Dracula is a true milestone in cinema: the first American horror film of the sound era and, in many ways, the first true American horror film. There had been horror films in the past, of course, but unlike European films such as Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, American horror films were scrupulously non-supernatural. Even when a film seemed to include supernatural elements (such as the lost Lon Chaney pseudo-vampire flick London After Midnight) they were explained away at the end as trickery and deception. Here, for the first time, American audiences were confronted with the unapologetically unreal.
We open in the mountains of Transylvania, where British real-estate agent Renfield (Dwight Frye) is on his way to close a deal with Count Dracula. Disregarding the locals, who try to dissuade him with warnings about vampires, he arrives at the castle to be greeted by Dracula (Bela Lugosi). Renfield is unnerved by his coach-ride and by Dracula’s odd mannerisms and uncanny ability to pass through spider-webs without touching them, but he persists and soon has his deal signed. Once that is done, Dracula leaves him after offering a bottle of “very old wine.” Renfiled soon collapses and Dracula bends over his throat...
Back in London Renfield is confined to a sanitarium, while Dracula begins preying on the citizens. He meets the sanitarium owner, Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston), and his daughter Mina (Helen Chandler), her fiancée, Jonathan Harker (David Manners), and her friend, Lucy Weston (Frances Dade). Later that night, as Lucy lies asleep, Dracula enters her room…
Like most pioneering movies, Dracula is an uneven effort. It’s fumbling, poorly-paced, and disjointed. Plot elements (such as poor Lucy Weston) are set up only to disappear without a trace. The dialogue often creaks and much of the acting is stiff and more suited to the stage than to film (most of the cast, including Bela Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan, are reprising their roles from the stage production). Odd moments, such as characters describing events instead of the film showing them, testify to the story’s stage-bound origin. In short, the film has all the problems of the early sound world and then some.
That being said, Dracula has many strengths all of its own, and chief among them are three iconic performances, each one enough to make the film worth catching for its own sake.
The first is, of course, Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. Really, what more needs to be said? After over eighty years this one performance has become so ingrained in the public mind that it exists beyond criticism. It’s become part of our cultural mythology to a degree beyond almost any other film performance. Everyone knows Lugosi’s Dracula, with his cape, tuxedo, and thick Hungarian accent. He’s the definitive film vampire; the image that this particular monster took when it entered the public mind. Lugosi’s Dracula is immortal.
Setting all that aside and looking at the role simply as acting, it’s much like the film that contains it: uneven, frequently misjudged, yet ultimately powerful. To start with, Lugosi’s broad movements and expressions are too exaggerated; more suited to the stage. Then there’s the fact that his stiff, effectively unnatural performance from the early scenes in Transylvania inexplicably vanishes once he enters Dr. Seward’s drawing room and he suddenly becomes more easy-going and fluid (though this could be a conscious effort on Dracula’s part).
But the strengths of his performance far outweigh the defects. There’s his wonderfully jerky, misemphasized way of speaking during the early scenes (“I have chartered a ship…that will take us to England…We will be leaving…tomorrow…evening”) which creates the disturbing impression that Dracula is unused to speaking (I also love the way some of his responses don’t quite match Renfield’s questions: as though Dracula had simply memorized and recited what he wanted to say). In the same scene, watch him when he serves Renfield the “very old wine:” he keeps his eyes fixed on Renfield rather than the wine.
As noted, his performance loses something once he gets into England, but he still has some great moments, like the look of barely-controlled hatred he gives Van Helsing after the latter shows him a mirror. Also, he maintains throughout an aura of supreme pride and confidence: of being secure in his own power that makes him a compelling figure even in the film’s weakest moments. And, in what might be the first onscreen instance of a classic acting technique, Dracula never blinks once during the whole film.
He’s well matched by Edward Van Sloan as Professor Van Helsing. Van Helsing is that rarest of cinematic breeds, the hero who actually seems to be just as good as the villain is evil. This is all the more impressive due to the vast difference between the tall, well-dressed, powerful Dracula and the bent, fidgety, elderly Van Helsing with his coke-bottle glasses (in one amusing moment, Dracula confronts Van Helsing, who quickly fumbles to put his glasses on). But Van Helsing soon proves himself every bit a match for Dracula, with a vast store of knowledge, an iron will, and a strong faith to counter Dracula’s unholy powers. Van Sloan gets some excellent moments, such as his gentle-yet-firm insistence on examining Mina’s throat after she has a ‘bad dream’ or the satisfied, knowing look he gives Dracula after the vampire smashes the mirror he showed him.
The latter is the first of several battles of will between Dracula and Van Helsing, which comprise some of the best scenes in the film. Both Lugosi and Van Sloan rise marvelously to the occasion and play off each other excellently. Van Sloan’s best scene probably comes when Dracula tries to get him out of the way; his fear and strain as he tries to resist is palpable.
