Born in 1899, James Whale grew up in poverty in the West Midlands of England and worked as a cobbler before turning to acting and directing for the stage. His London production of R.C. Sheriff's anti-war play, Journey's End, triggered an invitation to Hollywood, where Whale made his directing debut with a film of Sheriff's play in 1930.
Over the next 11 years Whale directed 21 feature films, among them such remarkable achievements as the definitive movie of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which made a star of Boris Karloff, and that rare breed, a superior sequel, in the 1935 Bride Of Frankenstein, featuring Elsa Lanchester; the Gothic comedy, The Old Dark House; the imaginative H.G. Wells adaptation, The Invisible Man, with Claude Rains; and a majestic musical, Showboat, in which Paul Robeson memorably sang Ol' Man River.
All of those films are featured in a valuable Whale season which the IFC is presenting over the next fortnight to coincide with today's release of the enthralling Gods And Monsters, a speculative fiction set in 1957, in the last weeks of Whale's life. The screenplay, which earned an Oscar last month for the film's director, Bill Condon, is based on Christopher Bram's novel, Father Of Frankenstein.
As the film begins, Whale, now long-retired from the film industry, is recovering from a minor stroke, and living a bored and lonely life in the home he shares with his devoted Hungarian housekeeper in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. Whale remains impeccably dressed and groomed for a life now largely empty except for memories. As he puts it, "I have spent most of my life outrunning the past and now it floods all over me."
Into his life comes a new gardener, Clayton Boone, a muscular young Korean war veteran who immediately attracts the attention of Whale, who, unusually for a film-maker of his time, was openly gay. Although Boone is resolutely heterosexual and is initially tense in Whale's presence, a close bond gradually forms between them.
Gods And Monsters, which takes its title from a line in Bride Of Frankenstein, recalls the recent Love And Death On Long Island in its acutely observed picture of the relationship between a gay, elderly Englishman and the straight young American male who is the object of his affection. Bill Condon's film inevitably recalls Sunset Boulevard in its period and setting, and specifically in its ominous shots of a Hollywood swimming pool and the heavily-accented voice of the subject's servant.
The narrative of Condon's inventive, touching and compassionate film is graced with precisely integrated flashbacks to Whale's grim upbringing in Dudley, to the trenches of the first World War when he was in love with a fellow soldier, and to the production of Bride Of Frankenstein. Gods And Monsters is designed and photographed with an elegance which belies its low budget.
Above all, it is enriched by the sublime central performance of a silver-haired Ian McKellen in an urbane, dignified and poignant portrayal of Whale. Best known for his work in much lighter fare such as George Of The Jungle and the recent Blast From The Past, Brendan Fraser is a revelation as Clayton Boone, as Condon effectively taps into his trademark innocence and naive charm. And in a comeback role judged just on the right side of parody, Lynn Redgrave is quite unrecognisable as the housekeeper who, although she strongly disapproves of Whale's sexual proclivities, is loyal and caring, forever fussing over him.
The pleasures of Gods And Monsters are compounded by its keen sense of humour, not least when Whale brings Boone to a Hollywood party in honour of Princess Margaret, which is hosted by the secretly gay film-maker, George Cukor, and attended by Whale's former stars, Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester. Introducing Boone to the princess, Whale has Cukor squirming when he quips, "He's never met a princess before - only old queens." By Michael Dwyer
8MM/Eight Millimeter (18) General release
Joel Schumacher's phoney, simplistic and nakedly manipulative thriller 8MM is based, like the riveting and terrifying Se7en, on a screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker, but this apparent numerical sequence does not denote a sequel, despite Schumacher's helpless striving to recapture the bleakness and menace of the dark, rain-swept and shocking Se7en.
It ought to have caught those qualities, according to Walker who claims his screenplay for 8MM was rearranged and rewritten to the extent that he refuses to see the film. "It was such an inherently depressing experience," he said in a recent interview, "that the very least I can do is protect myself from the miserable experience of watching it."
The film features Nicolas Cage in a blank, vacant performance as a surveillance specialist who is noted for his discretion and is hired by a wealthy widow (Myra Carter) to investigate the veracity and circumstances of a snuff movie in which a runaway schoolgirl appears to have been murdered. The trail takes him from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, where his eyes are opened to the hardcore sex business by a street-smart porn store employee archly named Max California and played with a welcome freshness by Joaquin Phoenix.
In its principal themes, 8MM mines territory already treated with depth and sensitivity by Paul Schrader and Robert Aldrich in Hardcore and Hustle, respectively, and it falls very far short of those achievements. In Schumacher's film there is a perilously thin line between the exploitation and sleaze which it seeks to expose and the exploitative and sleazy nature of that exposition. One doesn't expect much better from Schumacher, a former art director whose entire output as a film-maker has been distinguished only by the gritty, in-your-face Falling Down which was powered by Michael Douglas at his fiery, volatile best. Overwrought and absurdly over-stretched, 8MM is altogether closer to Schumacher's more recent efforts, the equally nasty A Time To Kill and the equally vapid Batman & Robin. By Michael Dwyer
Message In A Bottle (12) General release
The yachting fraternity has been criminally ignored as a potential audience by Hollywood up to now, an omission redressed by Luis Mandoki with this schmaltzy two-hander targeted firmly at the deck-shoe-wearing classes. How else to explain Message In A Bottle, in which forty-something angst is cured by the bracing tang of sea spray and the donning of chunky, cable-knit sweaters?
Divorcee Robin Penn Wright, given to much pensive staring into the middle distance, is the despair of her friends and colleagues for refusing to get back into the dating game, until, walking along the beach one day, she comes across a sealed bottle with a mysterious, poetic letter inside. Her journalistic instincts aroused by the potential for a full-colour, front cover lifestyle column on the subject, she tracks down the message to its source, a small fishing port on the Atlantic seaboard, where widowed boat-builder Kevin Costner spends his time pensively staring into the middle distance and refusing to get into the dating game.
Cue much skimming over waves, with Kevin showing off his jaw-line and Wright looking dewy-eyed. The course of true love does not run smooth, of course, and there are squalls and swells before the final act's harbour is finally, and mercifully, reached. A supporting cast that inexplicably includes Paul Newman and Robbie Coltrane looks on, appalled. By Hugh Linehan
