Thoughts on the Structures of Dracula Movies - Which Succeed?
As far as I can tell, Stoker's novel Dracula is divided into three basic sections, with the subplot of Renfield running parallel trough the first two and partway into the third. The first section consists of Jonathan's journey to Transylvania and his stay at Dracula's castle, the second of Lucy's slow illness/transformation into a vampire and her men's subsequent attempt to free her soul, and the third of the remaining characters' efforts to find and destroy Dracula as he began to attack Mina, lending an urgency to their efforts.
Managing to effectively include all these three sections in a film is pretty much impossible. No Dracula movie thus far has effectively managed it, at least to my knowledge. Plenty manage to do one, or maybe two, well, but all three simply becomes too much.
Much of the tone of a Dracula movie is determine by which of these sections it chooses to focus on, and how they manage to deal with/skirt over the remainder of the plot.
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu focuses indisputably on the first section, consolidating the second and third into one, quick, easily resolved plotline, eliminating the character of Lucy and making Ellen/Mina's victimization also the key to Orlock/Dracula's destruction. This enables Murnau to spend as much time as he pleases on Hutter/Jonathan's journey, spending precious scenes of his silent film on Hutter staying at an inn and reading about the terrifying nosferatu. We see hints of the second section in scenes with Ellen sleepwalking and having some sort of otherwordly connection with Hutter, but the movie fixates pretty invariably on Hutter's journey until both Orlock and Hutter are back in Bremen (that's where it takes place, right? I can't recall), and then rushes through to its visually stunning finish. Murnau also chooses to put an unwarrented but cinematically effective emphasis on Orlock's journey by boat - though the captain's log takes up a surprisingly large portion of the novel, it's time completely absent of character development, and having long scenes of it, let alone extending it into a plague plotline (that is also slightly abandoned later on - this is done better in Herzog's remake) seems completely illogical.
However, the choice of emphasizing the boat journey is one of the many factors that makes this movie so visually stunning, and it shows how, generally, Murnau's emphasis was on imagery, not character or plot development.
The 1931 Dracula also decides to focus on the first section of the book, but does so less skillfully even than Nosferatu, eliminating the connecting thread of Jonathan's presence in the first section, which makes it seem completely divorced from the rest of the movie. While the idea of having Renfield be the one who travels to Transylvania, and having his madness be a result of his experiences is there is an interesting one, it simply is not effective in terms of creating a coherent storyline. It means that we don't meet any of our protaganists until probably about halfway throught the flim (in the novel, we began to care about Jonathan, and thus begin to care about Mina because Joanthan cares about her, even before she appears in the plot), and then have no time at all to begin to care about them before they start being attacked by our antagonist. Then, the second two sections are crowded and rushed through in a messy fashion that heightens no one's opinion of the screenwriters. The second section is awkwardly left unresolved, and the third section is rushed through - as will become the fashion in Hammer films - in what amounts to a chase sequence, leaving no room for the important character development that takes up much of this section in the novel.
This also has the effect of having the title character present for a far larger percentage of the scenes than he is in the novel, as those not involving him are, for the most part, completely eliminated. Many have praised Stoker's novel for keeping its villain offstage for most of the plot, and I concur - the near constant presence of Bela Lugosi's Dracula on the screen detracts from any horror that might remain after his Hungarian accent, and surely contributed immeasurably to the soon to come phenomenon of Dracula as a figure of fun rather than terror.
It also means that, as audience members, we don't know how we're supposed to feel during the movie. The most likely character for anyone to identify with would be the Jonathan/Renfield hybrid, but that leaves the vast majority of the actual plot as pointless, a spectacle from which we can completely detach ourselves.