The film’s other great performance is Dwight Frye as Renfield, who’s probably the most delightful character in the film. He starts out as your average narrow-minded businessman who dismisses the warnings of the locals and studiously ignores the warning signs as he approaches Castle Dracula (really, Renfield should get some sort of award for his dedication to his job: I don’t think I’d still be trying to close a real-estate deal if my host kept talking about spiders and wolves and could open doors without touching them). Later, after he’s been bitten, he’s wild-eyed and crazy, alternating broadly between pronouncing dire warnings to the others and gloating over their predicament. He also provides one of the creepiest laughs in all of cinema; a strained, monotone chuckle that could make your hair stand on end. Renfield also achieves a kind of screen immortality for being Dracula’s first official victim.
Outside the three central roles, the acting is mostly poor. Helen Chandler doesn’t make much impression as Mina, but she does have some excellent scenes after she’s been bitten, especially in a conversation with Dracula that leaves us in doubt whose side she’s actually on. She also has a delightful moment where she suddenly becomes less interested in Harker’s rhapsodies on the night and the stars and more interested in his exposed throat. David Manners as Jonathan Harker is a nightmare: his character is boring, useless, and pig-headed, with all the appeal and charisma of a cardboard box (Manners hated his role, but was unfortunately typecast as the “romantic lead” and soon quit acting in disgust). Herbert Burston as Dr. Seward is just as boring, his dialogue consisting entirely of “I find that hard to believe” and “be reasonable.” Frances Dade as Lucy has only two scenes before dropping out of the film, but she does get one good moment where she recites a grim poem about death, prompting an unexpected response from Dracula.
Watching the film again, I was surprised to find that it’s actually quite creepy. There’s probably not much to disturb the average jaded horror fan of today (though more on that in a bit), but the film does have a number of shiver-inducing moments: Renfield’s stiff, silent coachman (actually Dracula, though Renfield doesn’t realize this) who communicates only in firm gestures like Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come; Dracula and his brides rising from their coffins and stiffly ascending to meet Renfield; Dracula entering through a mist-shrouded window before bending over the fallen Renfield; Dracula’s assault on a flower-girl in London (a scene loaded with disturbing subtext). Perhaps the creepiest moment in the film, however, comes courtesy not of Dracula, but of Renfield. After the Vespa arrives in London, the dockworkers find Renfield crouched in the hold, leering wide-eyed at them and laughing his unearthly laugh while (intentionally or not) the shadows fall around him make him look like he has spider-legs. Almost as disturbing is a moment later on where he crawls on all fours towards a fallen maid, teeth-bared, an inhumanly hungry expression on his face…
Certainly one can see how this movie could leave unprepared audiences trembling.
The element that makes Dracula most frightening, however, is one that will probably be lost on most viewers today, but was largely taken for granted when it came out: the fear of punishment after death. The loss of one’s soul, the possibility of Hell, the Last Judgment…these are all part of Dracula’s architecture as a horror film and are necessary to fully appreciate it. More than once characters make reference to the primary importance of saving someone’s soul “if not her life.” Van Helsing, trying to get Renfield to give them more information, warns him of the fate that awaits him if he helps Dracula. In this way, the most horrifying scene in the film is Renfield futilely begging Dracula not to kill him, since he knows his soul is too corrupted to face God…
As this indicates, the film is frank about religious matters. It’s very first moments involve a pair of Translyvanian travelers who cut off a conversation about vampires with an invocation to the Virgin. Shortly afterwards, when Renfield expresses his determination to go on to Castle Dracula, one of the villagers gives him a Rosary to wear around his neck, which at least temporarily protects him from Dracula. Later on Van Helsing’s crucifix proves not only an effective defense against Dracula (“More effective than wolfbane, Count”), but the mere sight of it is enough to temporarily break Mina’s enchantment and prompts her to beg Harker to listen to Van Helsing.
The opening scenes of the film have some marvelous imagery: the towering Carpathian mountains, Dracula’s crumbling castle with its huge cobwebs and coffin-filled basement (including such odd touches as an appearance by the rare Transylvanian armadillo), the iconic image of Dracula standing in the doorway, framed by the mist-shrouded night. These scenes are almost the definition of gothic horror, and as someone once said about the novel, the first act could work perfectly well as a short film in itself.
The voyage of the Vespa (a nightmarish episode in the book and in Nosferatu) is here relegated to some stock-footage of The Storm Breaker, but does have one delightful moment where Dracula comes out on deck to survey to chaos, completely untroubled (and indeed, looking thoroughly contemptuous) by the storm. From there the film doesn’t have much to look at until the climax at Carfax Abbey, which manages to recover some of the gothic dread of the first act (the actual staking of the vampire, however, is a disappointment: it happens off screen in a hideous anticlimax).
