With all this talk going down about Dracula, I noticed that the Coppola take on this one, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, has returned to Netflix streaming. If you recall my much earlier discussion, I was weighing whether or not to catch in on the streaming service before it was removed. I did not. However, shortly after Halloween, I realized that not only was Bram Stoker’s Dracula back on the stream menu, it was also back on the cull list*. This time I figured I had better watch it.
As I explained before, when this movie first came out, I was on a Francis Ford Coppola high. I was of the opinion that The Godfather was the perfect movie. I fully appreciated Apocalypse Now in concept, if not necessarily in execution. I had recently watched The Black Stallion and, awed by its impressive cinematography, associated it with Coppola (he being the executive producer). His directing of Rumble Fish and The Outsiders tied him, very particularly, to where I was at the time they were released. The pitch for Dracula, that it would take the story back to its literary roots, completely sold me.
Well, I think you know how this ends. I didn’t particularly care for it. For that matter, I didn’t particularly care for The Godfather: Part III. I got off my Coppola worship train, which is just as well. Not much** more came out under his direction after that. But was the problem me or was it Francis?
Given the context, one obvious thought in my head while I rewatched was to compare with my most recent Dracula experience. Obviously, all these Draculas based on the same literary source and so they are going to be mostly similar. At the same time, both of these version have the same, rich cinematic history that came before 1992. For just one example, I noticed a line (my title) repeated in the same place in both films. It took me a little more research to see that this one traces back, not to the book, but to the Bela Lugosi version (1931). This revelation may have been the key factor to helping me understand Coppola’s vision.
It took weeks to absorb the movie and realize what I was seeing. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is meant to be, at least to a large extent, a tribute to all that which came before. Explicit is the attempt to base the movie more on the original story than the ways the tales of Dracula had strayed over the course of almost a century. Beyond that, though, it is also a tribute to the old movies and the old ways of film making. Obvious nods include the borrowed dialog, of course, but this also explains some of “look” of the movie and why it felt so out of place.
There are any number of scenes scattered throughout the film that look flat or poorly conceived. I finally realize that Coppola is using the “special effects” techniques from the thirties as a way to honor that which came before him. It was this that in my earlier post I referred to as “stylized” without understanding what kind of bizarre “style” it was supposed to be. I’m not sure it enhances my enjoyment of the film to know this but it should cut down on the “WFT?!” moments.
Previously, nearly every time I comment on any Dracula movie, I have included a caveat about how I have not read the novel. I did try as a teen. I checked it out of the library but never made it through the opening chapter. I decided that the time has come to rectify this situation.
I can see now that the younger version of me entirely missed the boat. Part of it is that I’m older and part of it may be I’ve been reading a lot of Victorian novels lately and I’m already in the groove of the lingo. It is better writing than those others I’ve recently read, even when compared with its contemporaries. By many measures, it may be better writing that things I’m reading now.
Something I certainly did not appreciate back in the day was how this novel fit into its own literary landscape. The story, as you probably know, is told through diary entries, letters, and other documentation. This had been a popular method of story-telling for a good century (and then some) but Dracula was the most popular work of this style. The appeal was that the technique served as the equivalent of a “found footage” mockumentary. The reader was invited to accept the assembled documents as genuine, adding credibility to an otherwise-fantastic tale. Much like we would no longer accept another Blair Witch Project, this style no longer creates the sense of urgency that it once could. It certainly deterred teenage me even while offering grown-old me insight into its effectiveness.
Another theme, one that would have been hidden to me as a teenager, is that of technology. Like Verne before him, Stoker lived in a world of rapid technological development – in this case, he highlights consumer technology. His characters talk of taking “Kodaks” and enjoying moving picture shows. The story is trying to tell us something about the rapid change clashing with the foundation based upon centuries of heritage. Coppola did try to capture some of that “high tech” (and the BBC miniseries, perhaps, even more so), but today’s readers and are never quite going to see where Stoker was coming from.
Likewise, the modern reader is not going to fully appreciate those themes that get us going these days – those of sexuality and racism and the like. It is an interesting exercise in contrast. Coppola reproduces the scene where Dracula’s three lovelies attempt to seduce Harker. In his version, it is an explicit, highly-sexualized (almost pornographic) visual. The moviegoers of the 90s would not have settled for less. In the book, it is done with subtlety while being, in its own way, all the more sensuous. I happened to notice that the build-up to that scene used the world “voluptuous” in a way that seemed not quite right. At first I wondered if I didn’t appreciate that word’s use in Victorian England. When, shortly thereafter, the women found Harker, I decided it was intended as foreshadowing. Note that the seduction itself consists merely of the possibility that a girl might kiss him on the neck. He even feels her teeth (a sensation which we, who know the Dracula story, read much more into than the narrator) before she is stopped – very physically and violently by Count Dracula. The actual “sex” part of it is all innuendo and imagination. In its way, it is more effective than the explicit sexuality of the modern screen, to which we’ve become inured.
Likewise, the horror itself is better conveyed through prose than on screen. Or rather, I think it is. It’s hard to acknowledge a well-known, 125-year-old work as “scary” to the today’s reader. The terror in it – the idea that you are under the power of a murderous monster intent on your demise – is fundamentally far greater than jump scares or mind-bending special effects. Can the movies make you feel this far-more-personal form of fright? Some can. Most can’t. More specifically, the various attempts at Dracula do not and probably cannot. At a time when we all know the Dracula story inside and out, I doubt this book could really frighten anyone. Yet, we should all be able to appreciate how the writing was capable of doing so in that different time. In this, the original text begs to be revisited.
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*Well, it was. It isn’t now, as I finish up the post. Both the Coppola film and the new BBC miniseries are still being streamed on Netflix and I don’t see that either one has a date for being taken off.
**So, when I look at what Coppola directed post 1992, the only one that stands out have something I’ve watched is Rainmaker, the Matt Damon led version of the John Grisham novel. Today, I can’t remember a single thing about it. I gave it four stars on Netflix, so I must not have thought it was bad.