In the first of the Hammer Dracula movies, Horror of Dracula, it's difficult to tell what part of the plot is being focused on - the whole movie is such an orgy of spurting blood in bright technicolor that plot rather falls by the wayside. However, I think it's clear that the character we're supposed to sympathize and identify with is most likely Van Helsing, who indeed becomes the connecting thread of the plot, as, here, Jonathan is dead before he can leave Dracula's castle, and, in a complete divergence from the book, his friend (?) Van Helsing travels to Transylvania and discovers his undead body, before returning to lead, Lucy, Arthur, and Mina against the Count. Identifying with Van Helsing makes sense, in this movie - Jonathan is vaguely reprehensible in his calculated mission to kill the Count, Lucy is a Dorothy without personality before her transformation into a vampire and a raging beast afterwards, Mina is a vapid housewife, and Arthur is a slightly stupid brute. Van Helsing at least is capable of logic, unlike the rest of the characters, and is played quite sympathetically by Peter Cushing. But identification with Van Helsing, never quite an integral part of events of any of the three sections, gives the movie an unintentional surreality.
The first two sections are emphasized fairly equally here; the basic forms of each remain more or less recognizable, the screenwriters honing in on every opportunity possible for bloodletting by either the heroes or villains, even going so far as to add two extra stakings not present in Stoker's novel. The camera lingers on Lucy's terrified face as a crucifix is pressed against her forehead, and her scream at that moment is given more precendence than the majority of the dialogue. However, oddly enough, arguably the bloodiest scene in the novel, the blood exchange between Mina and the Count on October 2nd, is absent, and with it the vast majority of the third section, turned, as mentioned above, into a chase scene, the Count speeding back to his castle with an unconscious Mina in his arms and Van Helsing following behind. Stoker did in fact include a chase scene near the end of the novel, but there's none of that here - this is something nearly unrecognizable as an adaptation of the novel.
The 1979 remake of Nosferatu is quite loyal to Murnau's original, but, both because of the added time in Herzog's film and Herzog having the advantage of hindsight, being able to see what worked and what didn't in Murnau's film, Nosferatu, the Vampyre, focuses far more on Ellen/Mina (here called, to add to the confusion, Lucy), lingering on the later parts of the plot, the parts that are still a combination of the second and third sections of the novel, to great effect. And the far more active portrayal of Ellen/Mina/Lucy goes far in including much more of the third section of the novel, as Lucy spends time and energy planning her destruction of the Count - here, Ellen/Mina/Lucy does more than in any other adaptation that I've seen. And there's a hint of the second section as a seperate plotline, when Lucy's friend Mina (who's really Lucy - isn't this just terribly confusing?) is killed by Dracula, proving one of the things driving Lucy to sacrifice herself to destroy him.
In true Herzog fashion, and in effective tribute to Murnau, this movie lingers often on the beautiful imagery - Jonathan's long climb to Dracula's castle combes to mind, or the breathtaking scene as Lucy wanders through the party of townsfolk with the plague (a tribute to Murnau's Faust? I've wondered this for a while now). But the movie, unlike all the ones before it, does not skimp on plot or character development. All three of the leads are sympathetic, and there's just the right amount of plot to sustain the film. While outwardly not the most faithful to the novel, this movie does indeed include all three sections in more equal doses than most movies, and with far more coherancy.
The same year, the Frank Langella Dracula does something very interesting with regards to the three sections - it completely eliminates the first one. As the first section is the most obviously cinematic and the one with which previous adaptations have had the most success, this seems highly counterintuitive. However, it works to the advantage of this film, allowing it to focus on the dynamics between the characters and show something other than the routine "Jonathan at inn-Jonathan meeting Dracula-Jonathan having dinner with Dracula" scenes that had by that point become cliche. Interestingly enough, Jonathan gets more development despite having the section of the plot in which he was most present cut - him watching his fiancee (named Lucy here, but Mina in every imaginable way) succumbing to the Count and not knowing what he can do about it is one of the most effective parts of the movie.
In addition to doing with away with the first section altogether, the movie also eliminates most distinctions between the other two sections - while the Count generally goes after the Lucy character (named Mina) first, and then the Mina character (named Lucy!), the plotlines certainly overlap, which leads to occasionally very nice moments (Lucy/Mina watching as Mina/Lucy's heart is taken out of her chest by Van Helsing and Seward would be one), but means that barely any of the motivations and dynamics from the novel remain.
