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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 25, 2018 15:57:30 GMT
Ramble on, Doghouse6! If only my rambles were as good as yours… Yes, The Wolf Man does look and feel modern—as do, in fact, Dracula’s Daughter and Son of Dracula, at least to me. Perhaps, for me, that late-1800s Dracula impression has endured…or maybe it’s as Rick wrote before, that the movie just feels so much older than it is. When I buckled down and read the (very badly-written) Deane/Balderston play, I was surprised that Dracula-the-movie actually borrowed less from it than I’d expected. The general drawing-room atmosphere is kept, but that’s pretty much it!
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Post by deembastille on Jul 25, 2018 16:12:25 GMT
And has someone forgotten to leave their smartphone lives out of this? Don't compare classic movies with beachwaves and whore shoes of 2018!
It's not my thing but I know the story. However, if you are you looking for a Passion of the Christ/The Godfather/Titanic type of masterpiece, then you need to realize that this movie was made in 1931. You even said it in the title.
Don't bring 2018 into this bitch!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 25, 2018 20:51:30 GMT
And has someone forgotten to leave their smartphone lives out of this? Don't compare classic movies with beachwaves and whore shoes of 2018!It's not my thing but I know the story. However, if you are you looking for a Passion of the Christ/The Godfather/Titanic type of masterpiece, then you need to realize that this movie was made in 1931. You even said it in the title. Don't bring 2018 into this bitch!Care to point out where anyone did these dastardly deeds ? I seem to have missed those posts.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 25, 2018 21:16:50 GMT
And has someone forgotten to leave their smartphone lives out of this? Don't compare classic movies with beachwaves and whore shoes of 2018! It's not my thing but I know the story. However, if you are you looking for a Passion of the Christ/The Godfather/Titanic type of masterpiece, then you need to realize that this movie was made in 1931. You even said it in the title. Don't bring 2018 into this bitch! This seems to be another of those free floating posts … re-reading it .. I see that it was intended to be addressed to the OP .and not to the several other posters who were having in depth and serious discussion of the 1931 Dracula for several pages. If you need instructions on how to tag someone so that they are the sole recipient of a particular rant, I suggest that you ask for help. I am sure that someone will be here to help you asap.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Jul 25, 2018 21:22:46 GMT
Nalkarj, you and Doghouse6 need to assemble your joint Rambles and get them published... we'd have a best seller on our hands fer zer-tan shure . NOTE : That's SELLER not cellar
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 25, 2018 22:05:02 GMT
Ramble on, Doghouse6 ! If only my rambles were as good as yours… Oh, you're way too kind. And you've even invoked my favorite Led Zeppelin song! Yes, it really does, even in comparison to some of its contemporaries. There were directors with well-established silent chops, like Lubitsch and Capra, who took to talkies from the get-go, using the technology to expand their technique rather than being hobbled or intimidated by it. But next to Browning's first talkie, The Thirteenth Chair (which I'm sure you've seen), Dracula, for all its stately and deliberate pacing, is already considerably more tight and polished. TTC has moments that are incredibly clunky, such as a cut to a roomful of players standing idly and silent for a full six seconds before suddenly becoming animated and vocal, as though they'd just gotten the call for "Action." Ah, that's interesting, and serves me right for relying on what's merely anecdotal.
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Post by amyghost on Jul 25, 2018 22:10:35 GMT
Anyone here seen The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), with Claude Rains? Some of the scenes in that seemed to have that same sort of antiquated feel that Dracula exudes.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 25, 2018 22:44:12 GMT
Nalkarj , you and Doghouse6 need to assemble your joint Rambles and get them published... we'd have a best seller on our hands fer zer-tan shure . NOTE : That's SELLER not cellar Such enthusiasm suggests the foundation of a customer base meant to vault sales to a level beyond des cryption. I can dig it.
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Post by vegalyra on Jul 25, 2018 23:23:18 GMT
I absolutely love Dracula. So much atmosphere and the cast is first rate. I like the Mummy just a tad more though. All of those early '30s monster films are beautiful.
