Дракула: Классика Ужасов 1931 Года

1931 film

Dracula is a 1931 American pre Code supernatural horror film directed and co produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the title role. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée. Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, Dracula is the first sound film adaptation of the Stoker novel. Several actors were considered to portray the title character, but Lugosi, who had previously played the role on Broadway, eventually got the part. The film was partially shot on sets at Universal Studios Lot in California, which were reused at night for the filming of Dracula, a concurrently produced Spanish language version of the story also by Universal. Dracula was a commercial and critical success upon release, and led to several sequels and spin offs. It has had a notable influence on popular culture, and Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula established the character as a cultural icon, as well as the archetypal vampire in later works of fiction. In 2000, the film was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Renfield is a solicitor traveling to Count Dracula's castle in Transylvania on a business matter. The local village people fear that vampires inhabit the castle and warn Renfield not to go there. Renfield refuses to stay at the village inn and asks his carriage driver to take him to the Borgo Pass. He is driven to the castle by Dracula's coach, with Dracula disguised as the driver. En route, Renfield sticks his head out the window to ask the driver to slow down but sees the driver has disappeared; a bat leads the horses. Renfield enters the castle and is welcomed by the charming but eccentric Count, who, unbeknownst to Renfield, is a vampire. They discuss Dracula's intention to lease Carfax Abbey in England, where he intends to travel the next day. Dracula hypnotizes Renfield into opening a window. Renfield faints as a bat appears, and Dracula's three wives close in on him. Dracula waves them away, then attacks Renfield himself. Aboard the schooner Vesta, Renfield has become a raving lunatic slave to Dracula, who hides in a coffin and feeds on the ship's crew. When the ship reaches England, Renfield is discovered to be the only living person. He is sent to Dr. Seward's sanatorium adjoining Carfax Abbey. Elsewhere, at a London theatre, Dracula meets Seward. Seward introduces his daughter Mina, her fiancé John Harker, and a family friend, Lucy Weston. Lucy is fascinated by Dracula. That night, Dracula enters her room and feasts on her blood while she sleeps. She dies the next day after a string of blood transfusions. Renfield is obsessed with eating flies and spiders. Polymath doctor Professor Van Helsing analyzes his blood and discovers his obsession. He starts talking about vampires, and that afternoon, Renfield begs Seward to send him away, claiming his nightly cries may disturb Mina's dreams. When Dracula calls Renfield through the medium of a wolf howling, Renfield is disturbed by Van Helsing showing him wolfsbane, which Van Helsing says is used for protection from vampires. Dracula visits Mina, asleep in her bedroom, and bites her. The next evening, he enters for a visit, and Van Helsing and Harker notice that he does not have a mirror reflection. When Van Helsing reveals this to Dracula, he smashes the mirror and leaves. Van Helsing deduces that Dracula is the vampire behind the recent tragedies. Mina leaves her room and runs to Dracula in the garden, where he attacks her. The maid finds her. Harker wants to take Mina to London for safety but is convinced to leave her with Van Helsing. Van Helsing orders Nurse Briggs to take care of Mina when she sleeps and not to remove the wreath of wolfsbane from her neck. Renfield escapes from his cell and listens to the men discussing vampires. Before he is taken back to his cell, Renfield relates to them how Dracula convinced Renfield to allow him to enter the sanatorium by promising him thousands of rats full of blood and life. Dracula enters the Seward parlor and talks with Van Helsing. He states that Mina now belongs to him and warns Van Helsing to return to his home country. Van Helsing swears to excavate Carfax Abbey and destroy Dracula. Dracula attempts to hypnotize Van Helsing, but the latter's resolve proves stronger. As Dracula lunges at Van Helsing, he draws a crucifix from his coat, forcing Dracula to retreat. Harker visits Mina on a terrace, and she speaks of how much she loves "nights and fogs". A bat flies above them and squeaks to Mina. She then attacks Harker, but Van Helsing and Seward save him. Mina confesses what Dracula has done to her and tells Harker their love is finished. Dracula hypnotizes Briggs into removing the wolfsbane from Mina's neck and opening the windows. Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield heading for Carfax Abbey. Arriving there, they see Dracula with Mina. When Harker shouts to Mina, Dracula thinks Renfield has betrayed him by leading them there and kills him. Dracula is hunted by Van Helsing and Harker, who know that Dracula is forced to sleep in his coffin during daylight, and the sun is rising. Van Helsing prepares a makeshift wooden stake from Dracula's coffin lid while Harker searches for Mina. Van Helsing impales Dracula through the heart, killing him, and Mina returns to normal.

