A Film Canon

 

 

The Invisible Man foregrounds the politics of Wells' novel, deflecting its scientific spirit into extended special effects sequences, and condensing the protagonist to his desire for an apocalyptic crime spree. This construes invisibility as a necessary condition for a "reign of terror", catering to contemporary anxieties about fascist contagion. As with Frankenstein, Whale's idiosyncrasies are fairly minimal, with the exception of his use of extended pans to imbue the camera with the same apparent autonomy as those objects heaved and thrown around by the protagonist, whose arch, camp playfulness provides an odd sympathetic anchor, mainly because it is robbed of any facial contextualisation - as if language itself were speaking, or had become more visible than its speaker, in a wry attempt to reclaim the orienting, nostalgic parameters of silent cinema. Exuding a sophisticated urbanity, it also reduces the other characters to so many cariacatured, regional accents, suggesting nothing so much as England exoticised for an international audience; or, alternatively, an invocation of instantly recognisable national traits against imminent, transnational terror.