Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)


A positive review of a movie should be more than just a laundry list of refutations of other people's criticisms. It should, I think, point out what works about the film. Browning's Dracula is one of those I have trouble writing about because I always end up with the former, while never quite being able to put my finger on the latter. It's a deservedly well-loved movie, and it has just as many detractors as fans. Strangely, it's the critics who best express what they think doesn't work...I'm unsure whether I've ever read a take on it that captures exactly why it does work. Maybe there's nothing exact about it.

In fairness I should start not with the movie itself but by acknowledging the film that should have been. Universal had been planning a more epic and more faithful movie starring Lon Chaney in the title role (I don't know which part of that is the more mouthwatering). It's our great loss that it fell apart. Chaney died and the studio changed hands, and the project was scrapped in favor of a scaled-down production based not on Stoker's book but one of the more popular stage adaptations. Maybe the critics are right when they say Browning lost all enthusiasm. No one really knows what his thoughts were, we're all left guessing.

I grew up on Dracula ('31) and had a child's ability to accept that he was a monster simply because...well, just because. He's well-spoken, well-dressed, exceptionally well-mannered, urbane...the perfect dinner guest provided you're not the dinner. Still, you already know going in that he's a blood-drinking creature that isn't really human and isn't really alive either. It's just one of those things you learn early on, Dracula is a culturally known quantity the world over and you know this before ever seeing one of these movies. Some jaded horror viewers may need something more, but to a kid an undead blood-drinker is a lot. Children have a way of honing in on a concept whether the frills are there or not.

Some of those childhood movies no longer work for me, sad to say. Not so with Browning's Dracula, if anything it's become much more frightening to me in adulthood. When I was a child Dracula himself scared me whenever he was onscreen. Now it's the whole movie that creeps me out. It's no longer just a film about a monster. It's about keeping a death vigil over people you can't save, about watching someone you love fall under the sway of corruption and change into someone who no longer cares about you. The ghoulish factor provided by the literal vampirism completes the chill of nightmarishness, but it isn't the only one.

Nightmarish is exactly the right word. Have you ever tried examining a bad dream upon waking? Not just the content, but the experience of it, the tone and feel. Often the terror one feels comes not from what happens in the dream but from the dread of what you expect to happen. You feel yourself surrounded by mortal danger, impending death, evil, an awareness or knowledge of things not spelled out in the dream but that – in the way of dreams – you just happen to know. Like...that there's a vampire in the house. Notice, also, that bad dreams are often quiet. Your dreams don't have a score.

I don't know what works for others but Dracula evokes exactly that experience for me, due in no small part to the lack of music in the film. The effect is unintended, the choice not to score the film a practical one, but the effect is there all the same. If you're familiar with the dream experience I'm talking about try watching Dracula at one in he morning with the lights out, without the score Phillip Glass wrote for it, and see if it doesn't feel creepily familiar. It's a talky film, too, just like the most excruciating of bad dreams – you drone when you want to scream, shamble when you want to run.

The copy I watched was the 75th anniversary edition DVD, on my new HDTV. I've never seen it look so good. Karl Freund's cinematography is consistent throughout the production, from the Carpathians in the night fog to the night life of London or the estate of Seward's sanitarium in Whitby. The camerawork is subdued but never static or setbound: simply, it's about the ambiance more than the movement. Friend and the set decorators create a living space with deep blacks, strategic whites, and subtle grays. There's real depth of space onscreen: check out the gorgeous scene of the “mysterious Lady in White” walking through the foliage and other outdoors shots in the films' latter half (no one complains of the opening sequence in Transylvania for good reason) or the textured murk of the dungeons that seem to go on forever. In older copies the interior of Seward's mansion came across as flat, and the scenes duller for it. This restoration was a revelation, now it's a space that's fluid and expansive and enhancing the dream quality: I can feel the other rooms of the house and the potential for unseen that's within them, dark deeds taking place where no one's looking.

Casting Lugosi was a bold move. He had proven popular in the role on stage already, especially with the women, but it's a risky (risque) departure to present a vampire with such undeniable sex appeal. I can't imagine how heady this might have been for Thirties' audiences, with vampirism already tacitly understood to be a sexual transgression but this time involving not a monstrous parody of humanity but a sex symbol that had women swooning. Lugosi was hired for just that appeal. Take note, you who think recent adaptations have erred in casting attractive, romantic leads! His presence is undeniable. His Count has the supreme self-confidence of unquestioned nobility.

Of course, Dwight Frye is the other standout. As Renfield he's a nervous wreck full of rapidly shifting moods, nervous amusement, sudden fits of threatening mania. His terrible sick titter is unforgettable as his mad eyes leer up the hatchway - “Eh-hnh-hnh-hnh-hnh-hnh-hnh-hnhhhh-h-h-h-h!” If the rest of the cast lack for excitement, Frye makes up for all of them.

I've grown less fond of Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing over the years (though I love him in Frankenstein and Freund's The Mummy). Stokers' character is marked by a profound compassion for all he encounters, and I don't see that at all in Van Sloan's portrayal. Not does he do a very good job convincing Harker that they face a supernatural being. If you tell people that the man they just met is a vampire and they say there's no such thing, repeating 'but he's undead!' isn't a winning argument. Still, he does exude a steadfast authority – the scene of his confrontation with Dracula is still strong, and it helps that Harker is a dull-witted drip. Helen Chandler as Mina...not my favorite but her face does have a strange allure when she vamps out.

There are nice touches throughout, like the nonchalant way Dracula leaves the dead flowergirl behind, Dracula walking through a web without breaking it, the vampiric bee. Determine the scale of the bee's coffin by the stones on the wall it sits against: that is a human-sized bee, predating Argento's mantis for sheer WTFness. Making a tiny coffin for a bee might be a believable whimsy, but who crafts a scale stone wall to go with it?

I love this movie more than ever. It's far from a nostalgia thing.

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