When Bram Stoker meets Coppola.
| by Sajid A.Latheef | June 14, 2007
There lies an element of risk and challenge in rendering variety and originality to the film adaptation of a novel, which has been subjected to screen for a number of times. In 1992 when Francis Ford Coppola decided to make a new film out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he confronted with the same dilemma. By that time, there were produced several seminal films out of Dracula, notably Terence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula (1958) and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), to mention a few. The interpretations of Dracula by Universal studios in thirties and Britain’s Hammer films in sixties, with the charismatic perfomances of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee in lead roles, were still lingering in the minds of the viewers.
Being a familiar story, a spectator who goes to cinema for watching a Dracula film will obviously be looking at the way the tale unfolds. Coppola was well aware of this fact and wanted to break all the previous notions nurtured by audience, which was indeed a hard undertaking. However, the finished film remains as evidence to his insistence for novelty and originality. A huge popular and critical success for him, the film represents Coppola at his best as he deploys every means of cinematic dexterity he knows, all the while sharing his joy with the audience.
Any one who reads Dracula will not fail to notice the essential cinematic visualization of Stoker, which makes the initial sequences of the novel memorable-- the eerie journey of Jonathan Harker from the small superstitious village of Klausenburgh to the Castle Dracula and the suspenseful moments which awaits him there. The amenability of Dracula to the film medium has lured filmmakers from very earlier periods of silent film itself. Such an endeavor furnished us with a classic from the hands of F.W Murnau, the stalwart German Director: Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror (1922). From there starts the history of all horror films in general and Dracula films in particular, which is still moody and powerful enough to influence Francis Ford Coppola in the making of his Dracula in 1992 after seventy years.A particular significance in Francis Ford Coppola’s interpretation of Dracula as a case study of adaptation lies in (a) its way of pursuing the first person narratives of the novel in the film medium as well, at the same time offering an omniscient perspective, which the novel lacks ;(b) and how far Coppola has sought to find a visual stylistic enthusiasm out of Stoker’s commonplace situations.
In fairness, a near scrutiny of Coppola's adaptation strategies throughout his vocation illustrates a reverential respect for source literature, for instance, his nearly faithful adaptation of The Great Gatsby or his willful effort to bring John Milius's original screenplay of Apocalypse Now back to its inspiration, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The film of the teen classic, The Outsiders (1983), was so close to the original novel written by S. E.Hinton that one wonders why he bothered with a screenplay. When Coppola first agreed to the film The Godfather (1972), he was offered with a script that had altered the location to St. Louis and the time period to the present. He discarded the script and went back to Puzo's original novel.
Coppola approach is that fidelity to the original literary text will eventually enhance the filmic results of the adaptation. Naturally, here too, Coppola decided to follow, the original book as the source, while many of the previous films resorted to plays. Thus, his film came to be titled as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, rather than Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, which would have been more appropriate. Coppola certainly understood that in the years since The Godfather, "A Film by Francis Coppola" has become an appellation of high expectation and marketing value. So, apart from the publicity of the film as a return to the original source, Coppola wanted a new interpretaion of the story which is unique in every facet.
James V.Hart and Fred Saberhagen collaborated with Coppola in scripting the film. Fred was chosen because he was a novelist who had, by then, written a novel by the name, Dracula Tapes. This novel attempted to tell the Stoker’s tale from the perspective of Dracula, which was completely absent from the novel. Coppola was interested in this aspect and invited him to collaborate on the script. The team worked out the untold story of the film, which alters the character functions of Dracula and Mina Murray. Almost all other characters in the novel are retained as such with out any alterations in the character functions. The insect-eating mad man in Dr.Seward’s lunatic asylum, Renfield, who becomes Dracula’s lackey, is presented as a solicitor who preceded Jonathan to the Castle Dracula and returned insane. Coppola seems to have borrowed this fact from previous films, which substituted the character of Jonathan with Renfield, while the novel remains silent about the further identity of Renfield.The character of Mrs.Westernra is eliminated from the film.
Following the publication of In Search of Dracula by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally in 1972, the supposed connections between the historical figure, ‘Vlad the Impaler’ and Bram Stoker's fictional Dracula attracted popular attention.The novel itself included a passage in which the Count recalls his glorious endeavours of war with the Turks, which took place in 1462. .In 1973, a film adaptation of the novel by Dan Curtis gives emphasis on the historical namesake of the Count and he portrays him as mourning for a lost love, of whom he perceives Lucy to be the reincarnation. Curtis felt that this gave Dracula a stronger motivation for coming to England, as well as making him a more complex character: sympathetic as well as monstrous. Curtis obtained this idea from his own Dark Shadows series, but prior to that, the "reincarnated love" idea was the central motif of the horror classic, The Mummy in the 1930's, which probably singled it out in turn from H. Rider Haggard's classic novel She. These new developments to the Dracula myth might have inspired Coppola and his scriptwriters to bring the two Draculas into one persona.
Despite the cinematic qualities of Stoker’s novel, numerous filmmakers had confronted with a stumbling obstacle in adapting Dracula. After the powerful opening sequences, Dracula, the protagonist is absent for a considerable time, save for a few appearances, before he is finally destroyed. In the novel the invisible presence is felt through out, because the action is made possible through Dracula’s nocturnal deeds. However, a film demands a commanding presence in person and many previous adaptations suffered owing to this difficulty. In Bram stoker’s Dracula, Coppola and his men were able to tackle this intricacy, by adding a detailed prologue to the original story, which resolved the trouble regarding the Count’s absence.
The film opens in Transylvania in the year 1462 AD. When the force of Muslim Turks threatened the whole Christiandom, the ruler of Transylvania, Vlad Draculea, who belonged to the Sacred society of Dragon, rose against them. Draculea loved his wife, Elizabeta more than any thing else in his life, and it was hard for him to bid farewell to her before departing to the battlefield. While Draculea met his enemies with all his courage and valour, the vengeful Turks shot an arrow to his castle informing that he is dead. Believing him dead, Elizabeta flung herself in to the Arghes river and committed suicide. Broken hearted Draculea was angered to know that the church condemned her soul for taking her own life.
Being felt rejected by God after his effort in defending the church, Draculea accepts the powers of darkness to become a vampire, there by gaining immortality in hope of avenging her wife’s death. He throws his sword at the crucifix, from which blood gushes out and covers the floor. Here the prologue ends and then appears the title: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Then follows the familiar story of Bram Stoker, which begins with Jonathan’s trip to meet Count Dracula, who finds that Mina is none other than the re-incarnation of his beloved wife Elizabeta.Now, he has a solid reason to depart for London, rather than the purpose of satiating his lust for blood. This alteration makes filmic Dracula more complex than Stoker’s Dracula, as he is a lover who has “crossed oceans of time to meet her”. This alteration in the character of Dracula and Mina alters the course of the story in the second part of the novel, which will be discussed later.
Coppola imprints his signature in every frame of his film, and leaves the spectators spell bound with every visual he captures. As different from the novel, the film offers us an omniscient narrator, whose voice is heard on the sound track as the screen is filled with visuals:
.
The Year: 1462 A.D Constantinople had fallen. Muslim Turks swept into Europe with a vast, superior force, striking at Romania, threatening all of Christiandom. From Transylvania arose a Romanian knight, of the Sacred Order Of the Dragon, known as Draculea. On the eve of the battle, his bride Elisabeta whom he prized above all things on earth knew that he must face insurmountable force from which he might never return. (From the film)
Threat of the Turkish Muslims threatening the European Christiandom is effectively visualized through images of a crumbling Cross and the shadow of a crescent moving over the map of Europe, heading towards Romania.Coppola’s camera works like pen writing visuals along with the voice over as we see the Romanian knight clenching a sword; and the emblem of the Sacred Order of the Dragon against the fire. The battle is shown against the twilight red sky, with the silhouettes of Turkish soldiers impaled on spears, a scene which looks like a homage paid by Coppola to one of his favourite directors, namely, Akira Kurosova, particularly his film Kagemusha.This prologue foretells the cinematic styles Coppola would follow in the following movie.
After the prologue, now we come to the real story, where Coppola chooses to follow the novel showing justice to the title. How an adaptor stamps his signature in his film at the same time follow the source novel is a complex procedure. Some factors that considered while adaptation include the narrative function of the novel; the character functions; informants such as place-names, the names of characters the trades and professions of various characters and data relating to place; dialogue etc. Scrutinizing the adaptation of Dracula based on the aforementioned features, it can be seen that, the adaptor retains fidelity to some aspects while depart from it in case of some other aspects. For example, the description of the flirtatious Lucy Westerna and her three suitors as foil to the chaster Mina Harker is far closer to Stoker's original conception than any subsequent adaptation. This implies, the function of the character in the narrative (i.e., what the character do) is preserved in the film. This may not be the case with all characters.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Dracula consists of twenty-seven chapters and follows an epistolary narrative style in which the plot is developed and resolved in a series of diaries, newspaper items and letters, with out offering an omniscient narration. Though not clearly defined into parts, the action in the novel can be divided in to three: (a) Jonathan Harker’s stay at Castle Dracula, which extends from chapter one to chapter four. (b) Action in England takes place from chapter five to eighteen where Lucy dies and a hunt for Dracula is organized.
(c) Hunt for Dracula extends from chapter nineteen to twenty-seven. These are the factors that Brian Mcfarlane calls the functions proper. These three functions proper can again be further sub-divided into cardinal functions. As stated by Brian Mcfarlane, cardinal functions “open up alternatives of consequence to the development of the story”.
Following the method of Brian Macfarlane in his book Novel to Film, listed below are those key cardinal functions, which reverberate most significantly in the novel and, in an adjacent column, those which have been transferred to the film or omitted or altered or inserted in important ways. This will indicate how far Coppola and his co-scriptwriters have chosen to adhere to the narrative line of the original. Despite the necessary truncating of a long and complex verbal narrative to produce a 128-minute film, it will be seen that a surprising number of major cardinal functions have been retained. In the two texts the major cardinal functions may be summarized as follows:
NOVEL FILM
Not in the Film
Prologue: Story of how Dracula became a vampire after the death of his wife, equating Vlad Impaler with the fictional Count
1.Jonathan travels to Dracula’s castle. As for the novel
2.Jonathan meets Dracula As for the novel
3. The shaving scene As for the novel
4. Jonathan meets the
Vampire women As for the novel
5.Jonathan discovers Dracula
in the coffin, in the chapel Shortened in the film
Major deviation from the plot is brought about in the second section from 6 to 19,
Scenes of Dracula and Mina are added in order to include the love-theme.
