The Invisible Man (1933)

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

#97. The Invisible Man (1933)

 

“A special film such as this one brings unmitigated joy to those of the 20th century who like to sit in the dark and watch motion pictures, an activity that could have hardly been envisioned a couple of thousand years ago; and, is looked upon, even today, with a strange reserve by those who don’t take their movies that seriously, not understanding just how rewarding it is for those who find certain films so important — that it becomes an integral part of their life. For such film buffs, they can see the same film over and over again getting the same great satisfaction.”

---Critic Dennis Swartz

 

The Golden Years of Universal Monsters, an era of remarkable and concentrated excellence, ran from 1923 to 1941. After that date the quality degraded radically quickly and even though the new films remained profitable, they were usually lesser.

 

There were four notable aspects of those Golden Years: a strong influence of German Expressionism, a heavy reliance on famous literary sources, an obvious struggle to realize those sources faithfully, and the short, but influential, presence of English Director James Whale.

 

Whale was the studio’s finest Director, but only a few years after his triumph with “Frankenstein” (1931), Whale became enraged when the studio. Though he was working here in the USA, Universal allowed German Nazis to censor his anti-War film “The Road Back” (1937 and based on the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque (1931) that was already banned in Germany). But this SF/Horror film, a personal favorite of Whale’s, was made when everyone was still on good terms. A little historical context here, when “The Invisible Man” came out, Fascism was already a major force in Europe, and increasingly popular in the USA, but Adolf Hitler personally, only achieved power at roughly the same time this film was released.

 

In this case, like in “Frankenstein,” the script proved problematic. Many, many drafts were gone through and, like “Frankenstein,” the final script was the most faithful (but not completely faithful) to the novel. Without doubt, the story of Mary Shelly’s novel “Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus” (1818) was more heavily revised by the Screenwriters and Scenarists (Garrett Fort, Francis Edwards Faragoh, Robert Florey, John Russell, and Richard Schayer) than H. G. Wells’ novel “The Invisible Man” (1897); but by 1931 Shelly was long dead, while in 1933 Wells was still alive to complain in person even though he got better treatment. Here the final Scriptwriter was R.C. Sherriff, a repeat collaborator of Whale’s and also did the Screenplay for “The Road Back.”

 

(An indication of how difficult this process was, several of the earlier scripts were more based on a completely different novel, “The Murderer Invisible” by Philip Wylie (1931) only co-opting Wells more famous name. Also, one of the earlier scripts was by the great Preston Sturges, but more based on “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Orczy (1905). Sturges was fired the day after he handed it in. Whale’s own script was rejected because it was too similar to the novel “The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson (1986) which had been very recently adapted by a competing studio. During most of this strife, it proved that the studio apparently didn’t even own a copy of Wells’ novel even though they bought the rights to it.)

 

Why was Wells so cranky? We could start with the last words of the title Character in the film, “I failed. I meddled in things that man must leave alone.”

 

Those anti-Science sentiments were often expressed in SF films, they were ingrained in “Frankenstein” and even in the original Wells’ novel, but they were also the anthesis of Wells over-all world view. Also Wells, among the most important Utopian thinkers in Europe in the early 20^th c, was watching all his dreams of a better world turn sour as we lurched through a World-wide economic Depression and towards WWII, so he was grumpy about almost everything, not just this movie.

 

The original novel was inspired by a metaphor offered by the Greek Philosopher Glaucon, Plato’s older brother. In Plato’s “Republic” (375 BCE), Glaucon bleakly and smugly recounts the myth the Ring of Gyges as a way of postulating that Justice can only exist between parties of Equal Power; he was making this argument in the context of a society that was economically dependent of Slavery and where women were often viewed as less than the Slaves. The ring granted Invisibility and therefore an unbridled capacity for mayhem -- unless someone else also had a similar ring; even then, Justice would exist only between the two ring-bearers. Their Equality was a product of their equal Power and therefore they owed only each other equal Justice.

