This tragedy is only heightened by a beautifully potent scene midway through the film that strikes with clarity and sincerity. Frankenstein’s Monster – billed here in the opening credits as only “The Monster” with a casting of “?” (who we now know as the actor inextricably linked to the role: Boris Karloff) – plucks daisies with a young unattended girl by a lake. As she teaches the Monster to toss the flowers in one-by-one to see them float, the Monster takes the next logical step – at least for someone with limited knowledge of buoyancy – and tosses the young girl in the lake atop the flowers. It’s a shocking scene and absolutely drips with tension even before the act is actually performed.

But, perhaps what is most spectacular about this scene is how it builds upon Frankenstein’s Monster tragedy brilliantly. We have seen how Dr. Frankenstein whips, chains, and imprisons the Monster, using him as a demonstration of his own deity-like powers. But, the real tragedy of the character lies in his very nature. Frankenstein’s Monster is made evil, or at least with some evil parts, notably his brain. He can’t be anything but violent because of how he is made.

In the film’s final act, The Monster, trapped inside a windmill with his creator by an angry mob, saves Dr. Frankenstein by tossing the doctor to the ground below as the windmill goes up in flames. It is, once again, a beautiful statement of the Monster’s tragedy. Even when his own life is at stake, his first impulse is to save another.

Though Frankenstein remains potent today, upon its 1931 release in the United States the drowning scene was cut by film censors in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. In Kansas, nearly half the film was removed before the public screening, including a supposedly blasphemous line – the film’s most famous and oft-parodied, “It’s alive! It’s alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!”