6. Mina goes to Whitby
to stay with Lucy Not in the film. The setting of
Whiby is changed to London.
7. Dracula’s midnight
landing at Whitby Harbor As for the novel except the
change in the setting.
8. Log of the Demeter As for the novel
9. Lucy’s sleepwalking As for the novel
10. Mina departs for Buda-Pesth
to join Jonathan As for the novel,
but later in the film
11. Lucy is infected As for the novel.
12. Arrival of Dr.Van Helsing As for the novel
13. Blood Transfusions Four blood transfusions are
trimmed into one.
14. Death of Lucy’s mother Not in the film
as the character is eliminated.
15. Lucy dies. As for the novel.
16. The arrival of Jonathan and Mina. As for the novel.
17. The appearance of the ‘Bloofer Lady.’ Eliminated from the film.
18. The staking of Lucy. As for the novel.
19 Organizing the hunt for Dracula Reduced to fragments +
Van Helsing’s research on
Dracula added.
20. Destroying the coffins As for the novel.
21. The Death of Renfield. As for the novel.
22. The Count seduces Mina. As for the novel with
enough alterations to make it
congruent with the prologue.
23. Tracing Dracula through hypnotism As for the novel.
24. The search for Dracula As for the novel.
25. Vampire women are destroyed. As for the novel.
2
6. Dracula’s demise As for the novel.+
Scene of Dracula’s redemption
Added to resolve the
Plot-deviation in the prologue.
There is an element of subjectivity in selecting the cardinal functions. However, they are what Roland Barthes would call “narrative hinge points”, in the senses that each is capable of alternative outcomes and is linked consequentially as well as sequentially to other events and actions in the narrative. In his approach to Bram Stoker’s Dracula Coppola has taken care to preserve the important cardinal functions of the novel. In transferring the first and third functions proper, Coppola depends accurately on the novel, however, in the second, there is a profound variation that directly links the story to the prologue added by the filmmakers, which is original to this film.
Now we will analyze how the cardinal functions are treated in the film Jonathan’s trip from London to Transylvania is followed as such in the form of diaries written by him. Coppola has taken care to follow the first person narration in the film as well. The traditional cinematic equivalent of novel’s first person narrative is the technique of voice-over, and here in the film the voice of Keanu Reaves (who plays Jonathan) is heard on the sound track with the page of a hand written diary superimposed on the visuals. Coppola will use the same technique again when the diary of other people are dealt with.
A major difference from novel and film is that, novel presents Jonathan’s experience at the Castle Dracula in a single stretch, with out break, in the first four chapters. The readers are not acquainted with other characters except Mina as mentioned by Jonathan as his fiancée. We meet her in person in the chapter five through her correspondence with her friend Lucy Westernra.While the film presents the events taking place in Transylvania and England simultaneously by crosscutting. After Jonathan’s diary, we see Mina’s diary of the same date. Again the film cuts back to Jonathan and thus the circle of narration is widened to the diary of Dr.Seward and Log of the ship, Demeter etc. In this movement the film faithfully covers significant actions in the novel faithfully till the end of the first part. The significant events that characterize the first part of the novel are faithfully filmed, though there are changes in the portrayal of Dracula to conform to the prologue of the film.
In this sense the film tries to be faithful not only to the novel but also strives to be faithful to history in a way. For instance, in the movie Dracula speaks Romanian language while in the novel he claims to be a Szekely, meaning he would have spoken Hungarian. Coppola has taken care in rendering the count in the costumes of a Romanian nobleman, rather than following Stoker’s description of “a tall old man…clad in black from head to foot”. He speaks English in a Foreign accent which is identified to be Hungarian, a feature which Coppola borrows from Bela Lugosi’s interpretaion of Dracula in the 1931 film. Bela was a Hungarian actor and his actual accent bestowed authenticity to his portrayal of the Count who claims to have Hungarian connections. This may have lured Coppola into using the same feature in his film. He also follows the famous dialogue uttered by Dracula; “I never drink…. wine”, used in the same previous film, which were by hearted by the film buffs those days.
In rendering a novel of approximately 400 pages in a film of two hours and seven minutes, it will be obvious that a good deal of selection and compression is necessary. The episode in the Golden Krone, Hotel, where an elderly woman warns Jonathan about the evils of the of St. George Day, who gives him a crucifix, is eliminated in the film and this function is carried out through a scared women in the coach, which takes Jonathan on his way to the castle. Four conversations between Jonathan and the Count are trimmed into two by cleverly incorporating key dialogues from all the four episodes. At the same time new dialogues are introduced which is in conformity with the plot deviation ushered through the prologue. So Dracula explains to Jonathan about his resemblance to the portrait of an ancestor, who is he himself, and about the history of his family in a furious manner as he thinks that Jonathan ridiculed his ancestry:
HARKER: An ancestor? I see a resemblance.
DRACULA: The Order of the Dracul...the Dragon...an ancient
society pledging my forefathers to defend the church against all
enemies of Christ. That relationship was not entirely
successful.
HARKER (slightly snickering): Oh, yes.
Dracula angrily grabs a sword, swings it overhead
and points the tip at Harker
DRACULA: It is no laughing matter. We Draculs have a right to
be proud. What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila whose
blood flows in these veins? Blood is too precious a thing in
these times. The warlike days are over. The victories of my
great race are but a tale to be told. I am the last of my kind.
HARKER: I have offended you with my ignorance, Count. Forgive
Me (quoted from the film)
The second conversation between Jonathan and Dracula takes place in the library as in the novel, however there are alterations, which are appropriate for the plot shift regarding the love-interest of Dracula. The Count happens to see the picture of Mina and identifies her as his wife Elisabeta and asks about her. This scene offers the audience an option to perceive Dracula in a new light as he relates:
Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be ordered to a single purpose? The luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds true love…. I was married once...ages ago it seems. She died… She was fortunate. My life at its best is misery…(quoted from the film)
A cut to the Diary of Mina on the same date offer us her life at Hillingham, England with her rich friend Lucy Westenra. Coppola has altered the background of Lucy from commonplace to aristocratic one, probably, to compromise Lucy’s extra vagant life and open behaviour with men. A party scene is devised in order to present Lucy in her aristocratic context, where her three suitors-- Quincey Morris, Dr.Seward and Arthur Holmwood are introduced to the audience.
Coppola presents Lucy, as a woman with aggressive sexuality, who is not afraid of expressing her sexual emotions, which seems a bit anachronistic to the 1897 time frame. The two friends giggle over a copy of The Arabian Nights with Lucy making more knowing, sexually adventurous comments, while Mina is presented as chaste in comparison to her. Mina’s voice over is heard on the sound track, defending Lucy:
Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl, but I admit that her free way of speaking shocks me sometimes. Jonathan says it's a defect of the aristocracy that they say what they please. The truth is that I admire Lucy, and I'm not surprised that men flock around her. I wish I were as pretty and as adored as she.
As said before, the circle of correspondence develops as the film progress and we are invited to peek into Dr. Seward’s Phonograph Diary, of the same date, in which he records the strange case history of his patient RM.Renfield. The same voice over technique is followed to present the first person narrative, leading the action to the asylum where Renfield is locked. Renfield-episodes in the novel are carefully trimmed into one scene and his escape to the Carfax abbey is eliminated.. Some of the most discussed episodes of the novel include the shaving scene, Jonathan’s meeting three vampire women and his discovery of Dracula sleeping in the coffin in the chapel.. In the film, the first two episodes are shown in detail and the third is cut short. In the shaving scene Jonathan realizes that Dracula casts no reflection in the mirror, and the latter confirms him that Dracula is a vampire and by the third Jonathan discover his plan to leave the castle hiding in boxes of earth. So in novel and film these episodes are central to story.
The film is not much far from the novel in etching the shaving scene except the fact that it is a bit elaborate. Coppola makes it more sexually suggestive by showing Dracula lick the blood off from razors and help him shave when the crucifix in Jonathan’s neck repels him. Here Dracula utters a dialogue that is dfferent from the novel, which has a particular meaning for filmic Dracula: “Do not put your faith in such trinkets of deceit”. Dracula probably remembers how God rewarded him for defending his church. Careful trimming and insertion of appropriate dialogues from eliminated portions endows the complete realization of the source novel to the excellence. The seduction of Jonathan by the vampire women is etched as a sexually charged scene revealing the all the hidden suggestions in Stoker’s novel in an awfully disgusting manner. Following the novel per se, Dracula furiously bursts in to the room, reproaching them:
DRACULA: How dare you touch him! He belongs to me!
VAMPIRESS: You yourself never loved!
DRACULA: Yes, I too can love. And I shall love
Again (quoted from the film)
The last spoken words are supplementary ones added to the film, apart from the novel, which indicates Dracula’s anticipations regarding Mina.Jonathan’s search down to the decaying chapel is one of the suspenseful sequences in the novel, but it is shortened probably for fear of film’s length. Another scene where Coppola did justice to the novel is the one in which Jonathan perceives Dracula climbing down the walls of his Castle like giant lizard. As per the classification we made, the first part of the novel ends when Jonathan is locked in the Castle and Dracula leaves to England.
The plot deviation brought about in the novel fetched a lot of alterations in the film as different from the novel. One major departure is the inclusion of the “reincarnation romance” plot. In the movie, Dracula’s move from Transylvania to England is not for the purposes of feeding, but to reunite with the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. So Dracula’s major pre-occupation in London becomes capturing the attention of Mina. In the novel, Dracula is absent after the opening castle section and then appears towards the end before the final confrontation. However, we feel the invisible but powerful presence because it is his actions that set the novel moving. In the film, on the contrary, the hitherto horror yarn makes a ‘jump cut ’ to a romance, and Dracula become the young, dashing and romantic Prince Vlad, rather than the nocturnal bloodsucker in the novel. These variations bring about a slight variation in the chronological order of events depicted in the novel.