Bram Stoker's novel had already been filmed without permission as Nosferatu in 1922 by German Expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau. Stoker's widow sued for plagiarism and copyright infringement, and the courts decided in her favor, essentially ordering that all prints of Nosferatu be destroyed. Fort turned to the stage play. Already a huge hit on Broadway, the Deane/Balderston Dracula play would end up becoming the blueprint as the production gained momentum. The screenwriters also carefully studied the silent, unauthorized version, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu, for inspiration. Lifted directly from a nearly identical scene in Nosferatu that does not appear in Stoker's novel, was the early scene at the Count's castle when Renfield accidentally pricks his finger on a paper clip and it starts to bleed. Dracula creeps toward him with glee, only to be repelled when the crucifix falls in front of the bleeding finger.

The film was originally intended for Conrad Veidt, who had just appeared in Universal's The Man Who Laughs (1928) and The Last Performance (1929). When Veidt returned to Germany fearing his English was not good enough for talkies Universal looked to Lon Chaney, star of the studio's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Although at the time Chaney was under contract to Metro Goldwyn Mayer and had already decided a remake of The Unholy Three (1930) would be his first sound film. After his sudden death casting the title role proved problematic. Initially Laemmle was not at all interested in Lugosi, in spite of good reviews for his stage portrayal. Laemmle instead considered more established screen actors, with John Wray, fresh from his success in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) being announced as cast in the role. Both Ian Keith and William Courtenay would be subsequently mentioned in the press of the time. Other actors considered included Paul Muni, Chester Morris, Joseph Schildkraut and Arthur Edmund Carewe. Lugosi had played the role on Broadway, and to his good fortune, happened to be in Los Angeles with a touring company of the play when the film was being cast. Lew Ayres was hired to play Jonathan Harker, only to be replaced with Robert Ames because of a filming conflict. Ames was himself replaced with David Manners following news reports of his messy divorce. According to numerous accounts, the production is alleged to have been a mostly disorganized affair, with the usually meticulous Tod Browning leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to take over during much of the shoot, making Freund something of an uncredited director on the film. Manners recalled about the filming: "I can still see Lugosi, parading up and down the stage, posing in front of a full length mirror, throwing his cape over his shoulder and shouting, 'I am Dracula!' He was mysterious and never really said anything to the other members of the cast except good morning when he arrived and good night when he left. He was polite, but always distant". Lugosi struck Manners as a vain, eccentric performer: "I never thought he was acting, but being the odd man he was". Tod Browning remembered actress Helen Chandler from the 1928 Broadway play The Silent House and based on that maiden performance chose her for Mina, the heroine, who becomes mistress to Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula. The scenes of crew members on the ship struggling in the violent storm were lifted from a Universal silent film, The Storm Breaker. Photographed at silent film projection speed, this accounts for the jerky, sped up appearance of the footage when projected at 24 frames per second sound film speed and cobbled together with new footage of Dracula and Renfield. The picture was completed for a total cost of $341,191.20, which was under the original estimate of $355,050.

