Cinema Scope: Strickfaden Reassessed
My friend, Fabian, is a big fan of old movies — he’s French and he digs on the classics, like the old Universal horror flicks. While I count myself a fan, I’m not a tremendous one. I like a nice classic movie as much as the next cineaste, but I can’t be bothered to remember the names and specifics of any given movie.
If I may, I’d like to wax philosophical about an article he spun out some time ago regarding a guy who worked behind the scenes on FRANKENSTEIN. The name was Strickfaden, the game was set design. Yeah, not the top of the charts in terms of movie trivia. In fact, it probably ranks at the bottom of movie concerns, but set design is one of the most significant in terms of what it does visually.
Yes, Strickfaden was a genius. Yes, he worked on a number of early Hollywood classics, like WIZARD OF OZ and THE MASK OF FU MANCHU. He built sets, using a paltry set of props, and turned them into extravagant alternate realities. Working on more than 1,000 films in his life, he still managed to give more than 1,500 science and laboratory equipment demonstrations across the States. Me, I can’t be bothered to explain how my Tivo works to my nephew.
Strickfaden was something of a perfectionist. More than using the best pieces of equipment to dress his sets, he was careful to use them in realistic approximations. In fact, as Fabian mentioned, he was an associate of Tesla himself. It was Tesla’s coils that sparked and arched electricity across the FRAKENSTEIN set.
It was Fabian’s profile of the man that got me interested in the first place, but it was verifying all the facts that made me a fan. When Karloff refused to get near the coils for the crucial climax scene, Strick (as he was known by friends and associates), volunteered to do the stunt. Intelligent and fearless — that sums up this early pioneer pretty well.
The key to understanding the authenticity — or its approximation — of FRANKENSTEIN is understanding how the laboratory equipment was used by Strickfaden.
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