When transferred into film, Coppola abandoned the locale of Whitby and set the milieu at London .The sudden rain storm, the log of the Demeter, the escape of a wolf from London Zoo, the frenzy of Renfield in the lunatic asylum, the arrival of the ship at London, a wolf out of the ship approaching Lucy’s abode, all these events for which the novelist spent innumerable pages are powerfully written with camera through a series of continuous shots. Lucy sleepwalking scene where Dracula attacks Lucy for the first time is different from the novel in the sense that, the filmic version is so explicit and revealing, that Mina witnesses Dracula raping Lucy. Meanwhile in the novel Mina writes in her diary:
“..it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell” (88)
When the unidentifiable figure seems to vanish, Mina begins to doubt that she really did see someone or something crouched over Lucy. The mystery and doubts makes sleepwalking scene in the novel more powerful. In the film, Coppola exploits this atmospheric scene for the meeting of Prince Vlad and Elisabeta/Mina after four centuries.
In the film Mina, do not depart for Buda-Pesth so soon. Instead she is acquainted with Prince Vlad, a young Dracula, towards whom she seems to be involuntarily fascinated. Here is the most important departure from the novel takes place. Dracula and Mina, both characters breaks out of Stoker’s framework, and the story have turned out to a romance. In a particular instant Dracula is torn between his bloodthirst and his love for her and he prevents himself. Mina seems to remember to have seen the prince somewhere like a dream and finds it unable to restrain herself from the wish to see him.
Lucy’s infection and the arrival of Dr.Van Helsing are treated as for the novel, but the four blood transfusions are trimmed in to one. The vicissitudes of Jonathan Harker, who is left locked in the castle, is juxtaposed with the tender moments between Prince Vlad and Mina by cross cutting. Sister Agatha’s letter from Buda-Pesth informs Mina about Jonathan who saved himself from the castle, and Mina departs to meet Jonathan, half-heartedly. Prince Vlad, who is broken hearted to learn that Mina is to be married to Jonathan at Buda-Pesth, kills Lucy in his anger.
In direct homage to the famous baptism scene from The Godfather, the movie cuts between Lucy's death by Dracula and the marriage of Mina and Jonathan. The character of Mrs.Westenra and the”bloofer lady” episode is eliminated from the film.
The two earlier visits to Lucy’s tomb by Van Helsing and Dr.Seward are trimmed into one, where Lucy is staked by Arthur Holmwood, a scene which is treated akin to the novel. Organizing the hunt for Dracula, presented in the novel as an elaborate conference, in which Van Helsing explains to his team the real menace of Dracula, his ways and powers, is absent in the film. Instead the film follows Van Helsing into his researches and inquiry on Dracula where he traces the pseudo history of Vlad Tepes Dracula recounted in the prologue, and identifies him as the adversary who is to be followed and destroyed. Jonathan’s accidental meeting with Dracula on the London streets is treated as similar to the novel, the event that help them to put together the facts and identify Dracula as the cause behind Lucy’s illness. Among the fourteen cardinal functions listed above almost ten of them are retained in the film with alterations and a few sequences are introduced independent of the novel.
The third section of the novel is about the hunt for Dracula, which extends from chapters nineteen to twenty seven. The major cardinal functions in this section are integrated in the filmic narrative, with sufficient variations to make it congruent with the plot deviation introduced in the prologue. These alterations are mainly concerned with the death of Renfield and the seduction of Mina. The meeting between Mina and Renfield at the Carfax abbey lunatic asylum is preserved in the novel and film, however both looks different. In the film, Renfield addresses Mina as the bride his master covets, and he warns Mina to ‘get away from these men’ as a loyal vassal of his lord. As Mina leaves, he turns against his master for offering her the eternal life, which was promised to him, and for his betrayal Dracula takes his life. In the novel, it is the dying Renfield who warns Dr.Seward and Van Helsing about Dracula’s designs on Mina.
Dracula’s seduction of Mina is one of the most discussed scenes in the novel, which is described as ‘a primal scene in oral terms’, the scene in which the Count slits open his breast and forces Mina to drink his blood. According to the vampiric myth created by Stoker this act makes the victim a vampire in turn. The scene, recounted by Stoker with strong sexual overtones, shares the same implications with the film but with an added ardor, as it portrays the forbidden union of two lovers. The most sensual scene in the film, it is here that Dracula reveals to Mina his real identity as a vampire:
I am nothing, lifeless, soulless, hated and feared. I am dead to all the world...hear me! I am the monster the breathing men would kill. I am Dracula. (Quoted from the film)
Contrary to the novel, Dracula is torn between his love for her and his instinct to make her a vampire, meanwhile Mina renounce her reservations of a Victorian wife in acknowledging her love for him. The victim’s desire for Dracula seems concealed in the novel, however the film treats it explicitly. The plot deviation suggests the prospect of interpreting the story from the vampire’s perspective, which is absent in the novel.
Among inclusions in the film is Mina’s attempt to seduce Van Helsing and the scene of Dracula’s redemption in the climax. The final scene of the film becomes very important in the sense that the plot deviation introduced in the prologue is resolved here. A wounded Dracula and Mina are left in the chapel which is miraculously filled with heavenly light and Vlad Draculea who was exiled from the kingdom of God and destined to be a power of darkness for centuries regains his space in the divine realm through undying human love. These climatic revelations of Dracula myth make Coppola’s version one of the unique adaptations ever, rewriting stoker’s popular horror story as a tale of love and redemption. Thus Coppola’s Count is no longer the bloodthirsty protagonist who longed to feast upon the ‘teeming millions’ but a misunderstood antihero who attained salvation at the hands of his lover.
Though there is the impact of the James V.Hart and Fred Saberhagen in the film narrative, on the whole it is the expertise of Coppola that distinguishes the film from other versions of the novel. Coppola imprints his signature in every frame of his film, and leaves the spectators spell bound with every visual he captures. Most previous adaptations of Dracula-theme tend to follow Bram Stoker’s wake directorially, allowing the story itself to carry the film dramatically, whereas Coppola leaps in with rapturous visual excess that seems to burst from every frame of the film, confirming his experience and mastery over the medium. Coppola directs the way artists paint graphic novels. He uses his camera like a pen in translating the words into images. As different from the novel, the film offers us an omniscient narrator, whose voice is heard on the sound track :
The Year: 1462 A.D Constantinople had fallen. Muslim Turks swept into Europe with a vast, superior force, striking at Romania, threatening all of Christiandom. From Transylvania arose a Romanian knight, of the Sacred Order Of the Dragon, known as Draculea. On the eve of the battle, his bride Elisabeta whom he prized above all things on earth knew that he must face insurmountable force from which he might never return. (From the film)
Every uttered word is translated in to visuals as such as he literally writes with the lens. Threat of the Turkish Muslims threatening the European Christiandom and the rise of Draculea against them are effectively visualized through a montage of; a crumbling Cross; the Shadow of a Crescent moving over the map of Europe, heading towards Romania; and the Romanian knight clenching a sword; and the emblem of the Sacred Order of the Dragon against the fire. The battle is shown against the twilight red sky, with the silhouettes of Turkish soldiers impaled on spears, a scene which looks like a homage paid by Coppola to one of his favourite directors, namely, Akira Kurosova, particularly his film Kagemusha.This prologue foretells the cinematic styles Coppola would follow in the movie. When dealing with a often-told story, the real success of a director lies in the styles he employs in the movie, and that is where Coppola scores in Bram stoker’s Dracula.
As related before the novel is unfolded through the first person narratives of several characters in the form of diaries written by them. Apart from these subjective documents there is no omniscient narrator who comments on the events. The film on the contrary offers an omniscient commentator who attests the truth of the incidents described, clears doubts and aids the spectators at various points of the story. John Glover relates in his essay Travels in Romania-Myths of Origins Myths of Blood that the omniscient narrator in the film is Van Helsing. The film begins with the voice over of this narrator and interferes at chosen points to tell fill certain voids.
Many of the previous films discarded the narration of the story through the diaries of the characters where as Coppola retains it with voice-over techniques and subjective camera use. Though the novel is spun around the character of Dracula, his perspective is absent from the novel whereas the film incorporates the Count’s point-of –view, too, through a series of subjective shots. At a certain point in the film, the vampire’s wild vision of the world is offered through some extra-ordinary swinging camera shots, moving in a violent and disoriented manner. Inclusion of Dracula’s perspective in film facilitates the vision of Dracula as a misunderstood tragic hero and this makes Coppola’s Dracula a tale of redemption of the vampire and not a tale of exorcism.
Central device of Stoker’s novel is the slow accumulation of evidence and testimony as the characters struggle to make sense of the baffling experiences that sorround them. This treatment brings about a sense of mystery and obscurity to the novel, which heightens the terror, whereas the movie often becomes too transparent to be powerful. One such sequence is the sleepwalking scene of Lucy Westenra, where Mina witness Dracula seducing Lucy in the form of a hairy bat-man, while the counterpart in the novel is a frightening sequence where Mina is not sure about what she saw. The sexual undertones which are merely suggested in the novel are treated in an explicit manner by Coppola.For instance, the seduction of Jonathan by the vampire women is etched as a sexually charged scene revealing the all the hidden suggestions in Stoker’s novel and more in a telling manner.