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Post by telegonus on Jul 26, 2018 2:47:59 GMT
I think the film was a victim of Universal's distaste with the theme of the novel "evil foreigner seeks to exploit English women and is killed by various young strong native men." The changes they made from the stage play bears this out. Renfield is no longer a mental patient--he is a normal guy who is driven insane. Van Helsing is no longer an elderly adviser-he is the one who kills Dracula, and the young man does pretty much nothing (reminds me of Svengali where the young guy does nothing but lose at the end). Lugosi seems more of a Valentino than a real demonic force. I prefer his role in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein--he is more menacing and obviously evil. True about the Valentino aspect of the way Lugosi's Dracula was presented, as a sort of diabolical Valentino. Yet I find his refined manners and (outwardly anyway) gracious way of introducing Renfield to Castle Dracula a strangely fitting way to kick off the early talkie horror cycle. The movie was, after all, released on Valentine's Day, 1931.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 26, 2018 12:04:16 GMT
I absolutely love Dracula. So much atmosphere and the cast is first rate. I like the Mummy just a tad more though. All of those early '30s monster films are beautiful. I like them both too, and The Mummy and Dracula are probably the most similar two films of the whole Uni horror cycle (well, other than the two Draculas, of course!). Everson, as usual, hit the nail on the head when he wrote that Freund has this uncanny knack of really evoking the whole spirit and mystery of Egypt with just a few simple sets, just as he and Browning (or he alone?) had evoked Transylvania in the early scenes of Dracula. Both The Mummy and Dracula, moreover, have this slow-moving, nigh-poetic feel that sets them apart from, say, Whalesian comedy-horrors. And Freund’s other horror picture, Mad Love for MGM, combines that mood with rather shocking sadism. (Frances Drake hated Freund and said the sadism was typical of him.) I really wish he would have gotten to direct some more…
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 26, 2018 12:27:08 GMT
Ramble on, Doghouse6 ! If only my rambles were as good as yours… Oh, you're way too kind. And you've even invoked my favorite Led Zeppelin song! Yes, it really does, even in comparison to some of its contemporaries. There were directors with well-established silent chops, like Lubitsch and Capra, who took to talkies from the get-go, using the technology to expand their technique rather than being hobbled or intimidated by it. But next to Browning's first talkie, The Thirteenth Chair (which I'm sure you've seen), Dracula, for all its stately and deliberate pacing, is already considerably more tight and polished. TTC has moments that are incredibly clunky, such as a cut to a roomful of players standing idly and silent for a full six seconds before suddenly becoming animated and vocal, as though they'd just gotten the call for "Action." Ah, that's interesting, and serves me right for relying on what's merely anecdotal. I haven’t actually seen The Thirteenth Chair, but it’s on the list as well… Interestingly, in Dracula, when Browning wants to execute technique, he actually does a good job with it: unusually for the oft-static Browning, he has these sweeping camera movements on the Vespa and in the sanatorium. I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t use one for the Dracula’s introduction, as Melford did—maybe because Melford’s crane shot is so shaky? Browning was like that in the silents as well, though: there’s such an awkwardness to Browning films, a combination of wild concepts and static execution. Not entirely sure why the talkies would improve that, but (as I wrote) I mostly find Browning’s talkies ( Freaks notwithstanding) to be superior to his silents. Pretty much the only dialogue borrowed from the play is the Dracula/Van Helsing confrontation (“for one who has not lived a single lifetime…”), and that’s even chopped-up. For one thing, in the play it’s Van Helsing, not Dracula, who gets all the focus and attention (I think Deane was originally playing Van Helsing…?), and it’s much more focused as a mystery—“who is this guy?” The late Ken Hanke once wrote that it might well have been that the movie’s staginess replaced the play’s staginess, but it was a different staginess.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 26, 2018 12:27:45 GMT
Heh. Who knew Dracula would inspire this much discussion?
