Dracula of Bramstock It’s a movie that travels as much as its protagonist through the ocean of time.Director Francis Ford CoppolaOne of the most cutting-edge filmmakers of the “film school” generation in the 1970s, digging for the talent of young rising stars in front of and behind the camera, using very old technology.Coppola and his collaborators chose to eschew increasingly high numbers of digital effects, expensive location shots and elaborate tricks in favor of “childish” in-camera effects, stage shots and lavish costumes as “sets” to create a completely unique retelling of Dracula. The look of the film is both timeless and cutting edge of innovation. Despite celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, it’s still as modern and illegal as the day it was released.
Although Coppola is considered one of the greatest directors in the film industry, he first credits his collaborators and defines his directorial role as akin to a gardener. “A team of filmmakers is like a garden, all kinds of plants are overproduced… The director has to bring all these great ideas together to make it work.” If yes Draculathe first of these overproducing plants is an actress Winona Ryder. She originally starred in Coppola’s last film, godfather part 3, but had to quit. Coppola still wanted to work with her and invited her to bring any projects she might be interested in working with him on to his attention.In late 1990 or early 1991 (depending on the account) she brought him james v hartnew movie script Dracula Closer to Bram Stoker’s original novel than any previous film. It took Coppola across the oceans of his own life, back to his teenage years, when he worked as a theater camp counselor and read entire novels aloud for the 8- and 9-year-old boys he was in charge one summer.
There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of movie versions Dracula Varying in quality and importance, for Coppola, the film had to be truly unique. He really liked the script, and Hart’s overall loyalty to the novel, while injecting it with a love story based on some historical facts about the real Vlad “The Impaler” of the Draku family . He also realized that the year the novel was published and the screenplay was set coincided with the birth of the film. This sparked ideas about how to make the movie. “What if I make this film,” he thought, “in the style of turn-of-the-century films? That is, an illusion.” This gave Coppola the idea of shooting entire films in the studio and on camera. idea. Feeling impossible, the original special effects supervisor hired for the film resigned, and Coppola hired his magic-obsessed son Roman to do the visual effects.
By returning to the “naive effect” technique employed by Georges Méliès (“Journey to the Moon” – 1902), Carl Theodor Dreyer (“Journey to the Moon” – 1902)vampire-1932), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane-1941), and others cut from similar magic-inspired fabrics, Roman Coppola and his team gave the film an undeniably timeless quality that would have been lost with the early digital technology of the day. Here, the young Coppola used a number of “tricks”, including multi-channel optics, reverse photography, scrims, mirrors, shadow puppets, models, forced perspective, and changing gravity. The result is otherworldly, disorienting, and in short, magical.
Related to this is the cinematography with which Martin Scorsese often collaborates Michael Ballhouse. for Draculahe seems to be channeling another great director of photography, who also shot a Dracula Film, Carl Freund.But unlike the general still camera that Freund was tethered to Todd Browning’s 1931 film, Ballhouse draws on the work his masterful predecessor used in the film, such as last laugh (1924), in which the camera floats, spins and dances freely, seemingly of its own volition. For a brief sequence, Ballhouse even used Francis Coppola’s personal EMI silent film camera, much like the one Freund used in the 1920s, to evoke the look and feel of the early film Dracula (Gary Oldman) walking through the streets of London and the first thing he sees is Mina, whose late bride Elizabeta is exactly the image he seeks “through the sea of time”. Between Roman Coppola’s visual effects and Bauerhouse’s cinematography, the film’s unique cinematography has been set, but what also contributes to the film’s unique look is the unique set and costumes created for Dracula.
Coppola envisioned using the huge recording studio space to add to the illusion of cinema.Instead of creating sets with literal and realistic quality, Coppola asked production designers Thomas E. Sanders Create sets that take advantage of soundstage space and expand into darkness. Nowhere is this more evident than in the sets for Dracula’s Castle and Carfax Abbey, which appear to be at least partly inspired by the vast hideaway. Citizen Kane Where darkness increases the illusion of size.As Coppola puts it, these seemingly endless spaces make room for sophisticated and imaginative garments Ishoka Yingzi as a “set” for the film. Our eyes are continually drawn to these unique creations, which in turn feel out of place and out of place in the film’s Victorian setting. Once again, the otherworldly nature of the film was reflected in these costumes, which earned their creators a well-deserved Oscar.
