Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula":
The Concise Editing of Thematic Designs

Of the myriad film versions of Bram Stoker's horror classic Dracula (1897), most have assiduously avoided the sexual overtones of the novel. This has indeed proved difficult, given the unabashed symbolism of how the demon achieves his power, the procreation that results from such encounters, and the phallic significance of the vampire's extinction: one can only destroy him by beating him at his own game, so to speak. Dracula, it must be admitted, is an erotic book. While scholars have debated Stoker's own awareness of that eroticism, there can be little doubt as to its existence.

The most successful effort at capturing that sexual energy on film has been Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film, "Bram Stoker's Dracula." More particularly, Coppola encapsulates the essence of the book's eroticism as it relates to the most important thematic idea of the work, sex as initiation. In ten minutes of brilliant editing, he uses the cinematic technique of cross-cutting scenes to suggest simultaneous action: the transformation of Lucy into the Un-Dead, and the marriage ceremony of Jonathan and Mina in Transylvania. As devotees of Coppola's work or moviegoers in general will remember, the same editing technique was used in his 1972 film, "The Godfather." There, as in "Dracula," the montage of disparate events captures the thematic essence of the film: Michael Corleone's commitment to his role as Godfather juxtaposed to the Christian initiation rite of the baptism of Carlo's and Connie's child.

But while Coppola's earlier work emphasized the irony of two events, renunciation of the devil at the same moment that his enemies are being murdered, the latter work captures the entirety of the film's symbolic meanings. Van Helsing initiates the action as he gazes upon a depiction of the impaled victims of the historical Vlad Tepes. The next shot shows us Prince Vlad awaiting Mina in a private dining room, surrounded by candles on elongated stands. Dracula owes to Mina his transformation from demon to lover, for, after centuries of waiting, she appears to be his Elizabeta restored to life. But her rejection of him for her other love, Jonathan, causes a physical change in the elegant prince: the repressed, hidden ugliness--the beast within--comes physically to the fore in his second loss of that which he desires. As the camera angle looks down upon the raging, beast-like Dracula, the candles have multiplied; no longer symbols of romance, they suggest a perverted rite and candle-lit ceremony for the invocation of evil.

Van Helsing feels and intuits that evil, as the winds that Dracula summon blow within his own candle-lit study, extinguishing the light. "It is the cause, it is the cause my soul," says Van Helsing, echoing Othello's monologue just prior to his fatal encounter with Desdemona. Stoker's many quotations from Shakespeare, it must be acknowledged, would come readily to a man who spent his adult life managing the theatre of one of the finest actors in England: the eminent Shakespearean, Henry Irving. While quotations abound from such plays as Hamlet and King Lear, the majority of passages in Dracula are from Othello, which is not surprising given that Shakespeare's play concerns the forbidden love and erotic desire of two people of different race, age, and background. Van Helsing's quotation confirms, however, that Coppola understands the nature of the work with which he is dealing, for this particular citation from Othello, while so many others suggesting erotic desire exist, is not found in the book.

The lines of Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing could not be more appropriate. Othello intends to murder Desdemona for her supposed unfaithfulness, as he intones his monologue—"It is the cause, it is the cause my soul..."—beside his sleeping bride who has comforted herself by a lighted candle. The Prince, much like Othello, will take his revenge upon the closest "bride" at hand, Lucy Westenra. In slow motion tracking shots, Coppola's camera becomes the eyes of the monster, moving toward the sleeping Lucy. Along the way, a rose withers, symbolic of the death of the beautiful Lucy, and equally suggestive of the "destroyed" virginity of Mina by her husband-to-be, Jonathan. As if to confirm the rose as an ancient symbol of maidenhood, after the cinematic shot of the blackened rose, an innocent male figure is unceremoniously slaughtered and left on a pathway, suggesting that Dracula resents any male more potent than he.