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 26, 2018 14:40:23 GMT
I haven’t actually seen The Thirteenth Chair, but it’s on the list as well… Interestingly, in Dracula, when Browning wants to execute technique, he actually does a good job with it: unusually for the oft-static Browning, he has these sweeping camera movements on the Vespa and in the sanatorium. I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t use one for the Dracula’s introduction, as Melford did—maybe because Melford’s crane shot is so shaky? Browning was like that in the silents as well, though: there’s such an awkwardness to Browning films, a combination of wild concepts and static execution. Not entirely sure why the talkies would improve that, but (as I wrote) I mostly find Browning’s talkies ( Freaks notwithstanding) to be superior to his silents. Pretty much the only dialogue borrowed from the play is the Dracula/Van Helsing confrontation (“for one who has not lived a single lifetime…”), and that’s even chopped-up. For one thing, in the play it’s Van Helsing, not Dracula, who gets all the focus and attention (I think Deane was originally playing Van Helsing…?), and it’s much more focused as a mystery—“who is this guy?” The late Ken Hanke once wrote that it might well have been that the movie’s staginess replaced the play’s staginess, but it was a different staginess. In spite of its limitations, The Thirteenth Chair is a rather lively and colorful little drawing-room whodunit, with a nifty premise involving murder during a seance in a darkened room while the hands of all participants - and the victim - are joined. What you say about Browning's technique is representative of that adjustment to talkies; he gets static and stagey only with dialogue-heavy sequences. The ride from Borgo Pass to Dracula's castle, for instance, is quite dynamically shot and edited. And though we may not have gotten a crane shot for the Count's introduction, there's a lovely one - and your word "sweeping" is a good one for it - from inmates on lawn benches up to and into the window of Renfield's room when Martin confiscates his spider. While Browning didn't opt for it with Dracula's entrance, I feel Melford entirely diluted its effect by having Renfield stride up the steps to meet him face to face in a two-shot, as though they were greeting each other at a cocktail party. Carlos Villar's courtly bow and informal "Soy Drácula" just doesn't have the majesty of those closer and closer shots of Lugosi and, "I am...Dracula." While Melford's features individual moments that dazzle more than Browning's counterpart scenes (Dracula's rise from the coffin with footlit mist, for example), it plods by comparison overall; that additional half-hour of running time did it no favors.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 26, 2018 15:15:04 GMT
I haven’t actually seen The Thirteenth Chair, but it’s on the list as well… Interestingly, in Dracula, when Browning wants to execute technique, he actually does a good job with it: unusually for the oft-static Browning, he has these sweeping camera movements on the Vespa and in the sanatorium. I’m not entirely sure why he didn’t use one for the Dracula’s introduction, as Melford did—maybe because Melford’s crane shot is so shaky? Browning was like that in the silents as well, though: there’s such an awkwardness to Browning films, a combination of wild concepts and static execution. Not entirely sure why the talkies would improve that, but (as I wrote) I mostly find Browning’s talkies ( Freaks notwithstanding) to be superior to his silents. Pretty much the only dialogue borrowed from the play is the Dracula/Van Helsing confrontation (“for one who has not lived a single lifetime…”), and that’s even chopped-up. For one thing, in the play it’s Van Helsing, not Dracula, who gets all the focus and attention (I think Deane was originally playing Van Helsing…?), and it’s much more focused as a mystery—“who is this guy?” The late Ken Hanke once wrote that it might well have been that the movie’s staginess replaced the play’s staginess, but it was a different staginess. In spite of its limitations, The Thirteenth Chair is a rather lively and colorful little drawing-room whodunit, with a nifty premise involving murder during a seance in a darkened room while the hands of all participants - and the victim - are joined. Heh—right up my alley! My favorite of the Toler Monogram Chans, Black Magic/ Meeting at Midnight, also has that general premise. I completely agree with all of this, especially the sweeping crane shot you mention. It’s very well-done, yet Browning inexplicably uses it on such a minor scene! And I too feel that Melford diluted the effect of the crane shot by having Dracula and Renfield face-to-face, at the same level—I suppose the ideal version would combine Melford’s crane shot and Browning’s staging of the scene? Even the mist/rise from the coffin, which special-effects-wise is very impressive, doesn’t have the spookiness that the Browning version has: seeing Lugosi’s long fingers, a cutaway, and then him just there, staring at you, the viewer, is far more effective. Despite all the excellent moments in the Melford version, and despite how interesting it is to watch, I also think it plods in comparison. I am happy that we have it, though.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 26, 2018 22:52:01 GMT
