The Wolf Man (1941)

This review contains spoilers. It's recommended you watch the film first.

Having just watched Werewolf of London earlier this week, I have werewolves on the brain. Of all the classic monsters in horror movies, I don't think any is so tragic as the werewolf. For one, the werewolf is almost always the protagonist. Two, the werewolf is the victim of a curse: whatever he does as a werewolf is not something he can control. Three, the werewolf tends to end up dead at the end of the film. I noticed something else about werewolf stories. The protagonist is usually a somehow ostracized individual, someone who is insecure, not belonging. In Werewolf of London, Glendon is simply an unsocial man with a younger wife.

With The Wolf Man, it is a bit more incisive. Let's take a look. Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), a youngish man, is returning from America to his modern-day nobleman father's (Claude Rains) Welsh country estate to take the reins (no pun intended). He and his father have not had an easy relationship, but the death of the elder brother has occasioned a truce and they both promise to show one another more affection. Now he has to get to know the villagers in order to fit into his new position. At the same time gypsies, about as emblematic of outsider-dom as it gets, show up with the werewolf curse. Talbot contracts the curse from Bela (Lugosi). From there he is persecuted by the villagers with increasing ferocity until he's killed by his own father in a particularly brutal instance of infanticide.

So the anxiety for young Talbot to fit in is high. First of all he must fit in with his father, who had evidently been grooming the elder son to take over the estate. While Claude Rains plays Talbot Sr. for a kind, thoughtful man, his relationship with his son is still a bit uneasy; they're discovering new emotional vistas together. Talbot Sr. is an astronomer whose libraries and observatory attest to an erudite mind. Talbot Jr. on the other hand only works with his hands; he becomes increasingly frustrated with the werewolf legend because of his inability to find concrete application for it. He understands things hands-on; he's a physical person. This puts more of a gulf between he and his father. Talbot Jr. is clearly eager for his father's acceptance and while I think he more or less has it, he doesn't realize he does. He feels like a monster before his father. An early title for the film was Destiny; and in some sense infanticide feels like destiny here.

Perhaps Talbot would have felt more accepted by his father if he'd felt more accepted by his father's villagers, whom he knows his father to value very highly. But he becomes inextricably bound up with the gypsies. They arrive at the same time he does. They are fortune tellers; Talbot jokes that he's psychic to his love-interest Gwen. After killing one of the gypsies in wolf form, he's questioned by the local authorities and the people begin to gossip about him. This is when he assumes wolf form himself. Here's an exchange he has with the sympathetic Dr. Lloyd: Lloyd says, "It might be a case of mental suggestion, by mass hypnotism." Talbot replies, "You mean by that, he could be influenced by the people about him?" This exchange occurs immediately after Talbot could not bring himself to enter the church for Sunday mass; he was stared at by the whole congregation until he retreated. A particularly vocal woman, the mother of Bela Lugosi's sole victim in the village, makes clear to him that they think he's a monster. Might these people have made their own monster?

As with Werewolf of London, there is a problem with communication. Where Glendon just kept his problems to himself, Talbot tries to tell people and nobody will listen. The most sympathetic to him is Dr. Lloyd, but Talbot Sr. interferes whenever the doctor tries to help. The doctor plainly suggests letting him leave town; Talbot Sr. will hear none of it. He prevails upon his father to bind him to a chair, but it is too little too late and he is bludgeoned to death by his father a short time later.

The Wolf Man is thus a tragic story of an outsider; the protagonist is a good person who is being afflicted, made a monster against his will. His downfall is no fault of his own. The spiritual center of the film, the gypsy Maleva, puts it thus: "The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end." And the oft-repeated rhyme, "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright," is almost tailored to Talbot, certainly a man who fits the 'pure in heart' bill. Chaney exudes that 'lovable oaf' quality, a man who's probably never had a dark thought in his life. He's an oversensitive man caught in a situation that destroys him.

I was gripped by The Wolf Man from beginning to end. It's a rare film that gives me a hankering to re-watch right after the first viewing, but I do want to re-watch it. Every character in this film is likable. That's an incredible feat. Even the domineering father has my sympathy; he loved his son very much, but simply couldn't believe the wolf and his son could be the same being. Chaney's engaging performance as an alternatively charming, jaunty man and tormented, depressed outcast draws a lot of sympathy, which is what such a sensitive screenplay required to work. It's startling to see his enthusiasm crushed so soon, his joyous entrance full of optimism turned into this pessimistic tragedy, "so tears run to a predestined end."