, Research Paper

The Many Faces of Count Dracula

Throughout the past century, many films were made based on the fresh Dracula by Bram Stoker. These versions non merely state different series of events from the novel, but besides describe a Count Dracula different in visual aspect, his carnal morphism, and even in the manner he dies.

In the fresh Dracula, the Count s visual aspect when we foremost meet him is that of a tall old adult male, clean shaven save for a long white mustache, and clad in black from caput to pes ( Stoker 25 ) . Jonathan Harker, upon agitating Dracula s manus, notices that the manus seemed like ice- more like the manus of a dead than a life adult male ( Stoker 25 ) . However, the best description that is given of the old Count is when Harker eventually gets a opportunity to truly look at the old adult male:

His face was a strong- really strong- aquiline, with high- span of the thin olfactory organ and particularly arched anterior nariss ; with

lofty domed forehead, and hair turning barely round the

temples but perfusely elsewhere. His superciliums were really mas-

sive, about meeting over his olfactory organ, and with shaggy hair that

to curve in its ain perfusion. The oral cavity, so far as I could

see it under the heavy mustache, was fixed and instead cruel-

looking, with distinctive feature crisp white dentitions ; these protruded

over the lips, whose singular rosiness showed amazing

verve in a adult male of his old ages. For the remainder, his ears were

picket, and at the tops highly pointed ; the mentum was wide and strong, and the cheeks house though thin. The general

consequence was one of extraordinary lividness & # 8230 ; Hitherto I noticed

the dorsums of his custodies as they lay on his keens in the firelight, and they seemed instead white and all right ; but seeing them now near to me, I could non but notice that they were instead coarse- wide, with chunky fingers. Strange to state, there were hairs in the Centre of the thenar. The nails were long and all right, and cut to a crisp point. ( Stoker 27 )

Somewhere in the novel, Dracula starts to turn younger. As Dr. Van Helsing tells Mina: & # 8220 ; & # 8230 ; he can boom when that he can flesh out on the blood of the life & # 8230 ; we have seen amongst us that he can even turn younger ( Stoker 245 ) . Now that Dracula has blood to banquet on, he can renew himself and go younger.

In the film Bram Stoker s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Count Dracula besides appears to be old in the beginning. However, this Dracula, played by Gary Oldman, looks different than the description in the novel. Alternatively of being dressed all in black, the Count is now dressed in a long ruddy flowing robe. His tegument is wrinkled with the marks of age. His eyes are a deep, ardent ruddy. He has no moustache and has a long mane of braided white hair. He is still pale, and his custodies are the same: the picket thin fingers, the long pointed nails, and the hair on the thenar. His dentition, though, are non crisp and pointed, but like that of a regular homo. The ears were non pointed either, and his superciliums were non shaggy like that of the novel.

Dracula, as in the novel, becomes younger as the film progresses. When he appears in London, he is a younger adult male, with black hair alternatively of white. His tegument is smooth. He athleticss a face fungus and moustache. His custodies are those of a normal adult male. His eyes are dazing blue, alternatively of fiery ruddy. He is ever dressed in all right apparels with a cane and a top chapeau. All in all, the people around him view him as a regular individual, but the movie spectators know better.

Copolla frocks Dracula in all right apparels when he is both old and immature because he wants to portray to the audience how imperial and proper Dracula believes himself to be. Dracula is proud of who he is, and he treats himself with merely the best, and in his head that includes Mina Harker.

Unlike Copolla s portraiture, the versions of Dracula in Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau, and Dracula, directed by Tod Browning, are the same age throughout the whole film. In Nosferatu, histrion Max Schrek portrays the evil Count Orlock. When we meet the Count, we see an old adult male, hunched over and walking lopsidedly. His caput is deformed and he is bald. He has long pointed ears, a mouth full of crisp dentitions, and custodies with

long fingers and long pointed nails. He is dressed in a dark robe which enhances his pale white organic structure. Murnau did this in order to frighten the populace, who most likely ne’er saw Dracula before in their lives. He wanted to give the portraiture of Dracula an evil one so that he would be remembered in the dreams of the film frequenters.

In Browning s version, Bela Lugosi portrays a immature Count throughout the film, ne’er acquiring old. His black hair is slicked back. Decked out in a ness, he is dressed in a dinner jacket. He walks unsloped and keeps himself manicured and groomed. Browning s ground for doing Lugosi expression like this was for the money. It was during the depression that this film was made, and the public found great amusement in the theatres. If Dracula was ugly, cipher would travel and see the film, and hence no money would be made. In all the versions, Dracula was different based on the manager s desired affect on the audience.

Similarly, each one of versions of Dracula has different abilities to alter into different animate beings, and either alterations in forepart of other characters or alterations of screen or page. In the original novel, none of the characters can truly state whether they saw Dracula alteration. At times they believe that they were woolgathering. Before Lucy dies, she talks about the air full of eyeglasses, drifting and circling in the draft from the window and the visible radiations firing blue and dim ( Stoker 152 ) . This is non Lucy traveling brainsick ; it is Dracula coming to alter her into a lamia. Other times the darkness or other obstructions block the sight of the transmutation. Case in point: when Mina hides under her bed, a thick mist comes in through her door joists. Admist this mist are two ruddy eyes, the same ruddy eyes of the Count. Throughout the novel, the characters believe that Dracula can alter into a wolf, a chiropteran, and the mist. Although there are no existent sightings, the happenstances of these unusual occurrences lets the characters and the reader conclude what Dracula has changed into.

The determination in the different signifiers of Dracula in the films comes down to the picks of the manager. In the older versions, the budget was likely what stood in the manner of the legion carnal versions of Dracula. In the 1992 version, the large budget and the particular effects allow Copolla make reasonably much whatever he wanted to make with Dracula. Clearly the money factor was major in the determination devising.

However, whether one signifier of legion signifiers, Dracula alterations in every version. In Bram Stoker s Dracula, we really see Dracula alteration into different signifiers. Over the class of the film, he changes into a wolf, chiropterans, rats, and the mist, which was green this clip. In Dracula and Nosferatu, the spectator concludes that the Count alterations into different animals, including a chiropteran and a hyaena, from different intimations in the plot line. Although Dracula is non seen altering into different formations all the clip, all the versions have Dracula changing.

Even the manner that Dracula dies in the different versions is different. In the novel, Dracula has his pharynx cut deeply by Jonathan Harker s knife while Quincey Morris Bowie knife is stabbed into the bosom. Fatally wounded, he disappears in a cloud of dust, ne’er to be seen once more. In Copolla s version, Dracula is still fatally wounded by Harker and Morris, but doesn t dice instantly. Alternatively, he and Mina go to the church in his palace, where he dies on the alter on which he foremost vowed retribution on God. In Nosferatu, Count Orlock dies when the forenoon Sun hits his organic structure. He disappears in a fading shower of visible radiation, non a hint of him left at all. In Dracula, Bela Lugosi s character is killed merely plenty. Dr. Van Helsing puts a interest through his bosom when the Count is kiping in his casket, believing himself safe and sound. In each version, Dracula dies, but non ever in the same manner.

There exists legion versions of the Count from Transylvania. Each one has its alone characteristics. However, these versions, every bit different as they may be, demo one thing: how much a narrative can be embedded into the civilization of a state, or even the universe. That is what has happened with Dracula. The narrative and the characters appear everyplace, in different signifiers and in different narratives. Dracula lives here and now, even though he was killed & # 8230 ; or was he?

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