Coppola uses fast cutting, abrupt transitions and shifts of style to create dazzling tangles of scenes, which certainly covers up the above-mentioned slip. He packs every frame of the film with self- conscious effects—extra-ordinary fades, cuts and double exposures, where the eye of a peacock feather becomes a railway tunnel or the puncture marks on the neck changes into the glowing red eyes of a wolf. Coppola recalls the F.W.Murnau’s Nosferatu in the expressionistic style of employing shadows for effect in the film, where Dracula’s shadow moves independent of his body trying to grab the throat of Jonathan when he says about his forthcoming marriage with Mina. Dracula’s shadow menacingly hovers over Mina while she is attending the party and the scene fade out with Dracula face emerging out of darkness. Over the scenes of Jonathan’s trip and the storm scene Dracula’s eyes are superimposed. These techniques quite effectively suggest Dracula’s haunting presence over the characters
Unusual way of perception of even minute aspects make every shots etched by Coppola memorable. The famous shaving scene where the reflections of the crucifix on the razor and Dracula’s eyes, shot in extreme close ups is an example. The film forgets Stoker absolutely in the love scenes of Dracula and Mina, where Coppola’s aesthetic sense is brought to its height, capturing stunningly beautiful visuals. Images unpredicticably dissolves to another where the close up of Dracula’s iris dissolves in to the mouth of the chalice of wine. Crosscutting is employed to show parallel action where the vicissitudes of Jonathan in the castle is juxtaposed to the tender moments between Dracula and Mina. In another cross cutting sequence the marriage between Jonathan and Mina is juxtaposed with Dracula’s killing of Lucy, bringing parallels between marriage and death.
Francis Ford Coppola's film is far more faithful to the century of film history that preceded the film's production, than to anything in the novel. Coppola textualizes cinema history within his narrative, creating a film that is more a reflection on the history of Dracula on film, than on Dracula himself. The connection between Dracula and the birth of cinema is established when he emerges in the light of day for the first time, in Victorian London. For a few moments he is shot walking along the street in the jerky, fast motion, traditionally associated today with early cinema, captured for the first time by the medium, that is truly responsible for his immortality. He later accompanies Mina to a screening of the Cinematograph and praises the wonders of modern science to create such magic.
In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the film magic that so impressed Dracula is a key component to the film, which is why Coppola and his second unit director Roman Coppola preferred to shoot the film in a style that consciously reflects the early days of filmmaking. Rather than depending on modern technology for their special effects, they utilise traditional in-camera techniques such a pixilation, reverse printing and double exposure. Dracula's point of view, unavailable in the novel as the story is exclusively told from the point of view of the vampire hunters, is mediated through these film techniques. Dracula's approach to Lucy's home, shot from his direct point-of-view, is pixilated with each cut bringing him closer to his prey. As Mina transforms into a vampire, she commence to develop this inhuman vision. As she observes Dracula's carriage approach, pursued by Jonathan Harker and the others, we cut to her point of view, as her vision, pixilated at a random shutter speed, appears to zoom in on the action.
Similarly Coppola uses reverse motion to create the appearance of inhuman movement for the vampires. When Lucy, confronted by Van Helsing, retreats to her coffin, she seems to creep and slither back into its confines. In reality, it is merely a shot of the actress climbing out of the coffin, printed in reverse. These self-conscious uses of in-camera special effects illustrate an honored relationship between Dracula and film. While the human characters create the appearance of literary faithfulness with their narration, it is Dracula's point of view, as his silhouette is superimposed over the actions of the others that commands the film
Analyzing the characterization in Bram stoker’s Dracula shows that the film deviates from the novel considerably at the same time preserves many of its features. It seems to be the only major adaptation that managed to include all main characters in the novel. Brian Macfarlane relates that the character function, that is, what the characters do is an attribute that is amenable to audio-visual manifestations. However, in Dracula, though the character functions are preserved, the motivation behind the action of some characters are altered considerably on account of the plot deviation. Thus Coppola’s Dracula decides to go to London not to satiate his blood thirst but to meet the re-incarnation of his wife, Elisabeta.The Count is not portrayed as a scrupulous villain but a misunderstood lover who has “crossed oceans of time” to meet his lover. For this purpose the historical Vlad the Impaler and fictional Dracula are combined into one persona. So Coppola alters Stoker’s ‘tall old man…clad in black from head to foot’ into a figure of oriental mysticism, complete with a silky red robe and “high coifed Kabuki hair”.
Mina is not the same Mina in the novel but one who is torn between the love for her prince and her fiancé. She is a typical Victorian woman adored by the men of her times for her modesty and domesticity. Though she despises the “New Woman”who may dare to propose to a man, Mina in Van Helsing’s words is a women who “has a man’s brain. and a woman’s heart”. Coppola presents Lucy, as a woman with aggressive sexuality, who is not afraid of expressing her sexual emotions, which seems a bit anachronistic to the 1897 time frame. The two friends giggle over a copy of The Arabian Nights with Lucy making more knowing, sexually adventurous comments, while Mina is presented as chaste in comparison to her. Mina’s voice over is heard on the sound track, defending Lucy:
Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl, but I admit that her free way of speaking shocks me sometimes. Jonathan says it's a defect of the aristocracy that they say what they please. The truth is that I admire Lucy, and I'm not surprised that men flock around her. I wish I were as pretty and as adored as she.
The character of the American, Quincey P.Morris and Arthur Holmwood are often cut out or interchanged in most film adaptations of Dracula. Both of these characters make their first appearance together in this film.Dr.Seward, his Carfax abbey lunatic asylum with Renfield in it are portrayed exactly similar to the novel. Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing are true to the characterizations of Stoker.Mrs.Westenra, the character of Lucy’s mother and Mr. Swales; a minor character is eliminated in the film.
Though Coppola and his screenwriters endeavored to tie the story with historical ruler, Vlad Draculea III, there are errors in the treatment of history in the film. The filmmakers repeat the common fallacy that Vlad was the ruler of Transylvania rather than Wallachia.However, Coppola’s film seems to be historically more accurate than Stoker’s novel in rendering Dracula’s speech in Romanian. The events portrayed in the prologue of the film is by no means a reality, but based on the suicide of Vlad’s wife on the attack of enemies, after which Vlad married again. The London of the film is literally Bram Stoker’s London, because the street scenes display the poster of Shakespeares’s Hamlet in Lyceum Theatre with Henry Irving in the title role. In real life Bram Stoker was the manager of Lyceum Theatre where he worked as a shadow of Irving. The scientific advances of the time especially that of Cinematography is discussed in the film. Fin de seicle England viewed Sexually Transmitted Diseases with awe and fear. Dracula being a vampire story its associations with blood and sex and the anxieties towards it are echoed in Van Helsing’s speech in the classroom, which is absent in the novel:
Blood and the diseases of the blood such as syphilis will concern us here…They are involved in that sex problem about which the ethics and ideals of Christian civilization are concerned. In fact, civilization and syphillization have advanced together.Being a film released in the last decade of twentieth century, Coppola had planted
seeds for an interpretation of vampirism as an allegory of AIDS. The display of blood cells during the scenes of Lucy’s infection may account for this interpretation.
Dracula as a tale about the fear of female sexuality is not so potent in the film version as it was in the novel. In the words of David Glover, unlike the novel, ‘Coppola’s film is a tale of spiritual exile, of an apostate prince who is given a second chance by the reincarnation of his lost princess in a circular story of sacrifice and salvation through undying human love’. The film’s achievement or focus is the transformation from Gothic horror into religious melodrama. Thus, contrary to the novel, the romantic element of the story gains more importance whereas the novel powerfully works as a legend of suppressed sexuality. Unlike the novel, the film anachronistically portrays the character of Lucy and Mina as openly drawn towards sexuality. There is not much difference between the bitten and unbitten Lucy. So interpretation regarding the fear of female sexuality losses its potence. However the film abounds with sexual innuendoes and often treats it in an explicit manner, both visually and verbally. And the film preserves all the elements of vampire mythology of the novel like staking the vampire (women) with the (phallic) stake, crucifix, cutting off their head and taking out the heart etc. Thus the male scheme of subjugating women by means of phallic and religious power is not invisible in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula acknowledges its influences to many previous adaptations.
The use of expressionist shadows, which seem to act independently of their owner, is reminiscent of FW.Murnau’s Nosferatu, while Gary Oldman's performance as the Count when delivering lines from the novel, such as "I never drink...wine" or "Children of the night...what music they make" echoes with the voices of his predecessors, particularly Bela Lugosi.However, Coppola makes a conscious effort to break the film away from all the dinner-suited vampire film images of cliché. Dracula finding the photograph of Mina with Jonathan is borrowed from Murnau’s film. The blood coming in explosive gouts and the film’s outspoken sexuality is reminiscent that of Hammer films’ interpretation of Dracula myth. Linking Dracula with Vlad the Impaler and the reincarnation theme was first put forward by Dan Curtis in a Television adaptation in 1973. This connection was popularized a year before the movie appeared by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's in their book In Search of Dracula.Werner Herzog’s vision of Dracula as a ‘dis-eased’ human being alienated by the society also seems to have inspired Coppola in the portrayal of the Count.
Placing the author’s name above the title does puts the responsibility on a film as providing a definitive adaptation. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though claims to be the authoritative version by its title, and is not an exact reproduction of the novel. However it must be considered that it is usually at the very point of infidelity that the most creative acts of adaptation and appropriation take place. Regarding Bram Stoker’s Dracula in these light shows that it has acquired a status independent that of the novel though it is the launching pad of the film.
Despite the alterations the film has also been able to preserve the major cardinal functions and various issues related with the novel. Coppola’success lies in the generic shift made possible by transforming the ‘pot-boiler’ to a romance. In many aspects the film overcome the boundaries of the novel, by providing room for churning out new interpretations and associations to the novel. Thus rather than making a reactionary horror epic about bodily fluid exchange Coppola nudges the spectators to make analogies between AIDS and vampirism in a world where “civilization and syphilization advance together”. Coppola crafted a more optimistic piece with compassion for the disease carrier and a less polarized view of good and evil. This kinder, gentler Dracula depicts a leaving of the horror rather than a floundering in it. It speaks of human possibilities rather than limitations, despite all the marketing claims about a return to Stoker's original nightmare vision.
**************************************
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.Dir.Francis Ford Coppola.Perf.GaryOldman, Winona Ryder, Keenu Reaves, and Anthony Hopkins. Columbia, 1992.
Stoker, Bram.Dracula.New Delhi: Parichay Overseas, 1990.
. “Dan Curtis' Dracula”. 5 June 2007.