Certainly Arthur, Lucy's fiancé‚ demonstrates his own inadequacy as he falls asleep beside the threatened Lucy. His impotency at such a crucial, threshold moment merely confirms Dracula's own power: he transforms himself into a wolf, an animal of prey, which stalks its victim. Coppola then cuts to the wedding of Jonathan and Mina in the midst of their own initiation; a transformation takes place in the marriage ceremony, uniting husband and wife as Lucy awaits her initiation into the realm of the Un-Dead, a bride of Dracula forever.

Coppola's juxtaposition of these two events evokes power, and its agency passion. While the church sanctions the one, Dracula imposes the other: "I condemn you," he says staring at his victim, "to death...to eternal hunger for living blood." The God-like pronouncement propels him through the window in the form of a wolf once again, and, as he devours his victim in an orgy of blood, Coppola's use of simultaneous time takes us back to the wedding and the couple's drinking of the Eucharistic wine. The image is clear: life exists in the blood, for both the sacred and the damned. And as a final confirmation of both communions, the camera returns to the ravaging of Lucy, a close-up shot of her ecstasy-pain spliced with the married Jonathan and Mina passionately kissing.

Perversely, once the initiation of both ceremonies has occurred, it is Lucy, not Mina, whom we see dressed in the virginal white gown of marriage. Lying in her glass coffin, the scene shocks our sensibilities, because Lucy remains surrounded by her admirers, dressed as all of them had desired her. When the company of failed suitors later descends to her burial chamber, the suspicions of Van Helsing are confirmed: her tomb is empty; she belongs to another. Lucy herself then appears on her downward journey back to the tomb "with child"—Dracula’s potency is such that she holds the fruit of her desires while the impotent suitors can only look on in horror.

But to fight such power, these men must themselves respond erotically. Arthur, the intended husband and one who, through the transfusion, has also shared his blood with her, drives the stake through Lucy's heart. His phallic action symbolizes an ascendancy over the one who has stolen his love. When Van Helsing cuts off her head, the ceremonial rite reaches completion: Lucy, by loss of her "maiden's head," belongs once again to her first love, if only in memory and death.

Coppola's thematic montage takes less than ten minutes, yet it captures the sexual energy of Stoker's novel by its symbolic juxtaposition of erotic scenes. While there may be failings in the film—one thinks immediately of the limpid emotions of Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker—it represents the closest attempt at faithfulness in both spirit and plot to Stoker's Dracula. Strange to say, critics of the movie have castigated Coppola for the excessive eroticism of his screenplay. One reviewer for the Hartford Courant, Malcolm Johnson, has even suggested that the movie departs more from the movie than do previous cinematic efforts of the Stoker novel ("Coppola's `Dracula' a flashy but hollow version of classic," 13 Nov. 1992: D1; D8). So too, Johnson criticizes Coppola for the cross-cutting montage borrowed from his own "The Godfather."

Both objections should surprise us. Earlier versions of Dracula have been based more on the stage play than the book; few moviegoers would recognize the story in its original form. And as for the repeated technique of the montage of suggested simultaneity, both films creatively thread together thematic ideas in a matter of minutes into a coherent, enlightening whole. Shakespeare never minded borrowing from himself, nor for that matter did Alfred Hitchcock; if the technique works, accusations of self-plagiarism seem silly at best.

Coppola's addition to Stoker's work, the love affair between Vlad and Elizabeta, breathes life into the erotic quality of the novel. His film adapts its symbols from the opening premise of a desire so strong as to transcend time and death. So too the novel emphasizes that transitional moment of initiation into a state of unparalleled power, sexual energy, and erotic desire. What the added beginning initiates in Coppola's film finds fruition in the cinematic climax of the movie and novel alike: life resides in the blood, and the mingling of that life force becomes, as was believed for centuries, tantamount to consummation. For both victim and lover, a rite of passage has taken place, which initiates the pair into a new life of "one flesh." Coppola's editing brilliantly conveys that idea in the concision of a master film-maker.

Wayne Narey