Bride of Frankenstein

Generally considered a greater film that its predecessor, Frankenstein, this sequel starred Elsa Lanchester as the eponymous heroine and Boris Karloff repeating his role as the monster. Manguel gives a detailed and highly sensitive account of the film's felicities of inventive filmmaking. He also traces the literary roots of the Frankenstein myth, the creation of a living being by a man usurping the powers of a jealous God. And he finds echoes in the work of modern artists such as Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp of the Bride as a kind of femme fetale, monstrous and threatening.

Alberto Manguel is the author of A History of Reading and (with Gianni Guadalupi) of The Dictionary of Imaginery Places. His novel News from a Foreign Country Came won the McKitterick prize in 1992.