Director Tod Browning, who worked with Bela Lugosi on his 1929 film The Thirteenth Chair (also adapted from stage to screen), based his script for Dracula on the play rather than the novel, and brought Lugosi (as well as Edward Van Sloan in the Van Helsing role) from stage to screen. The script was written by screenwriter Garret Fort, who borrowed liberally from Deane and Balderston, and Dracula's origins as an adapted stage play is evident from its lack of cinematic special effects where they might have fitted in well.
F.W. Murnau in making Nosferatuclearly recognised the parallels between vampire mythology and the nature of the cinematic form, drawing out associations such as the vacillation between the real and the illusory, and using lighting effectively to emphasise the comparison of the darkened theatre to night, a tool that has traditionally been utilised in horror films to accentuate the similarities between the spectral and spectatorial technologies.
Indeed, since the earliest days of Georges Melies and his 'cinema fantastique', trick photography and cinematic illusion have been employed to make the incredible seem credible and the unreal seem real. And yet Tod Browning failed to exploit these possibilites, filming in a manner that mostly represented only what had been on stage, declining the use of montage editing, creative camera set ups or suggestive lighting effects. The off-screen death of Count Dracula himself for example seems anti-climactic, where Lugosi's definitive role as the title character might have warranted a more indulgent denouement.
While Browning did not use montage editing to create metaphoric juxtapositions in the way that Murnau attempted to do so (or in the way that numerous other directors and editors had developed this technique since Sergei Eisenstein revolutionary 1925Battleship Potemkin), he did use dissolves to indicate a change in time or location. These would denote the creation of a new set or mis-en-scene that frequently transmits a great deal of information about a character or characters, in a manner that was not possible with the more simple sets designed for use in the Deane and Balderston stage version.
The contrast, for example, between scenes in London and Transylvania emphasise the alienation factor of the vampire and serve to set the Transylvanian Count Dracula apart from the English society that that he infiltrates. Furthermore, the contrast between the refined Renfield and the superstitious locals in Transylvania highlights the primitive nature of this wild rural country where the course of industrialisation, Imperialism and education have not progressed, and harks back to themes from vampire mythology that link the creature to an ancient and atavistic nature.
Their number indicates the vampire's insatiable sexual appetite and power of seduction which is very much a part of the construction of the fear that vampire tales tap into. The London street scenes in which Dracula murders a lower class young woman are foggy, cold and evocative of a Jack the Ripper type serial murderer. Drac, like Jack, is ominous, anonymous – and leads the secret double life of an upper class gentleman (aristocrat in the case of Count Dracula and quite possibly also in the case of Jack the Ripper) who preys on the unsuspecting, and to whom society is so vulnerable, simply because we do not know who or what he is.
Establishment of characterisation for the supporting cast is also achieved through the use of costuming and set. Van Helsing for example, whose authority is crucial to the resolution of the story (ultimately both Harker and Dr Seward turn to him for guidance) declares at one point "I must be master here or I can do nothing". This line was recycled from the Deane and Balderston play, rather than from Bram Stoker's novel, and Browning has endorsed and affirmed this quality in Van Helsing by establishing him as an authoritative man of science through mis-en-scene.
As discussed in my opening background section, the use of scientific authority to sanction or give credibility to vampire lore has been emphasised in various constructions of the vampiric myth and here the supposed infallibility of science has also been used to give credibility and authority to Van Helsing, empowering him and setting him up in opposition to the supernatural power of Dracula. The close link that was perceived at that time between science and the patriarchy is also significant in stamping Van Helsing's charge on matters.
Whether dressed in a white labcoat and demonstrating his skill to a gallery of other doctors while he examines Lucy's body, or further authenticating his expertise to us (the film's audience) by practising his science viewing Renfield's blood under a microscope, Van Helsing fits the picture of a man who, as he later discloses "has devoted a lifetime to the study of many strange things, little known facts which the world is perhaps better off for not knowing". The importance of this 'man of science' figure is further illustrated by his consistent appearance, in similar forms, in horror films of the Universal cycle. The other landmark horror film of 1931, James Whale's Frankenstein, also features Edward Van Sloan. This time he portrays Dr Waldman, a character who represents conservative and institutionalised science.
