Monster March: Dracula (1931)

Viewing Dracula is a bit like remembering a dream you might have had. I can’t recall if this was my first time sitting down to watch the film front to back, but there were moments that stood out vividly in my memory. Other parts, though, seemed strange and foreign, diversions from the Bram Stoker novel I know so well. It is, then, like the old line from Inception, a half-remembered dream – and the half you remember is very, very good.

Bela Lugosi stars as Count Dracula, the role that made him infamous and the role that he made famous. After arranging a real estate deal with the mad solicitor Renfield (Dwight Frye), Dracula travels from Transylvania to England, where he preys upon socialite Mina Seward (Helen Chandler), her fiancé John Harker (David Manners), and her physician father (Herbert Bunston), who has already enlisted the help of Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) in understanding the unscientific maladies plaguing London since the Count’s arrival.

 

It is not quite the first vampire film – that honor most likely belongs to 1922’s Nosferatu, itself the subject of a plagiarism lawsuit brought by the Stoker estate – but Dracula is certainly the archetype. I don’t think I’m overstating things to say that just about every visual impression you have of the Dracula myth starts with this Tod Browning adaptation. He’s cribbing liberally from the Stoker novel (by way of the Deane/Balderston stage adaptation, about which more in a bit), but the definitive visual stamp of Dracula gives one the acute sense of déjà vu. If you haven’t seen the Browning film, shame – but also, in a sense you always already have, because it’s become a kind of cultural shared memory. This deep primordial memory is never clearer than in the film’s riveting first act, set in Transylvania; though the film places Renfield in Castle Dracula (rather than the novel depicting Jonathan Harker’s descent therein into madness), everything else about this opening sequence is uncannily familiar – the demented carriage ride, the castle itself, Dracula’s three brides and his own hypnotic stare.

 

Indeed, if the film can be said to succeed at all, it’s because of the inspired (or perhaps cursed) casting of Bela Lugosi as the titular vampire. Lugosi would only play Dracula once more, in 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but it was a role that haunted him and typecast him. But typecasting only really happens when one is exceptionally good at a particular role, and Lugosi is Dracula. This performance works on every level – the look, the posture, the voice, the mannerisms. Even the line “I never drink... wine” (which originates here) has become a central precept in the Dracula gospel, right down to Lugosi’s distinctive intonation. When he’s on screen, the movie is solidly arresting, almost as though Lugosi is himself hypnotizing the audience.

 

When Lugosi’s not on screen, though, unfortunately Dracula becomes a bit boring. None of the other performers is as charismatic as Lugosi, so when the script turns its attention to Dr. Seward and the London social scene, the film slows into a snooze. Similarly, where Browning’s direction is electric and moody during the Dracula scenes, the sequences without the vampire are stagy and dull, doubtless a consequence of the film’s shared DNA with the stage adaptation. The momentum of the film winds down considerably, as though the very projection reels grind to a crawl. Just about the only saving grace in this middle act is Edward Van Sloan’s turn as Van Helsing, which he plays a bit like a cross between the screen presences of Anthony Hopkins and Max Von Sydow – fiery and wise. The immediate adversarial nature established between Dracula and Van Helsing is never more riveting than when Van Helsing quickly realizes that Dracula casts no reflection, followed swiftly by Van Helsing’s modest ability to resist the Count’s hypnosis.

 

However, the push and pull between Lugosi and Van Sloan never quite takes over the third act of the film the way one might hope. Instead, the film becomes an unquestionable product of its time when it focuses on John Harker’s quest to free his beloved Mina from Dracula’s thrall. Here, Helen Chandler is suitably convincing as the possessed Mina, though David Manners is forgettably milquetoast, even for a pre-Hays Code film. Yet despite the film predating the Hays Code by more than three years, its climax is straight out of the playbook, with its focus on ensuring a happy ending for a soon-to-be-married couple, while the nefarious foreigner is dispensed with off-screen. Browning (or perhaps cinematographer Karl Freund, who is largely assumed to have taken control of the picture) stages the final shot as an ascent from Dracula’s dungeon – unfortunately, he leaves the two most interesting characters in the catacombs.

 

For what is essentially the first monster movie, Dracula is a real trailblazer, and it’s not hard to draw a straight line to nearly any other creature feature. Browning was working without a map here, but he ended up playing cartographer to an entire genre. And at the edge of the map he drew, we can faintly read the inscription, “Here be monsters...” Whether any of them could live up to Lugosi’s mantle is, perhaps, a question for the rest of Monster March.

 

Dracula is not rated. Directed by Tod Browning and Karl Freund. Written by Garrett Fort. Based on the novel by Bram Stoker, and on the play by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. Starring Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan.

Tune in tomorrow for Wolf Man Wednesday, with The Wolf Man (1941) starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week for Transylvania Tuesday, let’s do it again but in Spanish this time, with Drácula (1931) starring Carlos Villarías and Lupita Tovar.