Pulpmovies Reviews

Wow.

The 1931 Tod Browning classic with a whole new score written by Philip Glass. I saw this in Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam with the score performed live by Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet and it blew me away.

First of all, the film. This is a great interpretation of the Dracula story with Bela Lugosi playing the count with a powerful and hypnotic intensity. But, for me, the film is stolen by Dwight Frye’s manic portrayal of the insane Renfield. While still sane, the Renfield character is a wonderful collection of English stereotypes transported into an evironment that is simultaneously derelict and unnerving. But once he goes mad, the manically grinning lunatic wandering Dr Seward’s sanatarium seemingly at will (there are a couple of references to his constant escaping, but no evidence of any real attempt to find out how he’s getting out or how to keep him locked up) dominates every scene he appears in… and Browning does a lot more with Renfield than I have seen in a long time.

Lugosi’s Dracula hits all the right notes as the timeless Transylvanian trying to fit into modern (okay, 1930’s) English society. The contrast between Dracula’s decrepit castle and the comfortable English society in which he tries to move combined with Lugosi’s halting and heavily accented English combine to effectively undeline the vampire’s outsider status. This is visibly the perfomance that Christopher Lee drew on when he portrayed the (for me) undisputed personification of Dracula for the Hammer House of Horror.

The film is packed with great set-pieces, the battle of wills between Dracula and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) is particularly memorable as is Renfield’s journey to Castle Dracula. This had a particularly eerie quality because, during the night time scenes, Glass and the Kronos Quartet were visible behind the screen and from where I was sitting I had a great view of one of the violinists looming out of the storm ravaged mountains.

I even enjoyed the porter’s terrible cockney accent. Every time he spoke, I was half expecting Mary Poppins to fly in and complain about the state of the chimneys - and this is supposed to be in Whitby! One of the maids took a stab at the same accent, but it was so bad that it almost passed unnoticed.

And then there’s the music…

Although there were a few bars from Swan Lake in the original film, Browning largely avoided using any music at all, preferring to rely on the silence and the background noises to generate an oppressive atmosphere. For this re-issue, Philip Glass was commissioned to write a wholly new soundtrack and it’s an amazingly good fit, adding hugely to the tense and brooding atmosphere of the film. I don’t normally notice a films soundtrack unless it’s jarringly bad, but this one does a great job of carrying you along with the sweep of the film.

Faultless!

Feed on comments to this Post