Frankenstein: Alexandre Desplat Used Silver Violin for Creature's Theme

As Guillermo del Toro’s go-to composer, Alexandre Desplat knew about the filmmaker’s desire to tell his version of Mary Shelley’s “ Frankenstein .”

While del Toro loved the story, Desplat admits his own relationship with the iconic character was pretty much non-existent. He had read the book, but says, “I never saw any ‘Frankenstein’ movie.”

This gave him an innocent approach. Before shooting started, Desplat began by writing a few waltzes to find the right tone. “We tried to find the era. Do we go period? Do we go even before Baroque, or do we go electronica? We had to really decide what the sound of the film would be,” he says. Del Toro didn’t want to make a period movie, so Desplat says “we tried not to be too dated.”

Aside from the tone, the key was finding the sound of the Crea