Hansjörg Betschart

In Geneva, scientist Frankenstein has pieced together a human body from various corpse parts. He uses the electric charge of a thunderstorm to raise his creature. Right away, he fears the ugliness and wild strength of the “child” and imprisons it. But the CHILD manages to escape.
When Frankenstein discovers this, he starts searching for it and wants to kill it because he is scared it might do evil.
In its longing for human contact, the child arrives at a hut where an old blind man is playing the violin. The man and his son live there; soon Safie, a young Turkish girl whose father is persecuted for not being Christian, joins them. Hidden in the stable of the hut, the child watches the lives of the residents…
Betschart’s dramatisation of the classical subject stays close to Mary Shelley’s original, right up to its main statement: the child, Frankenstein’s creation, is born good (as are all people, according to Rousseau), with a longing for love, closeness, beauty. Only through its negative experience with society does it become evil, full of hatred and a desire for revenge. Frankenstein and those like him are the true monsters.
The gothic horror story is both timeless and very contemporary. The ostracising of an individual because of their otherness, especially regarding people of a different race and nationality, is an issue highlighted by the character of the young Turkish girl Safie and the side plot surrounding her.