Overall, I think the movie suffers from a lack of intensity, of going almost too far away from the Hammer films. The muted palette of lavenders and grays is beautiful, but occasionally you want the characters to break out of it and for there to be a moment that feels real and intense. Because of this, it's a movie that works best upon rewatching - the first time I saw it, I noticed more the ridiculous parts of it (the switching of Mina and Lucy's names, the horrendously ridiculous bite marks, and, oh, dear gods, the blood exchange scene), and thought that I hardly like it at all. When I saw it again, I was able to notice the subtly wonderful moments (I'll be writing more on this movie soon, as it merits a good deal of analysis and I haven't written about it much at all). It's slightly incoherant as a film - it can be delightfully like fan fiction at times, with its cleverly inserted hints at the novel, but the flawed attempts at mainstream romance and occasional incomprehensible decisions scar it.
Bram Stoker's Dracula includes all three sections, with is admirable, but, in another manifestation of the spirit of excess that seems to run through the entire movie, it decides to include a completely superfluous love story as well, which takes up more attention than any of the other plotlines and detracts from the movie immeasurably.
Overall, really nothing about the flim makes sense - I'd call it a nightmare film for many reasons, but one being that the film is as frustratingly incoherant as a nightmare. Not least in its incoherancies is its portrayal of the Count himself, who appears to Jonathan as a completely crazy aristocrat, to Lucy as a lustful monster, and to Mina as a romantic tortured soul. In fact, as I write this, I realize that I could see a movie that set out trying to do that being fascinating - commenting on the ever shifting nature of this character and this story in our media. But Bram Stoker's Dracula doesn't do that, at least not with any intelligence, for the other personalities of the Count are dropped as soon as Jonathan leaves the castle and Lucy turns into a vampire, leaving us with simpering Winona Ryder!Mina and her Prince.
This is the only film of these seven where I would say that it suffers from trying to adhere to the novel's plotline and the format of the three sections. For, if the film could spiral off into its own nightmarish reality, it might manage to retain some artistic interest, but, by flaunting the superificial details from the book that it includes, and making an effort to force more and more of them in, it becomes merely a pornographic carnival ride of Stoker's novel, taking us along and showing us each of the different, garish sites and then moving on to another until the hapless audience is dizzy. It doesn't succeed, not as a film or an adaptation of the book.
The 2006 BBC Dracula is pure fan fiction. I'd say that it focused most on the second of the three sections, for elevating Arthur to such importance as a character and making Lucy's character arc so central certainly made that part of the story the emotional heart of the piece. The first section is short, and, attesting to the movie's likeness to a work of fan fiction, seeming to be written for people who are familiar with the story already - time isn't needed to set up the scenes between Dracula and Jonathan, we already know all this. And the third section is barely present at all, due to the AU nature of the film, but the general idea of it (our remaining characters all working together over some period of time to destroy Dracula once and for all), is present enough that I can be satisfied.
I like this movie. It's to my taste. It's unapologetic fan fiction, the characters stay mostly IC, there are period costumes and a general sense of being in the late nineteenth century. There are interesting, unexpected dynamics. There's a Dracula/Mina plot of the variety that I actually like.
But, structurally, it doesn't really work. It's rushed, one of the most fast paced movies I've seen, and including barely any explanation whatsoever of its plot elements, so that you have struggle to keep track of everything. And, being fan fiction, it doesn't stand on its own, which is one of the reasons that I'm glad it was made for TV. Really, mainstream movies can't be pure fan fiction, they have to stand on their own. So, while the BBC Dracula may succeed as a comment on the book, and may be very enjoyable for people like me, it doens't succeed as a movie. Which is a shame.
This isn't a completely comprehensive analysis - I have many, many more Dracula films to see, some because I want to, and some because I should (Dracula 2000 falls into the latter category). But I think there's a sense at the moment of the story of Dracula being 'used up', both cinematically and with regards to written adaptations of it in some form or another. I don't think that's true at all - I think there's a whole in the world of Dracula films, and one that has the potential to be filled by truly wonderful films. There hasn't been a Dracula film that has portrayed the dynamics and characters both accurately to Stoker's novel, and thoughtfully. The 2006 Dracula, with its AU examination of Lucy and Arthur's marriage falling apart, shows the beginnings of that. What about looking at, not just the antagonist, but the protaganists? What about making them just as interesting as the title character? What about creating a film that is as much a period film as a horror film? There's room for it.
