...rated it well above all other science fiction movies of that era.
It really wasn't the special effects either, although for the time, as I understand it, they were considered quite ground breaking, particularly with respect to Robby the Robot.
What makes me value it is the Faustian aspect, the belief that intellectual and technological prowess can lead to our worst instincts going out of control.
I credit that the movie has a Shakespearean "The Tempest" theme, albeit modified, and I detect some Oedipus Rex as well, since Morbius kills his wife with his subconscious but not his daughter, but what really is the bottom line is Faust.
My favorite excerpt from Goethe's Faust, translated using my very bad German:
Du flehst, eratmend mich zu schauen,
Meine Stimme zu hören, mein Antlitz zu sehn;
Mich neigt dein mächtig Seelenflehn,
Da bin ich!- Welch erbärmlich Grauen
Faßt Übermenschen dich! Wo ist der Seele Ruf?
Wo ist die Brust, die eine Welt in sich erschuf
Und trug und hegte, die mit Freudebeben
Erschwoll, sich uns, den Geistern, gleich zu heben?
Wo bist du, Faust, des Stimme mir erklang,
Der sich an mich mit allen Kräften drang?
Bist du es, der, von meinem Hauch umwittert,
In allen Lebenslagen zittert,
Ein furchtsam weggekrümmter Wurm?
My translation:
You entreated me to show myself
To hear my voice, to see my face,
Your powerful soulful prayers bent me.
Here I am! What wretched dread
Seizes you, you superman! Where is the soul's call?
Where is the the breast in which a world itself was made.
Bore and nurtured, swollen with waves of ecstasy to become like us, a spirit,
Where are you Faust, whose voice rang out to me,
Pressing me with all that power?
Is it you, brushed by my breath,
So situated in this life, who trembles,
A fearful writhing worm?
For me the movie, out of the 1950s, anticipated what we now see before us, a horror where we lose control of our own power, in such a way that our power fills us with terrible and dangerous fears that we cannot control.
I read too much into it perhaps, but these are the feelings the movie evoked, now more than ever. I can't wait to see it again, full sized this time.
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