Edward Scissorhands

Overview

Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Production Company: Twentieth Century Fox
Producers: Denise DiNovi, Tim Burton
Screenplay: Caroline Thompson, story by Tim Burton and Caroline Thompson
Camera: Stefan Czapsky
Music: Danny Elfman
Production designer: Bo Welch
Cast: Johnny Depp (Edward Scissorhands), Winona Ryder (Kim), Dianne Wiest (Peg), Anthony Michael Hall (Jim), Alan Arkin (Bill), Vincent Price (The Inventor).
Running time: 105 minutes

Edward, a young man with scissors instead of hands, lives alone in a dark castle since his old inventor died of a heart attack, leaving Edward unfinished. Local Avon lady Peg discovers Edward on one of her rounds of the neighborhood and decides to adopt him into her pastel-colored suburban household. At first the nieghborhood is intrigued by the unusual newcomer, especially when it turns out he can sculpt hedges, hairdos and dogs with his scissorhands. Peg's daughter Kim fears Edward at first, but gradually realizes his strangeness is only skin deep, much to the jealousy of her bullying boyfriend Jim. When Edward rejects the local nymphomaniac and gets mixed up in a robbery, the neighbors suddenly turn against him and drive him back to his castle. Here he kills Jim, who has followed him, and Kim returns to tell the angry mob that Edward is dead.

Edward Scissorhands is usually seen as the most typical as well as the most personal work of its director, with all the elements that distinguish his films from others on prominent display. For starters, there is the character of Edward, the prototype of the well-meaning outsider with nothing but innocence and good intentions, who is neither understood nor accepted by the "normal" world he suddenly finds himself in. His status as an outsider and Edward's attempts to be accepted by his suburban surroundings accentuate the divergence between his world and the pastel suburb world of Peg and her neighbors. Edward's realization towards the end of the movie is that he lives in a split world, and that he does not belong with Peg and Kim. The visual contrast between the gothic architecture of the castle standing on a hillside and the sunny, pastel-colored suburbs enhances the split world on the story level. The view of the black castle shrouded in fog and clouds on a mountain right next to Peg's neighborhood makes the contrast between the two worlds existing alongside stronger than in any other Burton film. The castle's gothic atmosphere and the role of Vincent Price as Edward's inventor create a direct visual link to the horror films of the fifties, as well as the thematic link of the mad professor creating a misunderstood "monster". These stylized visuals, as well as the color-coordinated suburbs, make the film look like a live-action animation film.