 

Wells’ famous SF/Horror tale denied this view and went further, that a bearer with too much individual Power would ultimately destroys himself as he becomes self-indulgent and publicly cruel, triggering a swift public reaction. Wells was always somewhat of a snob, devoted to British Parochialism despite his radical Socialist beliefs and always suspicious of Democracy; but he also understood that there was a Collective Morality that created its own, undeniable, Collective Power, so Individual Power meant little without Allies, therefore you are nothing without co-operation, maybe even compassion.

 

Wells gave Super-Powers to a singular Villain, and showed how a man alone, even with Power, was nothing. Wells was arguing that there was a higher Justice, other ways to maintain a balance the Power, and for all his complaining, the film’s cat-and-mouse between the Invisible Man and the Police, who initially seem inept, perfectly expressed that, whatever other complaints Wells might’ve had.

 

Wells seemed most pissed-off that the Invisible Man was an even worse Villain in the film than the novel, to which Whale replied “in the minds of rational people only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway.”

 

The open scenes almost exactly follow the novel and are the most suspenseful in the film. A stranger, who we later learn is Jack Griffin (Claude Rains), arrives at an English country Inn. His face hidden behind dark glasses and bandages. He is rude to the locals. These scenes, the first seventeen minutes of the film, incrementally reveal Jack’s big secret, a secret already revealed in the title, yet even though we know what’s coming, they remain captivating almost a century later.

 

The Stranger takes a room, insisting he be left alone, but his own behavior demands intervention. In the most famous scene, he’s confronted and strips off his bandages and clothes to reveal nothing beneath. He then goes on a gleeful rampage through the town.

 

The unveiling pushed the absolute limits of the technology of the day, as Critic Richard Scheib pointed out, “no modern effects artist would be allowed to get away with not showing the back of the collar when the invisible man wears a shirt.” But, as Critic Carlos Clarens stated, "the scene where Griffin first flaunts his invisibility is the kind of cinema magic that paralyzes disbelief and sets the most skeptical audience wondering [it was] a technical tour de force, 

 

That difficult illusion was achieved by FX experts John P. Fulton, John J. Mescall and Frank D. Williams who, along with and Director Whale, trusted that if they sold it once, they’d have the audience all the way throughout, and later unveiling sequences were both quicker and less technically complex. The filmmakers used a primitive version of Chroma-key, something that goes back to the earliest days of cinema but not actually perfected until 1964. The fact that there’s no fuzzy edges in the super-imposed images should’ve been impossible at the time, so among the best examples of the film’s remarkable craftsmanship. As Critic Kim Newman pointed out, the FX in this film remain on-par and adventuresome as the obviously related “Memoirs of an Invisible Man” (1992), better-budgeted and three-decades later.

 

Other effects, objects moved without visible hands, were obviously done with wires. Another accomplishment of this crew, the wires were never visible. And the costume designer was as much a part of the atmosphere and illusion as the other’s mentioned above but, unfortunately, he or she never received screen credit.

 

These early scenes set the tone for the rest of the film. Jack is gleefully cruel, and as his violence escalates (this is among the most violent films of its era, far more than the more notoriously censored “Frankenstein”), Jack repeatedly displays his inhumanity because he clearly views his savagery as pranks. Well after the first on-screen homicide, a malicious beating-to-death of a wholly innocent Policeman, Jack terrifies all running down a road in seemingly disembodied pants, singing “Here we go gathering nuts in May.”

 

These scenes also establish Rains’ ownership of the film, or at least that of his voice -- He’s Invisible after all, we don’t get to see his face until the last few seconds of the film. The rest of the cast was made up of skillfully scene-chewing comics (Una Connor, who repeatedly worked with Whale, was a total hoot as the Inn Keeper’s wife), or more dramatic actors who were either given too little to do or just plain bad. In the midst of the deftly orchestrated mayhem, Rains ruled. He was already an honored Stage Actor on two continents, but so poorly paid he was considering switching careers to farming (I’m not kidding) but this movie made him a major star. It was his first significant screen-role and one gets the impression he’s having much more fun here in this seemingly restrictive role than the later ones he’s far-more remembered for. Back in 1933, Critic Mordaunt Hall wrote, “No actor has ever made his first appearance on the screen under quite as peculiar circumstance as Claude Rains does”

 

(The role of Jack was originally supposed to go to “Frankenstein’s” Boris Karloff, but at the time he was involved in a bitter contract dispute with Universal and, in fact, secretly conspiring with seventeen other mistreated Actors to form the Screen Actors Guide).