Managing to effectively include all these three sections in a film is pretty much impossible. No Dracula movie thus far has effectively managed it, at least to my knowledge. Plenty manage to do one, or maybe two, well, but all three simply becomes too much.
Much of the tone of a Dracula movie is determine by which of these sections it chooses to focus on, and how they manage to deal with/skirt over the remainder of the plot.
Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu focuses indisputably on the first section, consolidating the second and third into one, quick, easily resolved plotline, eliminating the character of Lucy and making Ellen/Mina's victimization also the key to Orlock/Dracula's destruction. This enables Murnau to spend as much time as he pleases on Hutter/Jonathan's journey, spending precious scenes of his silent film on Hutter staying at an inn and reading about the terrifying nosferatu. We see hints of the second section in scenes with Ellen sleepwalking and having some sort of otherwordly connection with Hutter, but the movie fixates pretty invariably on Hutter's journey until both Orlock and Hutter are back in Bremen (that's where it takes place, right? I can't recall), and then rushes through to its visually stunning finish. Murnau also chooses to put an unwarrented but cinematically effective emphasis on Orlock's journey by boat - though the captain's log takes up a surprisingly large portion of the novel, it's time completely absent of character development, and having long scenes of it, let alone extending it into a plague plotline (that is also slightly abandoned later on - this is done better in Herzog's remake) seems completely illogical.
However, the choice of emphasizing the boat journey is one of the many factors that makes this movie so visually stunning, and it shows how, generally, Murnau's emphasis was on imagery, not character or plot development.
The 1931 Dracula also decides to focus on the first section of the book, but does so less skillfully even than Nosferatu, eliminating the connecting thread of Jonathan's presence in the first section, which makes it seem completely divorced from the rest of the movie. While the idea of having Renfield be the one who travels to Transylvania, and having his madness be a result of his experiences is there is an interesting one, it simply is not effective in terms of creating a coherent storyline. It means that we don't meet any of our protaganists until probably about halfway throught the flim (in the novel, we began to care about Jonathan, and thus begin to care about Mina because Joanthan cares about her, even before she appears in the plot), and then have no time at all to begin to care about them before they start being attacked by our antagonist. Then, the second two sections are crowded and rushed through in a messy fashion that heightens no one's opinion of the screenwriters. The second section is awkwardly left unresolved, and the third section is rushed through - as will become the fashion in Hammer films - in what amounts to a chase sequence, leaving no room for the important character development that takes up much of this section in the novel.
This also has the effect of having the title character present for a far larger percentage of the scenes than he is in the novel, as those not involving him are, for the most part, completely eliminated. Many have praised Stoker's novel for keeping its villain offstage for most of the plot, and I concur - the near constant presence of Bela Lugosi's Dracula on the screen detracts from any horror that might remain after his Hungarian accent, and surely contributed immeasurably to the soon to come phenomenon of Dracula as a figure of fun rather than terror.
It also means that, as audience members, we don't know how we're supposed to feel during the movie. The most likely character for anyone to identify with would be the Jonathan/Renfield hybrid, but that leaves the vast majority of the actual plot as pointless, a spectacle from which we can completely detach ourselves.
In the first of the Hammer Dracula movies, Horror of Dracula, it's difficult to tell what part of the plot is being focused on - the whole movie is such an orgy of spurting blood in bright technicolor that plot rather falls by the wayside. However, I think it's clear that the character we're supposed to sympathize and identify with is most likely Van Helsing, who indeed becomes the connecting thread of the plot, as, here, Jonathan is dead before he can leave Dracula's castle, and, in a complete divergence from the book, his friend (?) Van Helsing travels to Transylvania and discovers his undead body, before returning to lead, Lucy, Arthur, and Mina against the Count. Identifying with Van Helsing makes sense, in this movie - Jonathan is vaguely reprehensible in his calculated mission to kill the Count, Lucy is a Dorothy without personality before her transformation into a vampire and a raging beast afterwards, Mina is a vapid housewife, and Arthur is a slightly stupid brute. Van Helsing at least is capable of logic, unlike the rest of the characters, and is played quite sympathetically by Peter Cushing. But identification with Van Helsing, never quite an integral part of events of any of the three sections, gives the movie an unintentional surreality.