< http://baharna.com/store … racula.htm >
.Bram Stoker’s Dracula.Dir.Francis Ford Coppola.Perf.Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keenu Reaves, and Anthony Hopkins. Columbia, 1992.
Glover, David. Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics
of Popular Fiction. Durham: NC,1996.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Routledge,
2006.s
Being a familiar story, a spectator who goes to cinema for watching a Dracula film will obviously be looking at the way the tale unfolds. Coppola was well aware of this fact and wanted to break all the previous notions nurtured by audience, which was indeed a hard undertaking. However, the finished film remains as evidence to his insistence for novelty and originality. A huge popular and critical success for him, the film represents Coppola at his best as he deploys every means of cinematic dexterity he knows, all the while sharing his joy with the audience.
Any one who reads Dracula will not fail to notice the essential cinematic visualization of Stoker, which makes the initial sequences of the novel memorable-- the eerie journey of Jonathan Harker from the small superstitious village of Klausenburgh to the Castle Dracula and the suspenseful moments which awaits him there. The amenability of Dracula to the film medium has lured filmmakers from very earlier periods of silent film itself. Such an endeavor furnished us with a classic from the hands of F.W Murnau, the stalwart German Director: Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror (1922). From there starts the history of all horror films in general and Dracula films in particular, which is still moody and powerful enough to influence Francis Ford Coppola in the making of his Dracula in 1992 after seventy years.A particular significance in Francis Ford Coppola’s interpretation of Dracula as a case study of adaptation lies in (a) its way of pursuing the first person narratives of the novel in the film medium as well, at the same time offering an omniscient perspective, which the novel lacks ;(b) and how far Coppola has sought to find a visual stylistic enthusiasm out of Stoker’s commonplace situations.
In fairness, a near scrutiny of Coppola's adaptation strategies throughout his vocation illustrates a reverential respect for source literature, for instance, his nearly faithful adaptation of The Great Gatsby or his willful effort to bring John Milius's original screenplay of Apocalypse Now back to its inspiration, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The film of the teen classic, The Outsiders (1983), was so close to the original novel written by S. E.Hinton that one wonders why he bothered with a screenplay. When Coppola first agreed to the film The Godfather (1972), he was offered with a script that had altered the location to St. Louis and the time period to the present. He discarded the script and went back to Puzo's original novel.
Coppola approach is that fidelity to the original literary text will eventually enhance the filmic results of the adaptation. Naturally, here too, Coppola decided to follow, the original book as the source, while many of the previous films resorted to plays. Thus, his film came to be titled as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, rather than Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, which would have been more appropriate. Coppola certainly understood that in the years since The Godfather, "A Film by Francis Coppola" has become an appellation of high expectation and marketing value. So, apart from the publicity of the film as a return to the original source, Coppola wanted a new interpretaion of the story which is unique in every facet.
James V.Hart and Fred Saberhagen collaborated with Coppola in scripting the film. Fred was chosen because he was a novelist who had, by then, written a novel by the name, Dracula Tapes. This novel attempted to tell the Stoker’s tale from the perspective of Dracula, which was completely absent from the novel. Coppola was interested in this aspect and invited him to collaborate on the script. The team worked out the untold story of the film, which alters the character functions of Dracula and Mina Murray. Almost all other characters in the novel are retained as such with out any alterations in the character functions. The insect-eating mad man in Dr.Seward’s lunatic asylum, Renfield, who becomes Dracula’s lackey, is presented as a solicitor who preceded Jonathan to the Castle Dracula and returned insane. Coppola seems to have borrowed this fact from previous films, which substituted the character of Jonathan with Renfield, while the novel remains silent about the further identity of Renfield.The character of Mrs.Westernra is eliminated from the film.
Following the publication of In Search of Dracula by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally in 1972, the supposed connections between the historical figure, ‘Vlad the Impaler’ and Bram Stoker's fictional Dracula attracted popular attention.The novel itself included a passage in which the Count recalls his glorious endeavours of war with the Turks, which took place in 1462. .In 1973, a film adaptation of the novel by Dan Curtis gives emphasis on the historical namesake of the Count and he portrays him as mourning for a lost love, of whom he perceives Lucy to be the reincarnation. Curtis felt that this gave Dracula a stronger motivation for coming to England, as well as making him a more complex character: sympathetic as well as monstrous. Curtis obtained this idea from his own Dark Shadows series, but prior to that, the "reincarnated love" idea was the central motif of the horror classic, The Mummy in the 1930's, which probably singled it out in turn from H. Rider Haggard's classic novel She. These new developments to the Dracula myth might have inspired Coppola and his scriptwriters to bring the two Draculas into one persona.
Despite the cinematic qualities of Stoker’s novel, numerous filmmakers had confronted with a stumbling obstacle in adapting Dracula. After the powerful opening sequences, Dracula, the protagonist is absent for a considerable time, save for a few appearances, before he is finally destroyed. In the novel the invisible presence is felt through out, because the action is made possible through Dracula’s nocturnal deeds. However, a film demands a commanding presence in person and many previous adaptations suffered owing to this difficulty. In Bram stoker’s Dracula, Coppola and his men were able to tackle this intricacy, by adding a detailed prologue to the original story, which resolved the trouble regarding the Count’s absence.
The film opens in Transylvania in the year 1462 AD. When the force of Muslim Turks threatened the whole Christiandom, the ruler of Transylvania, Vlad Draculea, who belonged to the Sacred society of Dragon, rose against them. Draculea loved his wife, Elizabeta more than any thing else in his life, and it was hard for him to bid farewell to her before departing to the battlefield. While Draculea met his enemies with all his courage and valour, the vengeful Turks shot an arrow to his castle informing that he is dead. Believing him dead, Elizabeta flung herself in to the Arghes river and committed suicide. Broken hearted Draculea was angered to know that the church condemned her soul for taking her own life.
Being felt rejected by God after his effort in defending the church, Draculea accepts the powers of darkness to become a vampire, there by gaining immortality in hope of avenging her wife’s death. He throws his sword at the crucifix, from which blood gushes out and covers the floor. Here the prologue ends and then appears the title: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Then follows the familiar story of Bram Stoker, which begins with Jonathan’s trip to meet Count Dracula, who finds that Mina is none other than the re-incarnation of his beloved wife Elizabeta.Now, he has a solid reason to depart for London, rather than the purpose of satiating his lust for blood. This alteration makes filmic Dracula more complex than Stoker’s Dracula, as he is a lover who has “crossed oceans of time to meet her”. This alteration in the character of Dracula and Mina alters the course of the story in the second part of the novel, which will be discussed later.
Coppola imprints his signature in every frame of his film, and leaves the spectators spell bound with every visual he captures. As different from the novel, the film offers us an omniscient narrator, whose voice is heard on the sound track as the screen is filled with visuals:
.
The Year: 1462 A.D Constantinople had fallen. Muslim Turks swept into Europe with a vast, superior force, striking at Romania, threatening all of Christiandom. From Transylvania arose a Romanian knight, of the Sacred Order Of the Dragon, known as Draculea. On the eve of the battle, his bride Elisabeta whom he prized above all things on earth knew that he must face insurmountable force from which he might never return. (From the film)
Threat of the Turkish Muslims threatening the European Christiandom is effectively visualized through images of a crumbling Cross and the shadow of a crescent moving over the map of Europe, heading towards Romania.Coppola’s camera works like pen writing visuals along with the voice over as we see the Romanian knight clenching a sword; and the emblem of the Sacred Order of the Dragon against the fire. The battle is shown against the twilight red sky, with the silhouettes of Turkish soldiers impaled on spears, a scene which looks like a homage paid by Coppola to one of his favourite directors, namely, Akira Kurosova, particularly his film Kagemusha.This prologue foretells the cinematic styles Coppola would follow in the following movie.
After the prologue, now we come to the real story, where Coppola chooses to follow the novel showing justice to the title. How an adaptor stamps his signature in his film at the same time follow the source novel is a complex procedure. Some factors that considered while adaptation include the narrative function of the novel; the character functions; informants such as place-names, the names of characters the trades and professions of various characters and data relating to place; dialogue etc. Scrutinizing the adaptation of Dracula based on the aforementioned features, it can be seen that, the adaptor retains fidelity to some aspects while depart from it in case of some other aspects. For example, the description of the flirtatious Lucy Westerna and her three suitors as foil to the chaster Mina Harker is far closer to Stoker's original conception than any subsequent adaptation. This implies, the function of the character in the narrative (i.e., what the character do) is preserved in the film. This may not be the case with all characters.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Dracula consists of twenty-seven chapters and follows an epistolary narrative style in which the plot is developed and resolved in a series of diaries, newspaper items and letters, with out offering an omniscient narration. Though not clearly defined into parts, the action in the novel can be divided in to three: (a) Jonathan Harker’s stay at Castle Dracula, which extends from chapter one to chapter four. (b) Action in England takes place from chapter five to eighteen where Lucy dies and a hunt for Dracula is organized.
(c) Hunt for Dracula extends from chapter nineteen to twenty-seven. These are the factors that Brian Mcfarlane calls the functions proper. These three functions proper can again be further sub-divided into cardinal functions. As stated by Brian Mcfarlane, cardinal functions “open up alternatives of consequence to the development of the story”.
Following the method of Brian Macfarlane in his book Novel to Film, listed below are those key cardinal functions, which reverberate most significantly in the novel and, in an adjacent column, those which have been transferred to the film or omitted or altered or inserted in important ways. This will indicate how far Coppola and his co-scriptwriters have chosen to adhere to the narrative line of the original. Despite the necessary truncating of a long and complex verbal narrative to produce a 128-minute film, it will be seen that a surprising number of major cardinal functions have been retained. In the two texts the major cardinal functions may be summarized as follows:
NOVEL FILM
Not in the Film
Prologue: Story of how Dracula became a vampire after the death of his wife, equating Vlad Impaler with the fictional Count
1.Jonathan travels to Dracula’s castle. As for the novel
2.Jonathan meets Dracula As for the novel
3. The shaving scene As for the novel
4. Jonathan meets the
Vampire women As for the novel
5.Jonathan discovers Dracula
in the coffin, in the chapel Shortened in the film
Major deviation from the plot is brought about in the second section from 6 to 19,
Scenes of Dracula and Mina are added in order to include the love-theme.