Script-wise…well, simply as a script, Dracula is, as noted, horrible. Things happen for no apparent reason (i.e. where was Renfield going when Van Hesling and Harker follow him to Dracula? And what were they doing out in the first place?), characters repeat information, plot elements drop out of the story completely, things that should be shown as simply described (the worst example is where Harker describes the ‘large dog’ running across the lawn while looking pointedly off-camera). On the other hand, the dialogue, particularly among the three leads, is often simply superb. Lugosi gets all kinds of juicy lines to sink his fangs into (“Listen to them; children of the night! What music they make!”), while Van Sloan has his share as well (“When was the last time you saw Ms. Lucy after she was buried?”). Dwight Frye, meanwhile, gets perhaps the most evocative dialogue in the film with an almost biblical-sounding speech describing Dracula’s temptation of him (“All red blood! All these will I give you, if you will obey me!”).
In the end, Dracula is, for all its very real flaws, a worthy effort. Approached with a modicum of good-will and understanding for its place in film history and it’s a very enjoyable experience in creepiness. Whatever else may be said of it, here is one of the undisputed turning points of American Cinema: the birth of the horror film. Without Dracula, there would be no Frankenstein, no Psycho, no Halloween. Indeed, without Dracula it is likely there would be no Universal Studios, as it was the huge success of this film that saved Universal from bankruptcy.
Yet, the ending of Dracula’s story is not entirely happy. The great tragedy associated with this film, and its star, was that neither Bela Lugosi, nor Edward Van Sloan or Dwight Frye could ever quite escape its shadow. Van Sloan and Frye both did little but genre films (for the most part playing roles very similar to Van Helsing and Renfield) for the rest of their careers.
Lugosi, who had played the role hundreds of times on stage, vowed never to play Dracula again (he only played the role once more on screen), but his image as Dracula had so ingrained itself in the public mind that people had trouble accepting him as anything else. He spent the rest of his career doing little but horror and science-fiction, and while he generally did these roles well (or at least enthusiastically), his career quickly began to deteriorate due to some poor choices on his part and the emergence of the more versatile Boris Karloff. He soon fell into a terrible morphine addiction, which he only managed to overcome shortly before his death. His last years were spent making truly horrible bottom-of-the-barrel flicks, mostly for his friend, Ed Wood.
Despite his tragic fall, Lugosi remains one of the truly great stars of Hollywood’s golden age. His performance as Dracula alone would ensure that, but he really was a very talented actor and had a number of good-to-great films under his belt: Dracula, The Wolf-Man, The Black Cat (where he played the hero opposite Boris Karloff’s villain), The Island of Lost Souls, White Zombie, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. His career may be an example of just how bad the film industry can be (he sternly warned his children never to become actors), but it is fitting, perhaps, that he has achieved a kind of immortality that few actors even come close to. Everyone knows Lugosi, even those who have never seen his films, because he’s part of our cultural mythology: he was and is Count Dracula.
Final Rating: 4/5. Despite its stuffy, staged nature and deeply flawed script, the film’s strengths and Lugosi’s iconic performance make it a must-see for anyone who isn’t completely averse to early-sound films.
Memorable Quotes:
Dracula: “I am…Dracula.”
Renfield: “Isn’t this a strange conversation for men who aren’t crazy?”
Dracula: “To die…to be really dead…that must be glorious!”
Mina: “Why, Count Dracula!”
Dracula: “There are far worse things awaiting man…than death.”
Dracula: “For one who has not lived even a single lifetime you are a wise man, Van Helsing.”
Van Helsing (to Renfield): “You will die in torment if you die with innocent blood on your soul!”
Renfield: “God will not damn a lunatic’s soul. He knows that the powers of evil are too great for those of us with weak minds.”
Renfield: “Flies? Poor, puny things! Who wants to eat flies?”
Martin: “You do, y’ah loony!”
Renfield: “Not when I can have nice, fat spiders!”
Renfield: “You know too much to live, Van Helsing!”
Renfield: “No, don’t kill me! Let me live, please! Punish me, torture me, but let me live! I can’t die with all those lives on my conscience! All that blood on my hand!”
Van Helsing: “Mr. Harker, I have devoted my lifetime to the study of many strange things. Little known facts, which the world is perhaps better off not knowing.”
Renfield: “And I thought I heard him say…’Rats…Rats!...RATS!...Thousands! Millions of them! All red blood, all these will I give you, if you will obey me!”
Van Helsing: “What did he ask you to do?”
Renfield: “That which has already been done.”
Dracula: “Van Helsing! Now that you have learned what you have learned it would be better for you to return to your own country.”
Van Helsing: “I prefer to stay and protect those whom you would destroy.”
No comments:
Post a Comment