Mercury Pictures Presents

Marra makes repeated references to cinematic adaptations of Frankenstein in the novel. Maria and Giuseppe are watching Frankenstein at the cinema when the blackshirts attack. They assault the owner of the cinema and destroy the film. They burst into the cinema during a scene in which torch-wielding villagers are chasing the monster, and Maria muses that they are inspired to torch the film by the action onscreen.

When she rewatches the film after relocating the America, Maria likens the monster, staring in at the family and hoping to learn their ways to win acceptance, to the immigrant audience, seeking acceptance in their adopted country. As a hybrid creature, stitched together from different corpses, the monster reflects the divided nature of immigrant identity, as also reflected in Nino’s album full of torn passport photos and the characters’ bi-national, split names (Vincent Cortese, Eddie Lu, etc.). The immigrant-as-monster is a reflection of societal expectations of immigrants and how they distort and clash with the individual’s self-perception. Bela Lugosi’s career stagnates when he turns down the role of Frankenstein’s monster, hoping to be accepted for leading roles in romantic films instead.