Dracula (1931)

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Movie
German title Dracula
Original title Dracula
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1931
length 75 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Death Browning
script Hamilton Deane
John L. Balderston
et al.
production Death Browning
Carl Laemmle Jr.
EM Asher (Associate Producer)
music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1931 version)
Franz Schubert
(1931 version)
Richard Wagner
(1931 version)
Philip Glass (1999 restored version)
camera Karl friend
cut Milton Carruth
Maurice Pivar
occupation

Dracula is in black and white twisted American horror film of Universal Studios from the year 1931 . The film is considered to be the first officially approved film adaptation of Bram Stoker 's novel of the same name , although its content can be viewed as an adaptation of the play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston . Directed by Tod Browning , the title role played Bela Lugosi , who became a star with this film.

Dracula was listed in 2000 as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress , USA.

action

Renfield, an English realtor , travels to Transylvania to close a real estate deal with the withdrawn Count Dracula. Dracula wants to buy "Carfax Abbey", a neglected, vacant abbey in London .

Renfield's fellow travelers in the carriage, as well as the landlord and guests of an inn where Renfield is resting, are shocked when he tells of his planned visit to Dracula Castle. Everyone warned Renfield that the half-ruined walls were vampires who suck the blood of the living at night. Renfield, however, is not impressed and sets off for Borgo Pass , where the Count's black coach is already waiting for him. During the restless drive over hardly used scree roads, along yawning chasms, Renfield notices that the coachman has disappeared and instead a bat hovers over the driver's seat. When he arrives at the old castle, he is invited in by a charming gentleman in elegant evening clothes. Renfield is anesthetized with a sleeping pill at dinner , and Count Dracula's three brides soon rush into his room. Dracula claims Renfield for himself and drinks his blood. As a result, Renfield becomes Dracula's slave and begins the journey home with him, where the Prince of Vampires in England thinks he has found a new home.

In London , from his new domicile, Dracula is soon up to mischief in the upper class society of the venerable city. Here he has it first on Lucy Weston, the friend of Dr. Apart from Seward's daughter Mina, who will also be his first victim. Lucy is visibly ailing. Dr. Seward, Dracula's neighbor and head of the local insane asylum, in which the maddening Renfield was also taken, can no longer help himself and asks the famous Professor Van Helsing for assistance. He soon suspects the mysterious Count Dracula as the originator of the evil. Van Helsing uses a ruse to reveal that Dracula has no mirror image, exposing him as a vampire. But while the professor, Dr. Seward and Mina's fiancé John Harker advise on how to get rid of the centuries-old monster, who has already put the young woman under his spell and kidnaps her to Carfax Abbey .

Since the dawn is already breaking, Dracula has to retreat into his coffin. Van Helsing uses this opportunity and destroys the vampire by driving a wooden stake through his heart and thereby saving Mina.

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Almost the entire chapter “Background” as well as the cinema review in “Reviews” are not occupied.

background

production

After the success of the play of the same name, which premiered in 1927, it was not until 1930 before Universal filmed the material. The reasons were, on the one hand, that Carl Laemmle , the studio boss, did not believe that the film version of Dracula fit into the concept of the studio to make entertainment films, and on the other hand, that the major studios had also refused to make a film by then.

When in 1929 Carl Laemmle Jr. the studio "took over", it was decided to film the novel. Initially, Conrad Veidt as Graf and Paul Leni as director of the film were in discussion, but Veidt went back to Germany and Leni died unexpectedly in 1929. Finally, the one of Carl Laemmle jr. favored director Tod Browning committed. The also from Laemmle jr. Lon Chaney , intended for the role of the Count , who at that time would have guaranteed the film's financial success, died a few weeks before shooting began. Laemmle Jr. definitely did not want to sign Bela Lugosi , who had successfully played the role on Broadway. To this end, he telegraphed his agents that there was no interest in Lugosi as Count Dracula. When Ian Keith, among others, turned down the role, test recordings were made with Lugosi. Lugosi was so determined to play the role of Count that he was satisfied with a very modest fee for his standards.