6. Mina goes to Whitby
to stay with Lucy Not in the film. The setting of
Whiby is changed to London.
7. Dracula’s midnight
landing at Whitby Harbor As for the novel except the
change in the setting.
8. Log of the Demeter As for the novel
9. Lucy’s sleepwalking As for the novel
10. Mina departs for Buda-Pesth
to join Jonathan As for the novel,
but later in the film
11. Lucy is infected As for the novel.
12. Arrival of Dr.Van Helsing As for the novel
13. Blood Transfusions Four blood transfusions are
trimmed into one.
14. Death of Lucy’s mother Not in the film
as the character is eliminated.
15. Lucy dies. As for the novel.
16. The arrival of Jonathan and Mina. As for the novel.
17. The appearance of the ‘Bloofer Lady.’ Eliminated from the film.
18. The staking of Lucy. As for the novel.
19 Organizing the hunt for Dracula Reduced to fragments +
Van Helsing’s research on
Dracula added.
20. Destroying the coffins As for the novel.
21. The Death of Renfield. As for the novel.
22. The Count seduces Mina. As for the novel with
enough alterations to make it
congruent with the prologue.
23. Tracing Dracula through hypnotism As for the novel.
24. The search for Dracula As for the novel.
25. Vampire women are destroyed. As for the novel.
2
6. Dracula’s demise As for the novel.+
Scene of Dracula’s redemption
Added to resolve the
Plot-deviation in the prologue.
There is an element of subjectivity in selecting the cardinal functions. However, they are what Roland Barthes would call “narrative hinge points”, in the senses that each is capable of alternative outcomes and is linked consequentially as well as sequentially to other events and actions in the narrative. In his approach to Bram Stoker’s Dracula Coppola has taken care to preserve the important cardinal functions of the novel. In transferring the first and third functions proper, Coppola depends accurately on the novel, however, in the second, there is a profound variation that directly links the story to the prologue added by the filmmakers, which is original to this film.
Now we will analyze how the cardinal functions are treated in the film Jonathan’s trip from London to Transylvania is followed as such in the form of diaries written by him. Coppola has taken care to follow the first person narration in the film as well. The traditional cinematic equivalent of novel’s first person narrative is the technique of voice-over, and here in the film the voice of Keanu Reaves (who plays Jonathan) is heard on the sound track with the page of a hand written diary superimposed on the visuals. Coppola will use the same technique again when the diary of other people are dealt with.
A major difference from novel and film is that, novel presents Jonathan’s experience at the Castle Dracula in a single stretch, with out break, in the first four chapters. The readers are not acquainted with other characters except Mina as mentioned by Jonathan as his fiancée. We meet her in person in the chapter five through her correspondence with her friend Lucy Westernra.While the film presents the events taking place in Transylvania and England simultaneously by crosscutting. After Jonathan’s diary, we see Mina’s diary of the same date. Again the film cuts back to Jonathan and thus the circle of narration is widened to the diary of Dr.Seward and Log of the ship, Demeter etc. In this movement the film faithfully covers significant actions in the novel faithfully till the end of the first part. The significant events that characterize the first part of the novel are faithfully filmed, though there are changes in the portrayal of Dracula to conform to the prologue of the film.
In this sense the film tries to be faithful not only to the novel but also strives to be faithful to history in a way. For instance, in the movie Dracula speaks Romanian language while in the novel he claims to be a Szekely, meaning he would have spoken Hungarian. Coppola has taken care in rendering the count in the costumes of a Romanian nobleman, rather than following Stoker’s description of “a tall old man…clad in black from head to foot”. He speaks English in a Foreign accent which is identified to be Hungarian, a feature which Coppola borrows from Bela Lugosi’s interpretaion of Dracula in the 1931 film. Bela was a Hungarian actor and his actual accent bestowed authenticity to his portrayal of the Count who claims to have Hungarian connections. This may have lured Coppola into using the same feature in his film. He also follows the famous dialogue uttered by Dracula; “I never drink…. wine”, used in the same previous film, which were by hearted by the film buffs those days.
In rendering a novel of approximately 400 pages in a film of two hours and seven minutes, it will be obvious that a good deal of selection and compression is necessary. The episode in the Golden Krone, Hotel, where an elderly woman warns Jonathan about the evils of the of St. George Day, who gives him a crucifix, is eliminated in the film and this function is carried out through a scared women in the coach, which takes Jonathan on his way to the castle. Four conversations between Jonathan and the Count are trimmed into two by cleverly incorporating key dialogues from all the four episodes. At the same time new dialogues are introduced which is in conformity with the plot deviation ushered through the prologue. So Dracula explains to Jonathan about his resemblance to the portrait of an ancestor, who is he himself, and about the history of his family in a furious manner as he thinks that Jonathan ridiculed his ancestry:
HARKER: An ancestor? I see a resemblance.
DRACULA: The Order of the Dracul...the Dragon...an ancient
society pledging my forefathers to defend the church against all
enemies of Christ. That relationship was not entirely
successful.
HARKER (slightly snickering): Oh, yes.
Dracula angrily grabs a sword, swings it overhead
and points the tip at Harker
DRACULA: It is no laughing matter. We Draculs have a right to
be proud. What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila whose
blood flows in these veins? Blood is too precious a thing in
these times. The warlike days are over. The victories of my
great race are but a tale to be told. I am the last of my kind.
HARKER: I have offended you with my ignorance, Count. Forgive
Me (quoted from the film)
The second conversation between Jonathan and Dracula takes place in the library as in the novel, however there are alterations, which are appropriate for the plot shift regarding the love-interest of Dracula. The Count happens to see the picture of Mina and identifies her as his wife Elisabeta and asks about her. This scene offers the audience an option to perceive Dracula in a new light as he relates:
Do you believe in destiny? That even the powers of time can be ordered to a single purpose? The luckiest man who walks on this earth is the one who finds true love…. I was married once...ages ago it seems. She died… She was fortunate. My life at its best is misery…(quoted from the film)
A cut to the Diary of Mina on the same date offer us her life at Hillingham, England with her rich friend Lucy Westenra. Coppola has altered the background of Lucy from commonplace to aristocratic one, probably, to compromise Lucy’s extra vagant life and open behaviour with men. A party scene is devised in order to present Lucy in her aristocratic context, where her three suitors-- Quincey Morris, Dr.Seward and Arthur Holmwood are introduced to the audience.
Coppola presents Lucy, as a woman with aggressive sexuality, who is not afraid of expressing her sexual emotions, which seems a bit anachronistic to the 1897 time frame. The two friends giggle over a copy of The Arabian Nights with Lucy making more knowing, sexually adventurous comments, while Mina is presented as chaste in comparison to her. Mina’s voice over is heard on the sound track, defending Lucy:
Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl, but I admit that her free way of speaking shocks me sometimes. Jonathan says it's a defect of the aristocracy that they say what they please. The truth is that I admire Lucy, and I'm not surprised that men flock around her. I wish I were as pretty and as adored as she.
As said before, the circle of correspondence develops as the film progress and we are invited to peek into Dr. Seward’s Phonograph Diary, of the same date, in which he records the strange case history of his patient RM.Renfield. The same voice over technique is followed to present the first person narrative, leading the action to the asylum where Renfield is locked. Renfield-episodes in the novel are carefully trimmed into one scene and his escape to the Carfax abbey is eliminated.. Some of the most discussed episodes of the novel include the shaving scene, Jonathan’s meeting three vampire women and his discovery of Dracula sleeping in the coffin in the chapel.. In the film, the first two episodes are shown in detail and the third is cut short. In the shaving scene Jonathan realizes that Dracula casts no reflection in the mirror, and the latter confirms him that Dracula is a vampire and by the third Jonathan discover his plan to leave the castle hiding in boxes of earth. So in novel and film these episodes are central to story.
The film is not much far from the novel in etching the shaving scene except the fact that it is a bit elaborate. Coppola makes it more sexually suggestive by showing Dracula lick the blood off from razors and help him shave when the crucifix in Jonathan’s neck repels him. Here Dracula utters a dialogue that is dfferent from the novel, which has a particular meaning for filmic Dracula: “Do not put your faith in such trinkets of deceit”. Dracula probably remembers how God rewarded him for defending his church. Careful trimming and insertion of appropriate dialogues from eliminated portions endows the complete realization of the source novel to the excellence. The seduction of Jonathan by the vampire women is etched as a sexually charged scene revealing the all the hidden suggestions in Stoker’s novel in an awfully disgusting manner. Following the novel per se, Dracula furiously bursts in to the room, reproaching them:
DRACULA: How dare you touch him! He belongs to me!
VAMPIRESS: You yourself never loved!
DRACULA: Yes, I too can love. And I shall love
Again (quoted from the film)
The last spoken words are supplementary ones added to the film, apart from the novel, which indicates Dracula’s anticipations regarding Mina.Jonathan’s search down to the decaying chapel is one of the suspenseful sequences in the novel, but it is shortened probably for fear of film’s length. Another scene where Coppola did justice to the novel is the one in which Jonathan perceives Dracula climbing down the walls of his Castle like giant lizard. As per the classification we made, the first part of the novel ends when Jonathan is locked in the Castle and Dracula leaves to England.
The plot deviation brought about in the novel fetched a lot of alterations in the film as different from the novel. One major departure is the inclusion of the “reincarnation romance” plot. In the movie, Dracula’s move from Transylvania to England is not for the purposes of feeding, but to reunite with the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. So Dracula’s major pre-occupation in London becomes capturing the attention of Mina. In the novel, Dracula is absent after the opening castle section and then appears towards the end before the final confrontation. However, we feel the invisible but powerful presence because it is his actions that set the novel moving. In the film, on the contrary, the hitherto horror yarn makes a ‘jump cut ’ to a romance, and Dracula become the young, dashing and romantic Prince Vlad, rather than the nocturnal bloodsucker in the novel. These variations bring about a slight variation in the chronological order of events depicted in the novel.
