectors, this is a gold mine. Note that all of the authors have asked to not be told how much their books fetch at auction. (I probably won't be able to avoid seeing it myself.)

The auction ends November 15, so keep checking the page to see how the bidding is going. I've heard that the last few hours can get really exciting. Here's the link again.

Let the bidding begin!

The Day of Gold

Fall in New England is famous for its beauty. People come here from all over the country to go "leaf-peeping" in the countryside. In Deerfield we're ready for them with scented candles, artisanal baked goods, microbrews, maple candy, fossils, crafts, and restaurants.

But when does Fall begin? On September 22 I heard a radio host announcing the "official" beginning of Fall, as that day is the autumnal equinox — the time when the Earth's tilted axis is side-on to the Sun, so that all over the world the days and nights are of equal length. In the northern hemisphere the nights are going to get longer, in the southern hemisphere they're going to get shorter, but in late September we all have the same amount of daylight. It's the start of astronomical autumn, which lasts until the winter solstice in late December.

However, that's only one definition. Other dates for the start of autumn are the beginning of the grain harvest season, which in pre-modern Europe was August 1; or Labor Day, when summer vacation ends and well-dressed people switch to winter styles. In warm climates, where Fall is a fairly abstract concept anyway, the season is simply the months of September through November.

For me, Fall in New England starts with the Day of Gold, which isn't marked on any calendar. It's the day that the ferns and the birch trees on my land have lost their summer green, but haven't yet withered to brown. For just a little while, everything is golden wherever I look. Then I know that Fall has really arrived.