page_title: The Invisible Man (1933 film)
section_title: Reaction, awards and honors
hierarchical_section_title: The Invisible Man (1933 film) / Reaction, awards and honors
caption_attribution_description: English: Theatrical release poster for the 1933 film The Invisible Man This is the Style&#160;A "teaser" poster.
context_page_description: The Invisible Man is a 1933 American pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by James Whale. Based on H. G. Wells' 1897 science fiction novel The Invisible Man and produced by Universal Pictures, the film stars Claude Rains, in his first American screen appearance, and Gloria Stuart. The film was written by R.C. Sherriff, along with Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, though the latter duo's work was considered unsatisfactory and they were taken off the project. As an adaptation of a book, the film has been described as a "nearly perfect translation of the spirit of the tale" upon which it is based. The first film in Universal's Invisible Man film series, it spawned a number of sequels and spin-offs which used ideas of an "invisible man" that were largely unrelated to Wells' original story.
  Rains portrayed the Invisible Man mostly only as a disembodied voice. Rains is only shown clearly for a brief time at the end of the film, spending most of his on-screen time covered by bandages. In 2008, The Invisible Man was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
context_section_description: The movie was popular at the box office, and was Universal's most successful horror film since Frankenstein.
  Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote, "The story makes such superb cinematic material that one wonders that Hollywood did not film it sooner. Now that it has been done, it is a remarkable achievement." The film also appeared on The New York Times' year-end list as one of the Ten Best Films of 1933. Variety called  the film "something new and refreshing in film frighteners" that "will more than satisfy audiences," but suggested that some of the laughs in the picture might not have been intentional.
  Film Daily wrote, "It will satisfy all those who like the bizarre and the outlandish in their film entertainment." John Mosher of The New Yorker called the film a "bright little oddity" that "never was properly appreciated."
  Despite the critical acclaim, H. G. Wells, the author of the original source text, said at a dinner in its honor that "while he liked the picture he had one grave fault to find with it. It had taken his brilliant scientist and changed him into a lunatic, a liberty he could not condone." Whale replied that the film was addressed to the "rationally minded motion picture audience," because "in the minds of rational people only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway." (In the original novel, the scientist was amoral from the start and did not hesitate to rob his own father [who consequently commits suicide] to get the money to buy certain drugs for the invisibility process. In the movie, an essential color-removing drug in the process had the unavoidable side-effect of unbalancing his mind.) Despite his misgivings, Wells did praise the performance of Una O'Connor as the shrieking Mrs. Hall.
  Whale, who had previously directed Frankenstein as well as the first version of Waterloo Bridge, received a Special Recommendation from the 1934 Venice Film Festival in recognition of his work on The Invisible Man. Rains' film career took off after The Invisible Man, which was his first American film appearance. The film was nominated for the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills and AFI's 10 Top 10 (science fiction film), while the character was nominated as a villain for the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains list.
caption: Pre-release "teaser" poster by Karoly Grosz.[15]
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