Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#41692
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Clement von Franckenstein represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 46 years in, and Clement is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Clement von Franckenstein appears in 12 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Clement. Young Frankenstein is the clearest case: a film rated 7.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for horror, thriller, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Giselle Bonilla, Joel Coen, Nicholas Stoller and others, Clement von Franckenstein helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Young Frankenstein (1974) as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited) · Death Becomes Her (1992) as Opening Man · Lionheart (1990) as English Investor
Career snapshot
Ranked #41692 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
12
1974–2020
Career length
46 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.7
Young Frankenstein
Average Nutevio score
5.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.8
Young Frankenstein
Most frequent director
Giselle Bonilla
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Giselle Bonilla
Most common genre
Comedy
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 36m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.6
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1970s
7.7 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. Young Frankenstein — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
7.7
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.8
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Young Frankenstein.
Most productive era
2010s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1970s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.51 film | 5.61 film | 6.12 films | — |
| Action | — | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 6.51 film | — | — | 5.81 film |
| Comedy | 7.71 film | 6.81 film | 6.01 film | 6.04 films | 0.01 film |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film | 6.01 film | 6.12 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.81 film | — | — | 5.81 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Highest rated performance · Career peak
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited). 7.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2020Virgencita
The current state of the argument, as Doctor.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
12 of 12 films
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
Directed by Mel Brooks
as Opening Man
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
as English Investor
Directed by Sheldon Lettich
as Tillman
Directed by Unknown
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Performance score7.5
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited) gives Clement von Franckenstein a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Opening Man
Death Becomes Her (1992)
Performance score6.7
Death Becomes Her asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Opening Man is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
English Investor
Lionheart (1990)
Performance score6.6
Lionheart asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. English Investor is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Tillman
Red Handed (2020)
Performance score6.5
Red Handed asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tillman is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
Start here. Young Frankenstein is the clearest statement of what Clement von Franckenstein does — accessible, 106 minutes, and rated 7.7 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Clement at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Lionheart (1990)
A deliberate change of key after Young Frankenstein — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Death Becomes Her (1992)
A deliberate change of key after Lionheart — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Red Handed (2020)
Keeps the horror register of Death Becomes Her but asks for a colder reading of it.
Virgencita (2020)
A deliberate change of key after Red Handed — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Mel Brooks
Director
1 film together
Notably Young Frankenstein
Sheldon Lettich
Director
1 film together
Notably Lionheart
Robert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together
Notably Death Becomes Her
David Seltzer
Director
1 film together
Notably Shining Through
Roger Kumble
Director
1 film together
Notably Cruel Intentions 2
Shawn Levy
Director
1 film together
Notably Just Married
Michael Dowse
Director
1 film together
Notably Take Me Home Tonight
Nicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together
Notably The Five-Year Engagement
Joel Coen
Director
1 film together
Notably Hail, Caesar!
Giselle Bonilla
Director
1 film together
Notably Virgencita
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Mel Brooks
Director
1 film together · 7.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Young FrankensteinRobert Zemeckis
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Death Becomes HerSheldon Lettich
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LionheartDavid Seltzer
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Shining ThroughJoel Coen
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hail, Caesar!Nicholas Stoller
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Five-Year EngagementMichael Dowse
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Take Me Home TonightShawn Levy
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Just MarriedRoger Kumble
Director
1 film together · 5.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Cruel Intentions 2Giselle Bonilla
Director
1 film together · 0.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
VirgencitaSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Take Me Home Tonight
as Frances Triebverbrecher
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Hail, Caesar!
as Sen. Sestimus Amydias
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Clement von Franckenstein has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
46 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Take Me Home Tonight
as Frances Triebverbrecher
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hail, Caesar!
as Sen. Sestimus Amydias
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Young Frankenstein
as Villager Screaming at Monster (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Lionheart
as English Investor
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Take Me Home Tonight
as Frances Triebverbrecher
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Red Handed
as Tillman
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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