 

Jack’s wise-cracking Villain was later mimicked in countless comic-books and in Freddy Kruger (the Villain of the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise (first film 1985)); it also made the film somewhat of an improvement on the very popular novel. I know that’s a heresy, but Wells’ first seven novels (the one’s we still read even though he was hugely prolific in his later years) were all grim parables of the hellishness of Science’s destructive capacities. He had a keen sense of metaphor and a compelling narrative drive, but he generally lacked a Sense of Humor. Even his satires were near-obsessively straight-faced. His humorless-ness likely drove him to increasingly embrace non-fiction as time went on, and as he became increasingly Utopian in his thinking (this started around 1905, though he seemed to lose faith in the Human Race around 1928) his lack of Humor made his fiction increasingly less-appealing. Defying Wells seriousness, we get cinema’s first truly great Horror/Comedy, and the blackness of the Humor must’ve astounded audiences during the innocent era of the 1930s (or maybe not, it was the Depression after all).

 

Character Jack proved to be a victim of his own ambition. A Chemist who came up with a bizarre concoction of drugs that allow light to pass through him flawlessly, he failed to pay attention to their side-effects. One in particular, monocaine (which doesn’t actually exist but has appeared in numerous Fictions since) had a reputation of triggering Megalomania and Aggression. So, in addition to the philosopher Glaucon, Wells may have been inspired by the tragic real-world case of Dr. Horace Wells, a dentist trying to develop anesthesia, experimented on himself, was driven to violent delusions, and ultimately committed suicide in 1848. (That real-world tragedy also likely inspired Stevenson’s “The Strange Case … ”)

 

Sure enough, the unfolding film is a study of the Melomaniac, wherein the increasingly monstrous Jack is also the most attractive Character, because the wild-drive of a Narcissist has much appeal -- there numerous examples of Tyrants throughout history who demonstrate that we are drawn to them, though we also claim moral superiority after they fall. The dialogue is exceptional, Critic Clarens again, “’The Invisible Man’ also contains some of the best dialogue ever written for a fantastic film." Jack’s deranged speeches are notable, especially when he tries to recruit the weakling Dr. Arthur Kemp (William Harrigan) to his evil plans:

 

“We'll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men - well, just to show we make no distinction. I might even wreck a train or two... just these fingers around a signalman's throat, that's all.”

 

And, “An invisible man can rule the world. Nobody will see him come, nobody will see him go. He can hear every secret. He can rob, and wreck, and kill!”

 

And, “I shall offer my secret to the world, with all its terrible power! “The nations of the world will bid for it – thousands, millions. The nation that wins my secret can sweep the world with invisible armies!”

 

And, “The drugs I took seemed to light up my brain. Suddenly I realized the power I held, the power to rule, to make the world grovel at my feet.”

 

But he also details his limitations, because all Power has its limits:

 

“There are one or two things you must understand, Kemp. I must always remain in hiding an hour after meals – the food is always visible in me until it is digested. I can only work on fine, clear days. If I work in the rain, the water can be seen on my head and shoulders. In a fog, you can see me like a bubble. In smoky cities, the soot settles on me until you can see a dark outline. You must always be at hand to wipe my feet, even dirt between my fingernails would give me away. It is difficult at first to walk down stairs, one is so accustomed to watching our feet. These are trivial difficulties; we shall find a way of working out everything.”