Tod Browning's interpretation of the story once again has variation: one notable distinction is the role of the traveller, who in this version is Renfield and not Jonathan Harker. Renfield, played by Dwight Frye, is the one that journeys to Transylvania, in what is probably the most compelling part of the film, with its gothic flavoured Carpathian Mountain castle set and snippets of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
The dapper Renfield is not tied to marriage or to the institutional occupations of the Harker / Hutter character of the novel or first filmic version. A free man, unlike the enslaved Knock of Nosferatu, Renfield appears to represent the Hollywood idea of a decadent English gentleman. With his white hat and cane and his effeminate movements, Renfield also draws on much older themes from the cultural history of the vampire, that of the link between the travelling dandy and the vampire, which relates back to the tales of Lord Byron and John Polidori.
The dinner scene at Dracula's castle communicates an identification between the aristocratic Count and flamboyant Renfield, both ornately overdressed and eyeing each other in the baroque setting as Renfield drinks his wine. As Renfield sucks the blood from his finger, Dracula stares lasciviously, dismissing the female vampires and leaning in towards Renfield's throat. In the tightly censored Hollywood of 1931 these were the hints of perversity that allowed Browning's film to draw on greater themes of the homoeroticism of vampire literature and film, and perhaps also added credibility to once again making a scapegoat of Renfield, as he is thrown shrieking into Dr Seward's asylum.
Lugosi's Count Dracula, in his adorned clothing represents alienation in a vastly different way to that of his counterpart in Nosferatu. Where as Max Shreck's depiction of the nosferatu set vampires aside from humanity through animalistic features, Hollywood's version of the Count focuses on his artistocratic background and breeding. In Draculathe sense of ancient and supernatural mystique is aroused through an inference of the secrets of an age-old family rather than through a connection with nature.
Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula speaks of course with a thick accent, an alienating device unavailable to Max Shreck in the silent Nosferatu. Also notably setting Lugosi aside from the other characters is the elaborate manner in which he dresses, wearing his cloak and medals indoors (and even his his coffin!). These embellishments of garb may well result from the projections of Depression-struck America, whose idea of a foreign titled gentleman was gaudily fulfilled by Hollywood to evoke that fear of the unknown, the mysterious, the suspicious and the ominous. However, this costuming serves to separate and distinguish Lugosi as Dracula in a way that strays from the intentions of Bram Stoker in his characterisation of Count Dracula in the novel.
The Dracula of the novel, while speaking "with a strange intonation"[3], is nonetheless still very concerned with blending into the crowd, and painstakingly collects English paraphernalia to try and familiarise himself with the culture, the better to fit in. Bram Stoker writes of Jonathan Harker's exploration in Dracula's library, where he finds "…a vast number of English books… volumes of newspapers and magazines… books of the most varied kind all relating to England and English life and customs and manners."[4]. In explanation, the Count tells Harker "I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me, or pause in his speaking if he hear my words, to say ha ha a stranger!"[5] It is partly his ability to blend so smoothly into English society that makes the vampire such a fearful creature – his easy and effective disguise of the horror that lies within creates the tension of atmosphere on which the suspense is built.
Lugosi however, relishes his distinction. He epitomises in many ways elitism, the inaccessibilty of breeding, and not just through baroque clothing. While Max Shreck's attire was not unlike that of any other character in Nosferatu, he was clearly demonstrated through his bestial features to be not quite human. Lugosi is fangless, the only memorable animal association (aside perhaps from that of the cardboard bats, which invoke more a dodgy stage production than creature transfomation) is that of Swan Lake, an aesthetic affinity with the elegant and cultured Count, who is quite at home at the Opera.
It is this recreation of Dracula as an aesthete and a socialite, with his grand entrances into the drawing rooms of his victims and aristocratic posturing, that made Bela Lugosi a stylishly dressed sex symbol and consequently began the transformation of Dracula from stalker and rapist to seducer and lady killer, an important step in the changing representation of his character over time, and indeed of the horror villain in general.
[1] Huss, Roy cited in Waller, Gregory A: The Living and the Undead: University of Illinois Press: Chicago, 1986: p85
[2] Clarens, Carlos: An Illustrated History of Horror and Science Fiction Films – the classic era 1895– 1967: Da Capo Press: New York, 1997: p 62
[3] Stoker, Bram: Dracula: Puffin Books: London, 1986: p26
[4] Ibid p30
5] Ibid p31
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