Nalkarj There may be something to be said for minimalism in big moments to avoid stylistic overstatement, and enlivening smaller ones with a bit of cinematic flair that stands out amid the stateliness surrounding them. Or if a cynic, one might presume that an edict was issued by a Laemmle to both Browning and Melford to employ the elaborate mobile crane Paul Fejos had had designed and built for 1929's Broadway: "We spent 25 grand on the damned thing, and you're gonna use it for at least one shot!" On a related note, discretion is a constant throughout the film: Browning is always taking us right up to the point of something supernatural or dastardly, and leaving off there with only the suggestion: Dracula stepping through the giant spiderweb without breaking it is conveyed entirely with before/after editing, and a cutaway to Renfield's surprise and amazement between; a fadeout before Dracula's first bite of Renfield; another fadeout from the Vespa to the grisly aftermath of the crew's slaughter (with only the shadow of the captain lashed to the wheel visible and the disembodied comments of investigators added as nice touches); the flower girl pushed behind a pillar giving way to a dissolve to the now-sated Count strolling along the sidewalk; Dracula's attacks on Lucy and Mina and Renfield's on the maid and so forth, all the way through to Dracula's end at Van Helsing's hands. Everything of this nature takes place offscreen, and what we don't see is as precisely timed as what we do. Some of this can be chalked up to the cinematic restraint common in even the pre-PCA era, but it's a clearly deliberate leitmotif, and one that seems to prefigure the similar "less is more" approach of the Val Lewton thrillers of the '40s. From what I've read, the 1931 consensus was that it was all properly chilling and unsettling, but I wonder if Browning got some criticism - or even concluded on his own - that he'd been too circumspect, and to which Freaks was a response. I've been thinking more about that Victorian feel you get from it, and it strikes me that while the film isn't liter al, it's liter ary. There are passages that play pretty much as they would read on the page: "From behind Renfield, the startling creak of a massive door. He turned to watch it move heavily on its ancient hinges, as though bidden to do so by an unseen force. Gazing into the gloom, he stepped apprehensively through the forbidding portal, and before him loomed the vast expanse of a once-majestic reception hall. Through tall, arched clerestories, beams of moonlight fell, gathering in geometric pools across the dusty stone floor. Beyond, broad and imposing stairs cascaded in crumbling grandeur." Others play just as the spoken text they are: Mina's description of Dracula's visit to her boudoir or her encounter with the dead Lucy; Harker's of the "huge dog" running across the lawn; Renfield's of the "red mist, coming on like a flame of fire" and those "Rats...rats...rats...thousands, millions of them." I know very little about Victorian-era literature or drama, but it all suggests what I'd suppose to be the nature of their structures.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Jul 27, 2018 1:18:00 GMT
Heh. Who knew Dracula would inspire this much discussion? That alone says something, doesn't it? In only a dozen more years, it'll be a century since Dracula went before the cameras, and Lugosi's look and manner still form the de facto image of the vampire. And how many such appearances did he make on film? Four (one of them ersatz)? And he wasn't even the first. Nosferatu may actually be a better film in its 1922 context than Dracula was in its 1931 one, but for my money, it just doesn't deliver equal entertainment value. I didn't vote in the poll, so I don't know the results. As I've said elsewhere, my brain simply isn't wired to rate films on a numerical basis; I don't know how to quantify one film as a "7" or another as a "9" or whatever. There are so many possible standards by which film "greatness" can be measured: script; performances; technical craftsmanship; artistic innovation; cultural impact and import. Yet it's possible, in my view, for a film to achieve greatness without necessarily checking off all or even any of those boxes. The sum of parts can inexplicably be transcended by something indefinable, rendering it iconic and special. That could be called a form of greatness, no? The Wizard Of OZ may be a case in point. Unsuccessful in its theatrical runs, it didn't become beloved - and profitable - until about 20 years later. By all those standards listed above, it's solidly good, but certainly not better in any one of them than many other examples, then or since. But the combination and balance of those ingredients elevate it, even if we can't point to specifics. It's rather like a recipe. Hubby tells me I make great lasagna and equally great chili. Both began with - and still follow - basic original recipes. But tweaks to the ingredients - heavier with the basil, lighter on the oregano and a subtle shift in the ricotta/egg mixture; a little less beer, a bit more garlic and cumin - took that lasagna and chili from good to great in hubby's estimation, although he can't say why. And he says both are even better the next day, after refrigeration and reheating. So, I dunno: maybe there's something in the aging, in the passage of time that allows films like these to resolve themselves into more harmonious blendings of ingredients that achieve greatness. Except that in these cases, the films remain exactly what they always were, undergoing no chemical changes; it's actually we and our palates maturing into appreciation that endures after so many decades...and without any idea of the specific proportions of garlic or wolfbane.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jul 27, 2018 1:29:09 GMT
There’s not much I can add, Doghouse6, except to say that I agree entirely with everything you’ve written here—which really ought to go into that book BATouttaheck keeps telling us to write! I’d never thought of Dracula’s virtues being more literary than anything, but it’s very true, and it, like great literature, succeeds in creating a distinctive mood. I too cannot rate movies in this 1-10 (or 0-11) poll system, though I’ve participated in a few of them just because the OP asked. (I didn’t vote in this one.) And you’re right: for film, as for all art, greatness exists in the unity, in the recipe, the combination of smaller elements, in whatever order, that build up to a truly great whole.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Aug 2, 2018 14:46:15 GMT
mikef6 Also, there was a huge thread at the Monster Kids board about whether the cardboard was intentional or unintentional, and it appears (I not having followed it fully) that the cardboard actually was a common practice at the time for use as an eye shield, to reduce light in the eyes. A point of interest: last night, I watched Faithless (1932), in which impoverished newlyweds Tallulah Bankhead and Robert Montgomery are living in a cheap furnished room that happens to have a wall sconce with an art glass shade. In a later scene, Montgomery is in bed recovering from an accident, and a large piece of heavy paper or thin cardboard has been wrapped around the sconce. Just more grist - or perhaps pulp - for the mill.
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Post by Nalkarj on Aug 2, 2018 14:55:10 GMT
mikef6 Also, there was a huge thread at the Monster Kids board about whether the cardboard was intentional or unintentional, and it appears (I not having followed it fully) that the cardboard actually was a common practice at the time for use as an eye shield, to reduce light in the eyes. A point of interest: last night, I watched Faithless (1932), in which impoverished newlyweds Tallulah Bankhead and Robert Montgomery are living in a cheap furnished room that happens to have a wall sconce with an art glass shade. In a later scene, Montgomery is in bed recovering from an accident, and a large piece of heavy paper or thin cardboard has been wrapped around the sconce. Just more grist - or perhaps pulp - for the mill. Very interesting! Thanks, Doghouse. Do you mind if I bring that up in the CHFB (with credit to you, of course)? (Though maybe I shouldn’t—I haven’t really logged on there since the blowback about Mark of the Vampire. “Blowback” about a little ‘30s horror b-picture—that’s silly. Oh well.) I think I commented on it somewhere around here, but I was intrigued by surprisingly close similarities to Dracula in the movie Outward Bound (’30), also with Helen Chandler. So close that I felt like I was watching yet another alternate version of Drac!
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