 

Whale, clearly borrowing from German Director F. W. Murnau and his greatest English student, Alfred Hitchcock, wholly embraced the idea of an “unchained camera.” The tracking shots are both abundant and complex. Whale frames the Invisible Man as if he’s really there in-front of him, then follows him through corridors and upstairs so the audience sees what isn’t seen. Every film and TV show involving Invisibility since has followed this skilled lead. Silent cinema had just begun to fully appreciate these important ascetic ideas when the birth of sound made the equipment even more bulky and difficult, but here Whale surpassed even his masterpiece “Frankenstein” in the engagement of the camera in the action before it. His Cinematographer was Artur Edeson, a frequent Whale collaborator.

 

It was narratively bold in other ways. Starting at the Lion’s Head Inn was a strong example of “in medias res.” After that though, the background was not filled in with the conventional tactic of flashbacks; instead, dialogues between Jack and Arthur or Jack and his fiancé Flora Cranely (Gloria Stuart, another Whale’s repeat collaborator, and Flora was not a character in the novel). These dialogues give us all the background details we need. Jack is clearly suffering under the effects of the drug, but it’s also clear he wasn’t ever a good person. He was arrogant, secretive, embittered, and driven by blind ambition. He was, in fact, the most monstrous of the Universal Monsters. “Frankenstein” and “The Wolfman” (1941) were Victims at least as much as they were Villains. Imhotep (“The Mummy” (1932)) waited thousands of years to regain his one, true love. There was a bit of the same with the cursed “Dracula” (1931) and he needed to drink blood to survive. But Jack did all this to himself, he chose this for himself, in ways none of the other Monsters did, and as he indulged more and more, he got worse and worse.

 

Even in the last scene, where dying Jack has apparently recovered his senses and confesses to Flora, he doesn’t use the words “I love you,” but instead, he continues to evade his selfishness unto his last breath:

 

Flora: Why did you do this?

Jack: For you, Flora.

Flora: For me?

Jack: Yes, for you, my darling. I wanted to do something tremendous, to achieve what men of science have dreamt of since the world began, to gain wealth and fame and honour, to write my name above the greatest scientists of all time. I was so pitifully poor. I had nothing to offer you, Flora. I was just a poor, struggling chemist.

 

Even Walter White (Bryan Cranston) showed greater self-awareness at the end of the “Breaking Bad” (TV series first aired 2008).

 

Despite Jack being a towering example of Villainy, Invisibility proved not nearly as scary the second, third, and one hundredth time around. It’s a Super Power, people want to have fun with Super Powers. “The Invisible Man” became a franchise as Universals’ output began to degrade in quality. The films got less scary, and some weren’t Horror at all. “The Invisible Agent” (1942) made the protagonist a Hero in an Espionage Thriller and that was later mimicked in multiple TV series all called “The Invisible Man” (1958, 1975, and 2000). After the ‘30s, the idea was generally treated in a more light-hearted fashion. There were exceptions of course, like the fine Horror novel by YA writer Robert Cormier, “Fade” (1988), the mostly unloved film “The Hollow Man” (2000) and the more-admired “The Invisible Man” (2020) which shifted focus off the Villain and onto his ex-wife, whom he’s gaslighting.

 

This film is important to a lot of use growing up from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s, when cable TV was either non-existent or not very popular, and internet streaming didn’t exist yet. Local TV stations dominated that medium’s representation of cinema. The above-quoted Dennis Swartz saw it first on WOR-TV’s “Million Dollar Movie,” just like I did. That program was also responsible for (in 1956) of the first TV airing of “King Kong” (1933).

 

Jeffrey M. Anderson put it well:

 

“What is our attraction to these ancient horror films? Surely, they're not scary anymore. I don't think I was actually terrified in The Invisible Man. But there's something that's tantalizing anyway. Perhaps it's that we're spying on something fantastic that we're not meant to see. There have been movies with invisible creatures and other forbidden things since this, but usually they're moving too fast. Our nerves are more sensitive to a careful examination than to an explosion.”

 

Trailer:

THE INVISIBLE MAN - 1933 Classic Horror Trailer (Claude Rains) - YouTube