A Frankensteinian hybrid

Abstract

The review of Frankenstein — 100 lat w kinie describes a unique form of the book proposed by Rafał Donica, Polish film critic and expert in popular culture. The shape of the book remains the object of its deliberations; fragmentary, heterogeneous narration by Donica reflects an idea of Frank-enstein’s monster body. Donica builds his narration with quotations, critical essays, historical re-constructions and original illustrative material. The author examines the character of Frankenstein’s monster in cinema and visual culture, which — as Donica accounts — brought about the transform-ation of the monster picture, extremely distant from Shelley’s prototype. The heterogeneity of Don-ica’s book manifests itself in several fields; the form of character appearance (from feature films, through animated films, TV series to commercials), temporal (from the beginnings of the cinema to present day) and territorial range — the author makes an attempt to present an objective, non-Euro-pocentric point of view, including examples of Frankenstein’s monster appearance in Asia or South America. Donica also proves his sensitivity to sociological mechanisms which guides popular cul-ture; he shows how “faces” of famous actors (like Boris Karloff) affected the monster image.