The first two sections are emphasized fairly equally here; the basic forms of each remain more or less recognizable, the screenwriters honing in on every opportunity possible for bloodletting by either the heroes or villains, even going so far as to add two extra stakings not present in Stoker's novel. The camera lingers on Lucy's terrified face as a crucifix is pressed against her forehead, and her scream at that moment is given more precendence than the majority of the dialogue. However, oddly enough, arguably the bloodiest scene in the novel, the blood exchange between Mina and the Count on October 2nd, is absent, and with it the vast majority of the third section, turned, as mentioned above, into a chase scene, the Count speeding back to his castle with an unconscious Mina in his arms and Van Helsing following behind. Stoker did in fact include a chase scene near the end of the novel, but there's none of that here - this is something nearly unrecognizable as an adaptation of the novel.
The 1979 remake of Nosferatu is quite loyal to Murnau's original, but, both because of the added time in Herzog's film and Herzog having the advantage of hindsight, being able to see what worked and what didn't in Murnau's film, Nosferatu, the Vampyre, focuses far more on Ellen/Mina (here called, to add to the confusion, Lucy), lingering on the later parts of the plot, the parts that are still a combination of the second and third sections of the novel, to great effect. And the far more active portrayal of Ellen/Mina/Lucy goes far in including much more of the third section of the novel, as Lucy spends time and energy planning her destruction of the Count - here, Ellen/Mina/Lucy does more than in any other adaptation that I've seen. And there's a hint of the second section as a seperate plotline, when Lucy's friend Mina (who's really Lucy - isn't this just terribly confusing?) is killed by Dracula, proving one of the things driving Lucy to sacrifice herself to destroy him.
In true Herzog fashion, and in effective tribute to Murnau, this movie lingers often on the beautiful imagery - Jonathan's long climb to Dracula's castle combes to mind, or the breathtaking scene as Lucy wanders through the party of townsfolk with the plague (a tribute to Murnau's Faust? I've wondered this for a while now). But the movie, unlike all the ones before it, does not skimp on plot or character development. All three of the leads are sympathetic, and there's just the right amount of plot to sustain the film. While outwardly not the most faithful to the novel, this movie does indeed include all three sections in more equal doses than most movies, and with far more coherancy.
The same year, the Frank Langella Dracula does something very interesting with regards to the three sections - it completely eliminates the first one. As the first section is the most obviously cinematic and the one with which previous adaptations have had the most success, this seems highly counterintuitive. However, it works to the advantage of this film, allowing it to focus on the dynamics between the characters and show something other than the routine "Jonathan at inn-Jonathan meeting Dracula-Jonathan having dinner with Dracula" scenes that had by that point become cliche. Interestingly enough, Jonathan gets more development despite having the section of the plot in which he was most present cut - him watching his fiancee (named Lucy here, but Mina in every imaginable way) succumbing to the Count and not knowing what he can do about it is one of the most effective parts of the movie.
In addition to doing with away with the first section altogether, the movie also eliminates most distinctions between the other two sections - while the Count generally goes after the Lucy character (named Mina) first, and then the Mina character (named Lucy!), the plotlines certainly overlap, which leads to occasionally very nice moments (Lucy/Mina watching as Mina/Lucy's heart is taken out of her chest by Van Helsing and Seward would be one), but means that barely any of the motivations and dynamics from the novel remain.