All of these elements and more help create the vision Coppola set out to achieve.As he wrote in his filmmaking journal, “I wanted to do Dracula Like a dark, passionate, erotic dream,” the film is just that. It brings to the surface all the sexual subtext of Stoker’s Victorian and somewhat repressed novels and pushes the images and characters and their motives. is appropriate Dracula of Bramstock Just as the semi-Victorian era of American life arrived, the conservative Reagan/Bush era of the 80s and early 90s was coming to an end. As in the Stoker era, this veneer of conservatism does little to hide the bloody energy beneath the surface. This is perhaps best illustrated by the difference between the novel and the film in the character of Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost). In the novel, she’s innocent and innocent, while in the film, she’s sexually aggressive and lively, making friends and suitors blush for her openness and curiosity.
This brings us to the final set of collaborators to highlight, the actors. Looking back on his days at the theater camp, Coppola said, “I still love taking actors out into the country and finding new ways to collaborate — doing theater games, improvising, reading books aloud, stage scenes and discussing characters.” This is popular with some young actors, and is dedicated to Ryder, Frost, Gary Elwes (Arthur Homewood), Richard E Grant (Dr. Jack Seward), and Billy Campbell (Quincy P. Morris) because they’re a whole for most of the movie. Johnny Depp was originally hired to play Minaj’s fiancé, Jonathan Harker, but at the last minute, the studio decided he didn’t have a big enough star for the role.Winona Ryder advises her friends Keanu Reeves For this role, he was cast at the beginning of filming.
Gary Oldman puts on a stellar performance as Earl, joining him alongside Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Udo Kier Kier was placed in the pantheon of vampire actors along with Frank Langella, using most of the time he didn’t need on set to explore the different roles Dracula could play.He has worked with makeup and hair stylists Michelle Burke And the team created avatars of vampires between various animal forms not in the script. tom wait Best performance as madman Renfield since Dwight Frye in the 1931 film, he was elated and unhinged. The only actor who seemed to resist the rehearsal process, ironically, the most stage-experienced actor in the entire cast, Anthony Hopkins. just won an Oscar as Hannibal Lecter The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Hopkins turned down Coppola’s request to make Professor Abraham Van Helsing “slightly mad”, but then unexpectedly did something surprising and unusual in certain shots. So there’s a touch of madness in Van Helsing that makes Hopkins’ performance truly distinctive and worthy of standing in the lineage of predecessors like Edward Van Sloan, Peter Cushing, and Lawrence Olivier.
When I go back to it now, I can’t help but be transported back to 1992, when I was fourteen and first saw it in the theater with my dad. I remember it well because he and I only watched four movies together, just the two of us: alien (1982), alone at home (1990), Dracula of Bramstockand Hannibal (1999). I remember him laughing in some parts of the movie, and I think now, as a father of kids my age, some of the laughter was nervous because the movie didn’t pump it up with its sex and bloodletting. At the same time, it was a moment of bonding; the connection to the Hammer and Universal movies he grew up with and the modern horror movies I was obsessed with. Dracula of Bramstock It’s a conflicting film. Innovative and familiar, using ancient technology at the dawn of the digital boom, it is highly technical and deeply human, set in the Victorian era, erotic, expansive and intimate, exploitative and high art, romantic and horrific.Few films are as visually compelling, let alone those of the era, as eye-catching as the modern eye Dracula Do. As the years went on, I was more impressed with the film and in awe of the way it was made in such an “original” way. Coppola described the film as an illusion. Looking at it now, I tend to agree, but I prefer to use different words. Just like when I was fourteen, and still is, in a sea of time, there is nothing but one thing: magic.