When transferred into film, Coppola abandoned the locale of Whitby and set the milieu at London .The sudden rain storm, the log of the Demeter, the escape of a wolf from London Zoo, the frenzy of Renfield in the lunatic asylum, the arrival of the ship at London, a wolf out of the ship approaching Lucy’s abode, all these events for which the novelist spent innumerable pages are powerfully written with camera through a series of continuous shots. Lucy sleepwalking scene where Dracula attacks Lucy for the first time is different from the novel in the sense that, the filmic version is so explicit and revealing, that Mina witnesses Dracula raping Lucy. Meanwhile in the novel Mina writes in her diary:
“..it seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell” (88)
When the unidentifiable figure seems to vanish, Mina begins to doubt that she really did see someone or something crouched over Lucy. The mystery and doubts makes sleepwalking scene in the novel more powerful. In the film, Coppola exploits this atmospheric scene for the meeting of Prince Vlad and Elisabeta/Mina after four centuries.
In the film Mina, do not depart for Buda-Pesth so soon. Instead she is acquainted with Prince Vlad, a young Dracula, towards whom she seems to be involuntarily fascinated. Here is the most important departure from the novel takes place. Dracula and Mina, both characters breaks out of Stoker’s framework, and the story have turned out to a romance. In a particular instant Dracula is torn between his bloodthirst and his love for her and he prevents himself. Mina seems to remember to have seen the prince somewhere like a dream and finds it unable to restrain herself from the wish to see him.
Lucy’s infection and the arrival of Dr.Van Helsing are treated as for the novel, but the four blood transfusions are trimmed in to one. The vicissitudes of Jonathan Harker, who is left locked in the castle, is juxtaposed with the tender moments between Prince Vlad and Mina by cross cutting. Sister Agatha’s letter from Buda-Pesth informs Mina about Jonathan who saved himself from the castle, and Mina departs to meet Jonathan, half-heartedly. Prince Vlad, who is broken hearted to learn that Mina is to be married to Jonathan at Buda-Pesth, kills Lucy in his anger.
In direct homage to the famous baptism scene from The Godfather, the movie cuts between Lucy's death by Dracula and the marriage of Mina and Jonathan. The character of Mrs.Westenra and the”bloofer lady” episode is eliminated from the film.
The two earlier visits to Lucy’s tomb by Van Helsing and Dr.Seward are trimmed into one, where Lucy is staked by Arthur Holmwood, a scene which is treated akin to the novel. Organizing the hunt for Dracula, presented in the novel as an elaborate conference, in which Van Helsing explains to his team the real menace of Dracula, his ways and powers, is absent in the film. Instead the film follows Van Helsing into his researches and inquiry on Dracula where he traces the pseudo history of Vlad Tepes Dracula recounted in the prologue, and identifies him as the adversary who is to be followed and destroyed. Jonathan’s accidental meeting with Dracula on the London streets is treated as similar to the novel, the event that help them to put together the facts and identify Dracula as the cause behind Lucy’s illness. Among the fourteen cardinal functions listed above almost ten of them are retained in the film with alterations and a few sequences are introduced independent of the novel.
The third section of the novel is about the hunt for Dracula, which extends from chapters nineteen to twenty seven. The major cardinal functions in this section are integrated in the filmic narrative, with sufficient variations to make it congruent with the plot deviation introduced in the prologue. These alterations are mainly concerned with the death of Renfield and the seduction of Mina. The meeting between Mina and Renfield at the Carfax abbey lunatic asylum is preserved in the novel and film, however both looks different. In the film, Renfield addresses Mina as the bride his master covets, and he warns Mina to ‘get away from these men’ as a loyal vassal of his lord. As Mina leaves, he turns against his master for offering her the eternal life, which was promised to him, and for his betrayal Dracula takes his life. In the novel, it is the dying Renfield who warns Dr.Seward and Van Helsing about Dracula’s designs on Mina.
Dracula’s seduction of Mina is one of the most discussed scenes in the novel, which is described as ‘a primal scene in oral terms’, the scene in which the Count slits open his breast and forces Mina to drink his blood. According to the vampiric myth created by Stoker this act makes the victim a vampire in turn. The scene, recounted by Stoker with strong sexual overtones, shares the same implications with the film but with an added ardor, as it portrays the forbidden union of two lovers. The most sensual scene in the film, it is here that Dracula reveals to Mina his real identity as a vampire:
I am nothing, lifeless, soulless, hated and feared. I am dead to all the world...hear me! I am the monster the breathing men would kill. I am Dracula. (Quoted from the film)
Contrary to the novel, Dracula is torn between his love for her and his instinct to make her a vampire, meanwhile Mina renounce her reservations of a Victorian wife in acknowledging her love for him. The victim’s desire for Dracula seems concealed in the novel, however the film treats it explicitly. The plot deviation suggests the prospect of interpreting the story from the vampire’s perspective, which is absent in the novel.
Among inclusions in the film is Mina’s attempt to seduce Van Helsing and the scene of Dracula’s redemption in the climax. The final scene of the film becomes very important in the sense that the plot deviation introduced in the prologue is resolved here. A wounded Dracula and Mina are left in the chapel which is miraculously filled with heavenly light and Vlad Draculea who was exiled from the kingdom of God and destined to be a power of darkness for centuries regains his space in the divine realm through undying human love. These climatic revelations of Dracula myth make Coppola’s version one of the unique adaptations ever, rewriting stoker’s popular horror story as a tale of love and redemption. Thus Coppola’s Count is no longer the bloodthirsty protagonist who longed to feast upon the ‘teeming millions’ but a misunderstood antihero who attained salvation at the hands of his lover.
Though there is the impact of the James V.Hart and Fred Saberhagen in the film narrative, on the whole it is the expertise of Coppola that distinguishes the film from other versions of the novel. Coppola imprints his signature in every frame of his film, and leaves the spectators spell bound with every visual he captures. Most previous adaptations of Dracula-theme tend to follow Bram Stoker’s wake directorially, allowing the story itself to carry the film dramatically, whereas Coppola leaps in with rapturous visual excess that seems to burst from every frame of the film, confirming his experience and mastery over the medium. Coppola directs the way artists paint graphic novels. He uses his camera like a pen in translating the words into images. As different from the novel, the film offers us an omniscient narrator, whose voice is heard on the sound track :
The Year: 1462 A.D Constantinople had fallen. Muslim Turks swept into Europe with a vast, superior force, striking at Romania, threatening all of Christiandom. From Transylvania arose a Romanian knight, of the Sacred Order Of the Dragon, known as Draculea. On the eve of the battle, his bride Elisabeta whom he prized above all things on earth knew that he must face insurmountable force from which he might never return. (From the film)
Every uttered word is translated in to visuals as such as he literally writes with the lens. Threat of the Turkish Muslims threatening the European Christiandom and the rise of Draculea against them are effectively visualized through a montage of; a crumbling Cross; the Shadow of a Crescent moving over the map of Europe, heading towards Romania; and the Romanian knight clenching a sword; and the emblem of the Sacred Order of the Dragon against the fire. The battle is shown against the twilight red sky, with the silhouettes of Turkish soldiers impaled on spears, a scene which looks like a homage paid by Coppola to one of his favourite directors, namely, Akira Kurosova, particularly his film Kagemusha.This prologue foretells the cinematic styles Coppola would follow in the movie. When dealing with a often-told story, the real success of a director lies in the styles he employs in the movie, and that is where Coppola scores in Bram stoker’s Dracula.
As related before the novel is unfolded through the first person narratives of several characters in the form of diaries written by them. Apart from these subjective documents there is no omniscient narrator who comments on the events. The film on the contrary offers an omniscient commentator who attests the truth of the incidents described, clears doubts and aids the spectators at various points of the story. John Glover relates in his essay Travels in Romania-Myths of Origins Myths of Blood that the omniscient narrator in the film is Van Helsing. The film begins with the voice over of this narrator and interferes at chosen points to tell fill certain voids.
Many of the previous films discarded the narration of the story through the diaries of the characters where as Coppola retains it with voice-over techniques and subjective camera use. Though the novel is spun around the character of Dracula, his perspective is absent from the novel whereas the film incorporates the Count’s point-of –view, too, through a series of subjective shots. At a certain point in the film, the vampire’s wild vision of the world is offered through some extra-ordinary swinging camera shots, moving in a violent and disoriented manner. Inclusion of Dracula’s perspective in film facilitates the vision of Dracula as a misunderstood tragic hero and this makes Coppola’s Dracula a tale of redemption of the vampire and not a tale of exorcism.
Central device of Stoker’s novel is the slow accumulation of evidence and testimony as the characters struggle to make sense of the baffling experiences that sorround them. This treatment brings about a sense of mystery and obscurity to the novel, which heightens the terror, whereas the movie often becomes too transparent to be powerful. One such sequence is the sleepwalking scene of Lucy Westenra, where Mina witness Dracula seducing Lucy in the form of a hairy bat-man, while the counterpart in the novel is a frightening sequence where Mina is not sure about what she saw. The sexual undertones which are merely suggested in the novel are treated in an explicit manner by Coppola.For instance, the seduction of Jonathan by the vampire women is etched as a sexually charged scene revealing the all the hidden suggestions in Stoker’s novel and more in a telling manner.
Coppola uses fast cutting, abrupt transitions and shifts of style to create dazzling tangles of scenes, which certainly covers up the above-mentioned slip. He packs every frame of the film with self- conscious effects—extra-ordinary fades, cuts and double exposures, where the eye of a peacock feather becomes a railway tunnel or the puncture marks on the neck changes into the glowing red eyes of a wolf. Coppola recalls the F.W.Murnau’s Nosferatu in the expressionistic style of employing shadows for effect in the film, where Dracula’s shadow moves independent of his body trying to grab the throat of Jonathan when he says about his forthcoming marriage with Mina. Dracula’s shadow menacingly hovers over Mina while she is attending the party and the scene fade out with Dracula face emerging out of darkness. Over the scenes of Jonathan’s trip and the storm scene Dracula’s eyes are superimposed. These techniques quite effectively suggest Dracula’s haunting presence over the characters
Unusual way of perception of even minute aspects make every shots etched by Coppola memorable. The famous shaving scene where the reflections of the crucifix on the razor and Dracula’s eyes, shot in extreme close ups is an example. The film forgets Stoker absolutely in the love scenes of Dracula and Mina, where Coppola’s aesthetic sense is brought to its height, capturing stunningly beautiful visuals. Images unpredicticably dissolves to another where the close up of Dracula’s iris dissolves in to the mouth of the chalice of wine. Crosscutting is employed to show parallel action where the vicissitudes of Jonathan in the castle is juxtaposed to the tender moments between Dracula and Mina. In another cross cutting sequence the marriage between Jonathan and Mina is juxtaposed with Dracula’s killing of Lucy, bringing parallels between marriage and death.
