27. Dracula (1931), dir. Tod Browning

I spent Sunday in Birmingham having a late, time-shifted family Christmas. It went well - we enjoyed a nice lamb dinner, of which Dad was able to eat a modest but reasonable portion, gazed adoringly at Eloise, who played in the middle of the floor like a little angel, and exchanged various well-received presents. Amongst these in my case were all of the Hammer Dracula films which I didn't already have on DVD, and since I knew in advance that Santa had these up his sleeve, I have been deliberately putting off my final remaining re-watch (of Dracula A.D. 1972) until I got the DVD. So on Christmas afternoon, when I had eaten my roast duck and fancied indulging in some Gothic horror until it was time for Doctor Who, I curled up instead in front of an earlier generation's telling of the Dracula story - the famous original screen production from Universal starring Bela Lugosi. Partly I wanted to see where the Hammer series was coming from - where were they following in Universal's footsteps, and where were they innovating? But also I have only seen this film once before anyway, and that seemed a bit neglectful. I've seen Nosferatu (1922) on the big screen more often than that, for heaven's sake! So I also wanted to re-visit it for its own sake - especially now that I have spent so much time in the Cottage Road cinema watching other films of this vintage, and can therefore perhaps understand it better in its original context.

( Expressionism )

( Relationship to Stoker's novel )

But it is Dracula that I'm really here for, so let's talk about him. First of all let's be honest and say that Bela Lugosi can't really win with me. My first experience of Dracula was Christopher Lee's portrayal for Hammer, and for all that I read the book soon afterwards, have since read up about the real Vlad Drăculea, and recognise Lugosi's iconic status as the first proper screen Dracula and his influence on subsequent portrayals (including Lee's), Lee still remains the definitive Dracula for me - and more importantly my favourite. This means that all poor Bela can really do in my eyes is not be enough like Christopher Lee. It doesn't even matter how well he interprets Stoker's character. Lee gets a free pass on that in my book, because I like his Dracula better than Stoker's. But Lugosi doesn't, so he's liable to criticism from me for both a) not playing Stoker's Dracula accurately enough and b) still not being the Dracula I really want to see anyway, even if he plays Stoker's character to perfection. Totes unfair, huh? But there it is - I'm making no pretensions to objectivity here. Nonetheless, let's take Lugosi's Dracula apart to see what makes him tick, and how he compares to both Stoker's character and Lee's interpretation.

As I've said repeatedly in my Hammer reviews, I like Lee's Dracula best when he hits three notes within the same film - ( icily aristocratic )

( Darkly sexual )

( And violently monsterish )

Two further notes also need discussing - perhaps we could call them ( harmonics to the main chord - malice and pathos )

So, yeah, six paragraphs supposedly about Bela Lugosi's Dracula which are really all about why he's not as good as Christopher Lee's. I told you I wasn't approaching this issue with an entirely open mind. I do see that Lugosi's interpretation has a magnetism and a mystique of its own which worked well on screen and was well suited to the tastes of the 1930s, and fully appreciate the contribution which he made to the ongoing evolution of the character. Lee couldn't have done what he did if Lugosi hadn't gone before him. But I know what I prefer.

Meanwhile, beyond the performances of the main actor, these are some of the other specific connections I can see between Universal's Dracula and the Hammer franchise:

• Dracula's opera cloak and ring have their origins here (on screen, anyway - still photos show they originated in the stage production), though Lugosi wears the collar of his cloak up while Lee wore it down, and Hammer did not import his white tie and tails. For their first film in particular, Hammer stick closer to the book, since Stoker's Dracula was dressed entirely in black, though from Prince onwards he has a red lining to his cloak.
• Lugosi also gives us for the first time Dracula's habit of using said opera cloak to envelop his victims as he bites them, like the wings of a bat, which Christopher Lee also does in his earlier films - e.g. with Lucy in Dracula (1958) and Helen in Prince (1966).
• Universal's general policy was clearly never to show us any actual biting, which would presumably have been too risqué, but instead to cut away or have Dracula and his victim move out of sight at the crucial moment, and this is more or less where Hammer start too, although we already see a little more even in the first film. But Hammer's biting scenes inevitably get progressively more explicit as censorship rules relax and they need to outdo their own previous efforts.
• At Castle Dracula, Lugosi appears for the first time at the head of a flight of steps, coming down them to greet his visitor. This is definitely a filmic innovation, since in the book Dracula greets Harker at the castle door. Dracula (1958) also employs Universal's flight of steps device - and to excellent effect.
• Dracula's castle is a semi-ruin with some rooms in good condition, as is also the case in Scars of Dracula (1970). Again, this isn't a case of both films drawing independently from the book, because Dracula's castle is perfectly sound in the book, if dusty and unoccupied in parts, except for the chapel which is in ruins.
• A large and obviously fake rubber bat hangs about the castle doing Dracula's bidding. Hammer's immediate response to this was to avoid bats altogether, but by Scars they had thrown caution to the wind and were just going for it anyway. The effect is very much akin to Dracula (1931).
• All scary, predatory close-ups of Lugosi feature a strong line of light across his eyes while the rest of his face remains in shadow. This is used in the first Hammer film too, when Dracula appears on the terrace outside Lucy's bedroom window, and also crops up repeatedly in Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), as I noted when I reviewed it.
• We never see Lugosi getting out of his coffin - only the lid moving, his hand appearing through the opening, and then a cut to a scene of him standing beside it. On one of the commentary tracks for the Hammer series (I think for Dracula, Prince of Darkness), Christopher Lee notes that this was also a conscious directorial decision for the Hammer series, on the grounds that the clambering required would make Dracula look too awkward and prosaic.
• Universal use an assistant at Seward's asylum named Martin as a comic relief character. Hammer do much the same with an undertaker and a customs official in Dracula (1958), and with similar characters in their later films. I think there may be a few comic policemen etc. in Stoker's novel, though, and in any case it is a well-recognised literary device for leavening dark or horrific stories, so this one may not be a case of direct emulation.
• When Van Helsing brandishes a crucifix at Lugosi's Dracula, he reacts with a hiss and a sweep of his cloak, both of which very much became part of Christopher Lee's repertoire in similar circumstances.
• Dracula twice lurks beneath the trees in Seward's garden - once to communicate with Renfield and then later again to draw Mina to him and enfold her in his cloak. He does this pretty much constantly throughout Taste the Blood, too.
• Dracula sweeps off, carrying Mina in his arms, to hide her away in Carfax Abbey, just as Christopher Lee also does repeatedly with a series of girls in Dracula, Prince, Scars and probably others.
• After Dracula has been defeated and Mina and Jon(athan) walk out of Carfax Abbey together, we hear the sound of church bells - just as we do in this equivalent scene for both Dracula and Risen from the Grave (and quite probably several other entries in the Hammer franchise, too).

So there is definitely a lot of inter-textuality. Obviously Universal and Hammer were working from the same source material, and there are certain expected motifs which were bound to crop up in both of their films. But there are enough direct resemblances which don't have anything to do with the book to suggest that the Hammer team took quite a few cues from the 1931 film over the course of their own adaptations - especially the more obviously filmic aspects like strip-lighting across Dracula's eyes, the decision not to show him getting out of his coffin and the use of church bells to signal the destruction of his demonic influence. The fact is that the Hammer films I love so much couldn't have happened without Universal and Bela Lugosi, and for that I'm very grateful.

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