Films: 1930s
(1931) Dracula
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Dracula
Director: Todd Browning
Release: 1931
The difficulty in judging the impact of Todd Browning's 1931 "Dracula" lies in the possible facts surrounding its creation.
It may be that that the musical score was omitted due to studio concerns that an audience still transferring from silent movies would be disoriented by sourceless music, but that does not negate the result: "Dracula" is a glorious study in silence.
It may be that Bela Lugosi needed to learn his lines phonetically, but that does not negate the result: "Dracula" is soaked in oddly clumped bursts of dialogue and long, nerve-wracking hesitations between lines.
Browning came to "Dracula" with Garette Fort's revisions of playwright Hamilton Deane's clunky theatrical adaptation as his template, and it is apparent he compensated for Fort's choppy script by throwing every atmospheric detail he could into sets, lighting and camera.
"Dracula" begs examination.
Charles Halls' art direction and Russel Gausman's set decoration manifest a mist-cloaked world of Baroque Transylvanian carriage paths and castles, and soupy, menacing London streetscapes.
In the center of this gorgeous attention to environment is Bela Lugosi, playing Dracula in a perpetual state of distance. At once urbane and alien, Lugosi delivers his lines like a man just awakened from a cloudy sleep.
Orbiting him with spastic, leering fireworks is Universal Picture's serial madman Dwight Frye as Renfield. Whereas Lugosi's eyes gleam like marbles in his head, Frye's are whirlpools and the two make the perfect on screen pair - inscrutable monster and insuppressible maniac.
Renfield, in this version of "Dracula" travels to the Carpathians where he seals a land deal with Count Dracula for Carfax Abbey in London. Dracula makes Renfield his blood-slave (trading small creatures for Renfield's allegiance) and the two sail for England.
Upon their arrival, the Vesta's crew decimated en route, Renfield is incarcerated in Seward Sanitarium, next to the abbey. Dracula roams London, preying where he likes until discovering Dr. Jack Seward (Herbert Bunston) and his daughter Mina (the stunning Helen Chandler, who ended up in a real sanitarium nine years later).
Mina is betrothed to Jonathan Harker (the rather flimsy David Manners, note his weak flailing at a large bat on the veranda). Dracula drains her friend Lucy Weston (Frances Dade) and turns next to her. She is easy prey and soon under his spell.
It is Browning's driving theme of lust and capture that makes "Dracula" so unnerving. Browning manages to capitalize on Lugosi and Chandler's twisted attraction (he for her blood and innocence, she for his power and indomitable will). Watching the two of them intertwine in the garden beneath Lugosi's cape leaves little question that subversion and dominance are the order of Browning's day.
That being said, "Dracula" is at its best before the London scenes. Frye and Lugosi are buoyed by the dramatic sets of the Transylvanian castle and surroundings. The camera lingers far too briefly, but does some of its most sophisticated work on these sets. The tracking shot to Dracula's coffin in the castle crypts is fluid and frightening, the ability to stop and notice an armadillo or a beetle slip behind a wall or out of a miniature casket allow for the kind of texture and nuance that Murnau brought to his predecessor masterpiece "Nosferatu."
Once in London, it's hard not to feel some lag. Granted, Browning dispatches the entirety of Transylvania, the sea voyage and Lucy's death in 30 minutes, top-loading "Dracula" in such a way that slowdown is inevitable, but the flat dialogue between Mina and Harker goes on for too long and Edward van Sloan, very notable as a Dr. Waldman in "Frankenstein," comes off as a bit silly as a geeky Van Helsing. He spends too much time injecting scientific garbage into mini-monologue form and far too little time squaring off with the Dracula.
There are some plot holes that detract from the story. As in Bram Stoker's novel, Lucy returns from death to prey on the children of London. Browning shows her lurking and allows for some detail in a news report, but she is never confronted and never mentioned again (this was a crucial role in the original narrative, in that driving a stake through Lucy's heart galvanized Harker and company to pursue the matter of Dracula to its end).
The ending is sadly misshapen. Talk of censorship may account for the off screen dispatching of Dracula (Renfield is the only character to receive a suitably dramatic demise), but not for the inexplicable decision of Van Helsing to stay in the basement of Carfax for a little while while Harker and Mina ascend a staircase like English royalty. Cut to credits. The end.
What does remain, however, is Browning's attention to detail and absolute success with atmosphere. The Universal horror films tended to have their broken gears, but the salvageable is stylish, significant and sophisticated.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Dracula, 1931
It is Browning's driving theme of lust and capture that makes 'Dracula' so unnerving. Browning manages to capitalize on Lugosi and Chandler's twisted attraction (he for her blood and innocence, she for his power and indomitable will). Watching the two of them intertwine in the garden beneath Lugosi's cape leaves little question that subversion and dominance are the order of Browning's day.