Others

  • A Spanish version of Drácula was filmed at the same time - the US version was filmed during the day and the Spanish version at night. The same sets were used, but the actors were different. The Spanish version is about 30 minutes longer than the US film.
  • For the role of Count Dracula, the " man with the 1,000 faces " was originally Lon Chaney sen. intended. However, the silent film star died of cancer shortly before filming began. Before the part went to Lugosi, however, actors such as Conrad Veidt , John Wray , Paul Muni , Chester Morris and William Courtenay were in discussion.
  • As with Frankenstein (1931), Edward Van Sloan gave a short introductory speech in a prologue before the film actually started. However, this was cut out during the re-performance in 1936 and is now considered lost.
  • The studio didn't like the scene in which Dracula bites the unconscious Renfield because that moment had a too homoerotic air. The director was sent a note saying, "Dracula should only attack women!"
  • The studio had planned Dracula as a massive, big-budget production that would be very close to Bram Stoker's novel. As a result of the Great Depression, however, Universal did not have the financial means to carry out such a large-scale project. Instead, the much cheaper play by Hamilton Deane was adapted .
  • Various elements that are still associated with Dracula today are actually not present in the film itself. The Count's fangs can never be seen, but the bite wounds on the necks of the victims can be seen.
  • Originally, Bette Davis , who was signed by Universal at the time, was supposed to play the role of Mina. Carl Laemmle jun. however, decided that she didn't have enough sex appeal for the part.
  • David Manners , who played the role of the romantic hero John Harker, hadn't seen the finished film once in his life.
  • The original movie poster was auctioned off at Heritage Auctions in March 2012 for $ 503,000.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created by Studio Hamburg Synchron.

role actor German Voice actor
Count Dracula Bela Lugosi Rolf Boysen
Mina Seward Harker Helen Chandler Karin Lieneweg
John Harker David Manners Claus Jurichs
RM Renfield Dwight Frye Lutz Mackensy
Professor Van Helsing Edward Van Sloan Konrad Wagner
Dr. Jack Seward Herbert Bunston Klaus W. Krause
Lucy Weston Frances Dade Renate Pichler
Martin Charles K. Gerrard Manfred Steffen

Reviews

  • Dieter Krusche, Jürgen Labenski in Reclam's electronic film dictionary : “The film is pretty unbalanced. In addition to scenes in which the uncanny comes alive directly in the picture, there are others in which the origin of the film from a stage play is all too obvious. Browning and Lugosi jointly popularized a character who has since been revived in dozens of films of varying quality. Many actors have slipped into the role of Dracula. Only a few have regained Lugosi's sinister dignity, which - also in other Dracula roles - always guaranteed him a remnant of pity from the audience. "
  • Cinema : “The film started with a death: Because Lon Chaney sr. died before shooting began, in 1931 a Hungarian with a communist past got the role of aristocratic bloodsucker. He called himself Bela Lugosi and became immortal with this first Dracula sound film. In the first part of the horror epic, there is a perfect horror atmosphere, which is attributed to the expressionist cameraman Karl Freund ( Metropolis , director of The Mummy ): A driverless carriage takes the broker Renfield to the gloomy Carpathian castle of Count Dracula. There the master of the bats mixes a drug in the red wine for him and leaves him to three thirsty vampires. Dracula continues his mischief in the more conventional, theatrically rigid second part in London, where he plays in the vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing finds his master. The film owes its success at the time mainly to Lugosi's foreign, erotic charisma. The myth never left Lugosi: he gave interviews in the coffin and was buried in his original Dracula outfit in 1956. "
  • Prisma wrote: “The film adaptation of Bram Stoker's famous vampire story owes its effect above all to the atmosphere of evil that Bela Lugosi impressively conveys as the seemingly dead Count Dracula who climbs out of his grave to suckle blood. His acting power is hardly matched by later epigones. When it came to filming the horror story, director Browning was particularly guided by the play of the same name by John Balderston and Hamilton Deane from 1927. Karl Freund's camera work is also impressive. "

Sequels

Five years after the resounding success of Dracula , Universal decided to continue the story. Dracula's daughter follows on seamlessly from the first part and begins with Prof. Van Helsing's arrest for the murder of Count Dracula.

Another seven years later another sequel was produced with Dracula's son , this time making no reference to the previous films. The mysterious Hungarian Count Alucard intends to move into his new home on a plantation in the southern United States . A series of eerie events began with his arrival.

Over the next two years, attempts were made to build up the tension by combining several movie monsters into one story. In Frankenstein's house and Dracula's house, in addition to a mad scientist with a hunchbacked assistant, Count Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster met each other.

The comedy Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein , in which the studio's most popular monsters were satirized, marked the end of Universal's Dracula series . Bela Lugosi played Count Dracula in a film for the first time since 1931.

DVD release

Dracula was released several times in Germany as a single DVD and as part of the "Monster Legacy DVD Collection". In addition to the original version, the American DVD editions from Universal Pictures also contain the restored version with Philip Glass' new film music and the Spanish-language version that was created at the same time.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Librarian of Congress Names 25 More Films to National Film Registry - Article on Library of Congress website, December 27, 2000, accessed March 30, 2012.
  2. ↑ Article in Hollywood Reporter, March 26, 2012, accessed March 30, 2012.
  3. ↑ Dracula at the German synchronous file
  4. ↑ Dracula in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used at Zweiausendeins.de, accessed on March 30, 2012.
  5. ↑ Reclam's electronic film lexicon (CD-ROM), Reclam, Stuttgart 2001.
  6. ↑ Review on Prisma.de, accessed on March 30, 2012.