The film's histrionics from the stage play are also reflected in its special effects, which are limited to fog, lighting, and large flexible bats. Dracula's transition from bat to person is always done off camera. The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close ups for dramatic effect, and employs two expository intertitles and a closeup of a newspaper article to advance the story, a seeming holdover from silent films; a point made by online film critic James Berardinelli is that the actors' performance style seems to belong to the silent era. Director Tod Browning had a reputation as a silent film director, having made them since 1915, including ten horror blockbusters with Lon Chaney including The Unknown (1927), but he never felt completely at ease with sound films. The film, with this new score, was released by Universal Studios in 1999 in the VHS format. Universal's DVD releases allow the viewer to choose between the unscored soundtrack or the Glass score. The soundtrack, Dracula, was released by Nonesuch Records in 1999. Glass and the Kronos Quartet performed live during showings of the film in 1999, 2000. 2012 and 2017.

Dracula was a big gamble for a major Hollywood studio to undertake. In spite of the literary credentials of the source material, it was uncertain if an American audience was prepared for a serious full length supernatural chiller. Though American audiences had been exposed to other chillers before, such as The Cat and the Canary (1927), this was a horror story with no comic relief or trick ending that downplayed the supernatural. Despite this, Dracula proved to be a box office success. When the film finally premiered at the Roxy Theatre in New York City on February 12, 1931 (released two days later throughout the U. S.), Variety praised the film for its "remarkably effective background of creepy atmosphere" and wrote: "It is difficult to think of anybody who could quite match the performance in the vampire part of Bela Lugosi, even to the faint flavor of foreign speech that fits so neatly". Film Daily declared the film "a fine melodrama" and remarked that Lugosi had created "one of the most unique and powerful roles of the screen". Time called it "an exciting melodrama, not as good as it ought to be but a cut above the ordinary trapdoor and winding sheet type of mystery film". John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote a negative review, remarking that "there is no real illusion in the picture" and "this whole vampire business falls pretty flat". The Chicago Tribune did not think the film was as scary as the stage version, calling its framework "too obvious" and "its attempts to frighten too evident", but still concluded that it was "quite a satisfactory thriller".

The film was originally released with a running time of 85 minutes; This epilogue was removed out of fear of encouraging a belief in the supernatural. This scene was briefly shown in the "Road to Dracula" documentary, but it may be unusable and can not be restored.

In the early days of sound films, it was common for Hollywood studios to produce "Foreign Language Versions" of their films using the same sets, costumes and so on. While Browning filmed during the day, at night George Melford was using the sets to make the Spanish language version Drácula, starring Carlos Villarías as Conde Drácula. Long thought lost, a print of Drácula was discovered in the 1970s, of which large sections had rotted away. In the early 1990s, a good copy was found in Cuba. The film was preserved in the US National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. A third, silent, version of the film was also released. In 1931, some theaters had not yet been wired for sound, and during this transition period many studios released alternative silent versions with intertitles. John Oliver of the British Film Institute credited the film with establishing the "popular on screen image of the vampire" and wrote that "the cinematic horror genre was born with the release of Dracula". He concluded that although he feels the film becomes almost "overly stage bound in its middle section, the virtues of its star performance and general visual style outweigh any such deficits".

The actors who followed in Lugosi's shoes in playing Dracula, and who achieved significant fame in that role, had different attitudes to Lugosi's portrayal. Christopher Lee, who played Dracula in a series of Hammer movies, said: "Anyhow, about the Lugosi Dracula. I was so disappointed. I absolutely had been wanting to see it for a long, long time. There are aspects of it, for instance, that I considered ridiculous. Dracula is played too nice at the beginning. Practically no menace in the character There is no shock or fright in it. Lugosi's hands too He held them out stiffly making him look like a puppet. His smile was not always sinister, either". While thinking that Lugosi was in his younger days a wonderful looking man, who had tremendous presence and personality, Lee also thought that Lugosi "was not the right man to play Dracula from the point of view of nationality. Because Transylvania is in Romania and he was a Hungarian from the town of Lugos, hence his name". At the time that Bram Stoker wrote the novel, however, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary. In addition to this, Lugoj, the town from which Lugosi came from, is located in what can be considered Transylvania. Gary Oldman, who played Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation, considered Lugosi to be his favourite Dracula and said about his performance: "He was really on to something: the way he moved, the way he sounded". Oldman based his Dracula voice on Lugosi's voice.