Francis Ford Coppola's film is far more faithful to the century of film history that preceded the film's production, than to anything in the novel. Coppola textualizes cinema history within his narrative, creating a film that is more a reflection on the history of Dracula on film, than on Dracula himself. The connection between Dracula and the birth of cinema is established when he emerges in the light of day for the first time, in Victorian London. For a few moments he is shot walking along the street in the jerky, fast motion, traditionally associated today with early cinema, captured for the first time by the medium, that is truly responsible for his immortality. He later accompanies Mina to a screening of the Cinematograph and praises the wonders of modern science to create such magic.
In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the film magic that so impressed Dracula is a key component to the film, which is why Coppola and his second unit director Roman Coppola preferred to shoot the film in a style that consciously reflects the early days of filmmaking. Rather than depending on modern technology for their special effects, they utilise traditional in-camera techniques such a pixilation, reverse printing and double exposure. Dracula's point of view, unavailable in the novel as the story is exclusively told from the point of view of the vampire hunters, is mediated through these film techniques. Dracula's approach to Lucy's home, shot from his direct point-of-view, is pixilated with each cut bringing him closer to his prey. As Mina transforms into a vampire, she commence to develop this inhuman vision. As she observes Dracula's carriage approach, pursued by Jonathan Harker and the others, we cut to her point of view, as her vision, pixilated at a random shutter speed, appears to zoom in on the action.
Similarly Coppola uses reverse motion to create the appearance of inhuman movement for the vampires. When Lucy, confronted by Van Helsing, retreats to her coffin, she seems to creep and slither back into its confines. In reality, it is merely a shot of the actress climbing out of the coffin, printed in reverse. These self-conscious uses of in-camera special effects illustrate an honored relationship between Dracula and film. While the human characters create the appearance of literary faithfulness with their narration, it is Dracula's point of view, as his silhouette is superimposed over the actions of the others that commands the film
Analyzing the characterization in Bram stoker’s Dracula shows that the film deviates from the novel considerably at the same time preserves many of its features. It seems to be the only major adaptation that managed to include all main characters in the novel. Brian Macfarlane relates that the character function, that is, what the characters do is an attribute that is amenable to audio-visual manifestations. However, in Dracula, though the character functions are preserved, the motivation behind the action of some characters are altered considerably on account of the plot deviation. Thus Coppola’s Dracula decides to go to London not to satiate his blood thirst but to meet the re-incarnation of his wife, Elisabeta.The Count is not portrayed as a scrupulous villain but a misunderstood lover who has “crossed oceans of time” to meet his lover. For this purpose the historical Vlad the Impaler and fictional Dracula are combined into one persona. So Coppola alters Stoker’s ‘tall old man…clad in black from head to foot’ into a figure of oriental mysticism, complete with a silky red robe and “high coifed Kabuki hair”.
Mina is not the same Mina in the novel but one who is torn between the love for her prince and her fiancé. She is a typical Victorian woman adored by the men of her times for her modesty and domesticity. Though she despises the “New Woman”who may dare to propose to a man, Mina in Van Helsing’s words is a women who “has a man’s brain. and a woman’s heart”. Coppola presents Lucy, as a woman with aggressive sexuality, who is not afraid of expressing her sexual emotions, which seems a bit anachronistic to the 1897 time frame. The two friends giggle over a copy of The Arabian Nights with Lucy making more knowing, sexually adventurous comments, while Mina is presented as chaste in comparison to her. Mina’s voice over is heard on the sound track, defending Lucy:
Lucy is a pure and virtuous girl, but I admit that her free way of speaking shocks me sometimes. Jonathan says it's a defect of the aristocracy that they say what they please. The truth is that I admire Lucy, and I'm not surprised that men flock around her. I wish I were as pretty and as adored as she.
The character of the American, Quincey P.Morris and Arthur Holmwood are often cut out or interchanged in most film adaptations of Dracula. Both of these characters make their first appearance together in this film.Dr.Seward, his Carfax abbey lunatic asylum with Renfield in it are portrayed exactly similar to the novel. Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing are true to the characterizations of Stoker.Mrs.Westenra, the character of Lucy’s mother and Mr. Swales; a minor character is eliminated in the film.
Though Coppola and his screenwriters endeavored to tie the story with historical ruler, Vlad Draculea III, there are errors in the treatment of history in the film. The filmmakers repeat the common fallacy that Vlad was the ruler of Transylvania rather than Wallachia.However, Coppola’s film seems to be historically more accurate than Stoker’s novel in rendering Dracula’s speech in Romanian. The events portrayed in the prologue of the film is by no means a reality, but based on the suicide of Vlad’s wife on the attack of enemies, after which Vlad married again. The London of the film is literally Bram Stoker’s London, because the street scenes display the poster of Shakespeares’s Hamlet in Lyceum Theatre with Henry Irving in the title role. In real life Bram Stoker was the manager of Lyceum Theatre where he worked as a shadow of Irving. The scientific advances of the time especially that of Cinematography is discussed in the film. Fin de seicle England viewed Sexually Transmitted Diseases with awe and fear. Dracula being a vampire story its associations with blood and sex and the anxieties towards it are echoed in Van Helsing’s speech in the classroom, which is absent in the novel:
Blood and the diseases of the blood such as syphilis will concern us here…They are involved in that sex problem about which the ethics and ideals of Christian civilization are concerned. In fact, civilization and syphillization have advanced together.Being a film released in the last decade of twentieth century, Coppola had planted
seeds for an interpretation of vampirism as an allegory of AIDS. The display of blood cells during the scenes of Lucy’s infection may account for this interpretation.
Dracula as a tale about the fear of female sexuality is not so potent in the film version as it was in the novel. In the words of David Glover, unlike the novel, ‘Coppola’s film is a tale of spiritual exile, of an apostate prince who is given a second chance by the reincarnation of his lost princess in a circular story of sacrifice and salvation through undying human love’. The film’s achievement or focus is the transformation from Gothic horror into religious melodrama. Thus, contrary to the novel, the romantic element of the story gains more importance whereas the novel powerfully works as a legend of suppressed sexuality. Unlike the novel, the film anachronistically portrays the character of Lucy and Mina as openly drawn towards sexuality. There is not much difference between the bitten and unbitten Lucy. So interpretation regarding the fear of female sexuality losses its potence. However the film abounds with sexual innuendoes and often treats it in an explicit manner, both visually and verbally. And the film preserves all the elements of vampire mythology of the novel like staking the vampire (women) with the (phallic) stake, crucifix, cutting off their head and taking out the heart etc. Thus the male scheme of subjugating women by means of phallic and religious power is not invisible in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula acknowledges its influences to many previous adaptations.
The use of expressionist shadows, which seem to act independently of their owner, is reminiscent of FW.Murnau’s Nosferatu, while Gary Oldman's performance as the Count when delivering lines from the novel, such as "I never drink...wine" or "Children of the night...what music they make" echoes with the voices of his predecessors, particularly Bela Lugosi.However, Coppola makes a conscious effort to break the film away from all the dinner-suited vampire film images of cliché. Dracula finding the photograph of Mina with Jonathan is borrowed from Murnau’s film. The blood coming in explosive gouts and the film’s outspoken sexuality is reminiscent that of Hammer films’ interpretation of Dracula myth. Linking Dracula with Vlad the Impaler and the reincarnation theme was first put forward by Dan Curtis in a Television adaptation in 1973. This connection was popularized a year before the movie appeared by Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu's in their book In Search of Dracula.Werner Herzog’s vision of Dracula as a ‘dis-eased’ human being alienated by the society also seems to have inspired Coppola in the portrayal of the Count.
Placing the author’s name above the title does puts the responsibility on a film as providing a definitive adaptation. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though claims to be the authoritative version by its title, and is not an exact reproduction of the novel. However it must be considered that it is usually at the very point of infidelity that the most creative acts of adaptation and appropriation take place. Regarding Bram Stoker’s Dracula in these light shows that it has acquired a status independent that of the novel though it is the launching pad of the film.
Despite the alterations the film has also been able to preserve the major cardinal functions and various issues related with the novel. Coppola’success lies in the generic shift made possible by transforming the ‘pot-boiler’ to a romance. In many aspects the film overcome the boundaries of the novel, by providing room for churning out new interpretations and associations to the novel. Thus rather than making a reactionary horror epic about bodily fluid exchange Coppola nudges the spectators to make analogies between AIDS and vampirism in a world where “civilization and syphilization advance together”. Coppola crafted a more optimistic piece with compassion for the disease carrier and a less polarized view of good and evil. This kinder, gentler Dracula depicts a leaving of the horror rather than a floundering in it. It speaks of human possibilities rather than limitations, despite all the marketing claims about a return to Stoker's original nightmare vision.
**************************************
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Bram Stoker’s Dracula.Dir.Francis Ford Coppola.Perf.GaryOldman, Winona Ryder, Keenu Reaves, and Anthony Hopkins. Columbia, 1992.
Stoker, Bram.Dracula.New Delhi: Parichay Overseas, 1990.
. “Dan Curtis' Dracula”. 5 June 2007.
< http://baharna.com/store … racula.htm >
.Bram Stoker’s Dracula.Dir.Francis Ford Coppola.Perf.Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Keenu Reaves, and Anthony Hopkins. Columbia, 1992.
Glover, David. Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals: Bram Stoker and the Politics
of Popular Fiction. Durham: NC,1996.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Routledge,
2006.s
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