Overall, I think the movie suffers from a lack of intensity, of going almost too far away from the Hammer films. The muted palette of lavenders and grays is beautiful, but occasionally you want the characters to break out of it and for there to be a moment that feels real and intense. Because of this, it's a movie that works best upon rewatching - the first time I saw it, I noticed more the ridiculous parts of it (the switching of Mina and Lucy's names, the horrendously ridiculous bite marks, and, oh, dear gods, the blood exchange scene), and thought that I hardly like it at all. When I saw it again, I was able to notice the subtly wonderful moments (I'll be writing more on this movie soon, as it merits a good deal of analysis and I haven't written about it much at all). It's slightly incoherant as a film - it can be delightfully like fan fiction at times, with its cleverly inserted hints at the novel, but the flawed attempts at mainstream romance and occasional incomprehensible decisions scar it.
Bram Stoker's Dracula includes all three sections, with is admirable, but, in another manifestation of the spirit of excess that seems to run through the entire movie, it decides to include a completely superfluous love story as well, which takes up more attention than any of the other plotlines and detracts from the movie immeasurably.
Overall, really nothing about the flim makes sense - I'd call it a nightmare film for many reasons, but one being that the film is as frustratingly incoherant as a nightmare. Not least in its incoherancies is its portrayal of the Count himself, who appears to Jonathan as a completely crazy aristocrat, to Lucy as a lustful monster, and to Mina as a romantic tortured soul. In fact, as I write this, I realize that I could see a movie that set out trying to do that being fascinating - commenting on the ever shifting nature of this character and this story in our media. But Bram Stoker's Dracula doesn't do that, at least not with any intelligence, for the other personalities of the Count are dropped as soon as Jonathan leaves the castle and Lucy turns into a vampire, leaving us with simpering Winona Ryder!Mina and her Prince.
This is the only film of these seven where I would say that it suffers from trying to adhere to the novel's plotline and the format of the three sections. For, if the film could spiral off into its own nightmarish reality, it might manage to retain some artistic interest, but, by flaunting the superificial details from the book that it includes, and making an effort to force more and more of them in, it becomes merely a pornographic carnival ride of Stoker's novel, taking us along and showing us each of the different, garish sites and then moving on to another until the hapless audience is dizzy. It doesn't succeed, not as a film or an adaptation of the book.
The 2006 BBC Dracula is pure fan fiction. I'd say that it focused most on the second of the three sections, for elevating Arthur to such importance as a character and making Lucy's character arc so central certainly made that part of the story the emotional heart of the piece. The first section is short, and, attesting to the movie's likeness to a work of fan fiction, seeming to be written for people who are familiar with the story already - time isn't needed to set up the scenes between Dracula and Jonathan, we already know all this. And the third section is barely present at all, due to the AU nature of the film, but the general idea of it (our remaining characters all working together over some period of time to destroy Dracula once and for all), is present enough that I can be satisfied.
I like this movie. It's to my taste. It's unapologetic fan fiction, the characters stay mostly IC, there are period costumes and a general sense of being in the late nineteenth century. There are interesting, unexpected dynamics. There's a Dracula/Mina plot of the variety that I actually like.
But, structurally, it doesn't really work. It's rushed, one of the most fast paced movies I've seen, and including barely any explanation whatsoever of its plot elements, so that you have struggle to keep track of everything. And, being fan fiction, it doesn't stand on its own, which is one of the reasons that I'm glad it was made for TV. Really, mainstream movies can't be pure fan fiction, they have to stand on their own. So, while the BBC Dracula may succeed as a comment on the book, and may be very enjoyable for people like me, it doens't succeed as a movie. Which is a shame.
This isn't a completely comprehensive analysis - I have many, many more Dracula films to see, some because I want to, and some because I should (Dracula 2000 falls into the latter category). But I think there's a sense at the moment of the story of Dracula being 'used up', both cinematically and with regards to written adaptations of it in some form or another. I don't think that's true at all - I think there's a whole in the world of Dracula films, and one that has the potential to be filled by truly wonderful films. There hasn't been a Dracula film that has portrayed the dynamics and characters both accurately to Stoker's novel, and thoughtfully. The 2006 Dracula, with its AU examination of Lucy and Arthur's marriage falling apart, shows the beginnings of that. What about looking at, not just the antagonist, but the protaganists? What about making them just as interesting as the title character? What about creating a film that is as much a period film as a horror film? There's room for it.