Dracula (1931 film)
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| Dracula | |
|---|---|
 Dracula movie poster |
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| Directed by | Tod Browning |
| Produced by | Tod Browning Carl Laemmle Jr. |
| Written by | Novel: Bram Stoker Stage Play: Hamilton Deane John L. Balderston Screenplay: Garrett Fort Tod Browning (uncredited) |
| Starring | Bela Lugosi Helen Chandler David Manners Dwight Frye Edward Van Sloan |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | February 14, 1931 (New York premiere) |
| Running time | 75 min |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Dracula's Daughter (1936) |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Dracula is a 1931 horror film produced by Universal Pictures Co. Inc. and based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Contents |
[edit] Cast
- Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula
- Helen Chandler as Mina Seward
- David Manners as John Harker
- Dwight Frye as Renfield
- Edward Van Sloan as Prof. Abraham Van Helsing
- Herbert Bunston as Dr. Jack Seward
- Frances Dade as Lucy Weston
- Joan Standing as Briggs (a nurse)
- Charles K. Gerrard as Martin
[edit] Plot
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.
[edit] Description
The first official Dracula movie was directed by Tod Browning, with a screenplay based on the stage play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The title role was played by Bela Lugosi. Also starring in the film were David Manners as Jonathan Harker, Helen Chandler as Mina Murray/Harker and Dwight Frye as Renfield.
Carl Laemmle Jr had originally intended the movie to be a lavish production to rival both The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, and, like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney (despite him being under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic, however, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney (who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928) had sadly succumbed to his terminal illness. Furthermore, studio financial difficulties, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, caused a drastic reduction in the budget, forcing Laemmle to look at a cheaper alternative (this meant several grand scenes that closely followed the Stoker storyline had to be abandoned). Already a huge hit on Broadway, the tried and tested Hamilton Deane/John L. Balderston Dracula play would become the blueprint and the production gained momentum. However, the question of who would play the Count remained. This would fall to the (then) current broadway Dracula, Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, but not without controversy. Originally Carl Laemmle Jr had stated he was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of the warm reviews his portrayal had received, and instead sought to hire the actor Ian Keith. Against the tide of Studio opinion Lugosi lobbied hard and ultimately won the executives over, thanks in part to him accepting a salary far less then his co-stars.
The eerie speech pattern of Lugosi's "Dracula" was said to have resulted from the fact that Lugosi did not speak English, and therefore had to learn and speak his lines phonetically. This is a bit of an urban legend. While it is true that Lugosi did not speak English at the time of his first english-language play in 1919, and he had learned his lines to that play in this manner. By the time of his filming this role Lugosi spoke English as well as he ever would.
To many film lovers and critics alike, Bela Lugosi's portrayal is widely regarded as the definitive Dracula. Lugosi had a powerful presence and authority onscreen. The slow, deliberate pacing of his performance gave his Dracula the air of a walking, talking corpse, which terrified 1930's movie audiences. He was just as compelling with no dialogue, and the many stunning closeups of Lugosi's face in icy silence jumped off the screen. However, Dracula would ultimately become a role which would prove to be both a blessing and a curse. Despite his earlier stage successes in a variety of roles, from the moment Lugosi doned the cape on screen, it would forever see him typecast as the count.
According to numerous accounts, the production was alleged to have been a mostly disorganized affair, with the usually meticulous Tod Browning apparently leaving legendary cinematographer Karl Freund to take over during much of the shoot. Given that Browning had originally intended Dracula as collaboration between him and Lon Chaney, it is somewhat understandable that he may have been distracted since the demise of his original leading man.
When the film finally premiered on Valentine's Day 1931, newspapers reported that members of the audiences fainted in shock at the horror onscreen. This publicity, shrewdly orchestrated by the film studio, helped ensure people came to see the film, if for no other reason than curiosity. Dracula was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller.
Dracula proved to be a huge box office success and later that year Universal would release James Whale's Frankenstein to even greater acclaim. Dracula ushered in a new era of cinema: The Horror Movie, and before long every producer in Hollywood, and indeed around the world, was cashing in on the success of Tod Browning's movie. Universal in particular would become the forefront of early horror cinema, with a canon of films including, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man.
Today, Dracula is widely regarded as a classic of the era and of its genre and has been selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
[edit] Sequels
Five years after the release of the film, Universal released Dracula's Daughter, a direct sequel that starts immediately after the end of the first film. A second sequel, Son of Dracula, starring Lon Chaney, Jr. followed in 1943. Despite his apparent death in the 1931 film, the Count returned to life in three more Universal films of the mid-1940s: 1944's House of Frankenstein, 1945's House of Dracula and 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. While Lugosi had played a vampire in two other movies during the 1930's and 40's, it was only in this final film that he played Count Dracula onscreen for the second (and last) time.
[edit] 1998 score by Philip Glass
Due to the short-lived limitations of adding a musical score to a film's soundtrack, during 1930 and 1931, no score had ever been composed specifically for the film. In 1998 minimalist composer Philip Glass was commissioned to compose an original score for the classic film. The score was performed by the Kronos Quartet under direction of Michael Riesman.
Of the project, Glass said:
- "The film is considered a classic. I felt the score needed to evoke the feeling of the world of the 19th century — for that reason I decided a string quartet would be the most evocative and effective. I wanted to stay away from the obvious effects associated with horror films. With [the Kronos Quartet] we were able to add depth to the emotional layers of the film."
The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios Home Video in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score.
[edit] The Spanish language version
It the early days of sound, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce foreign language versions of their films (usually in French, Spanish and German) using the same sets, costumes and etc. Unfortunately, most of these foreign language versions no longer exist. The Spanish version of Dracula is an exception.
The Spanish language version of Dracula was made by director George Melford who simultaneously filmed the movie using the same sets at night. Melford used a different crew and cast that featured Carlos Villarías, who played the title role, and Eduardo Arozamena who portrayed Van Helsing. Carl Laemmle Jr. was the producer of both versions.
In recent years this version has become more highly praised by some than the English language version. The Spanish crew had the advantage of watching the Dailies from the English crew's version when they came in for the evening. They would work out better camera angles and more effective use of lighting. With the film being intended for a Spanish-speaking audience, they didn't have to adhere to the Hayes Code, as was the case for the English-language version. As a result, this version's supporters consider it to be much more artistically effective. The Spanish semiologist Roman Gubern considers that the longer duration allows better development of the plot in spite of the shorted shooting time and smaller budget.
The Spanish version was included as a bonus feature on the Legacy Collection DVD in 2004 and the 75th Anniversary Edition DVD set in 2006.
[edit] Notes
- Initial 1931 prints (and some subsequent reissue prints) carried a tint of Verdante, which was Kodak's title for green in their Sonochrome series of sound tinting stocks. Universal's ad department labeled it "the color of fear". A counterpart to Dracula on its reissues, Frankenstein also carried this tint, and this is often attributed to creating the myth that the Frankenstein monster was green in color.
- There were a number of scenes which were cut from the film, the most famous being an epilogue which only played during the movies initial run. In a sequence similar to the prologue from Frankenstein, and again featuring Universal stalwart Edward Van Sloan, he appeared as a narrator to re-assure the audience that what they’d just seen wouldn’t give them nightmares. However, Van Sloan would then calmly inform those with a nervous disposition that… "There really are such things as Vampires!"
- The design on the towering windows in Castle Dracula were actually based on the windows found at Whitby Abbey, the place where (in Stoker's novel) Dracula seduces his first victim, Lucy.
- David Manners (Jonathan Harker) was so unimpressed with the production, he never once watched the film in the remaining 67 years of his life.
- In various scenes set in Castle Dracula several armadillos are seen wandering around the set. Purportedly this is an in-joke on the part of director Tod Browning, who insisted Castle Dracula contain armadillos (an animal much beloved in his place of birth, Texas), regardless of the fact that they don't occur naturally in Central Europe.
[edit] See also
- Dracula (1979 film) which is based on the same Deane/Balderston play
- Universal Monsters
- Universal Horror
[edit] External links
- EOFFTV - The Universal Dracula series
- Dracula (English) at the Internet Movie Database
- Drácula (Spanish) at the Internet Movie Database
- Dracula at the All Movie Guide
- 1998 score by Philip Glass
| Characters of Dracula |
|---|
| Dracula | Jonathan Harker | Mina Harker | Abraham Van Helsing | Lucy Westenra | Renfield |
| Film Adaptations of Dracula |
| Nosferatu | Dracula (1931) | House of Dracula | Dracula (1958) | Count Dracula (1969) | Dracula (1979) | Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht | Love At First Bite | Bram Stoker's Dracula | Dracula: Dead and Loving It | Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary |
| Horror Icons In Film | |
|---|---|
| Classic: | The Creature | Dracula | Frankenstein's monster | The Invisible Man The Mummy | Count Orlok | The Phantom | The Wolf Man |
| Modern: | Norman Bates | Chucky | Ghostface | Jigsaw | Freddy Krueger | Leatherface | Hannibal Lecter | Michael Myers | Pinhead | Jason Voorhees | |
