このレッスンの実行方法

レッスン9は6本のビデオレクチャー（レクチャーのテキストがビデオレクチャーの下に記載されています）と3本の動画で構成されています。
このレッスンは、ページをスクロールダウンしながら最初から順番に動画を見たりテキストを読んでください。

Part 1 – Carl Laemmle, Jr. bought the rights to both the novel, Dracula, and the very successful Broadway play, Dracula.

The way was clear for Universal to make the film. However, Universal could not afford another failure. The bitter disappointment of the musical Broadway in 1929 meant that Carl Laemmle Jr. would have to modify the “Thalberg Formula” because he did not have the resources to launch another million or million-and-half-dollar movie like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera or The Man Who Laughs. But Laemmle believed that he did not need to. The German expressionist style Paul Leni had used in the two films he made for Universal, The Cat and The Canary and The Man Who Laughs, seemed to perfectly suit Dracula and it was the inexpensively made Cat and The Canary which had made money for the studio while the gigantic Man Who Laughs had lost money. This convinced Laemmle that style, (especially German Expressionist style), not gigantic and expensive sets and costumed extras could create exactly the atmosphere he wanted for Dracula. Paul Leni had shown he could direct a film on a low budget, but with exactly the right atmosphere. But just as Laemmle was buying the right to Dracula, tragedy struck. Paul Leni, one of the geniuses of German Expressionism, died in 1929 from an infection caused by a bad tooth!

Part 2 – Then Carl Laemmle, Jr. had a brainstorm. Perhaps he couldn’t find another German Expressionist director, but he certainly could hire a director who had extensive experience filming the “human tragedy” types of films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. He hired Tod Browning!Browning was a very experienced director, but more important than that, he was Lon Chaney’s close friend and associate. Lon Chaney and Tod Browning, “the Gruesome Twosome”, were first paired as a team by producer Irving Thalberg at Universal Studios in 1919 before either was famous. Thalberg teamed them again in 1925 in a film called The Unholy Three, a “human tragedy” story about circus performers turning to theft and murder. Most of the films Chaney and Browning made were of this type, not really what we would today call true horror movies. The exception was London After Midnight (1927) in which Chaney created another one of his one thousand faces, that of the grinning vampire which we have already talked about when we compared Chaney’s make-up design to that of Jack Pierce’s for The Man Who Laughs.

Part 3 – Two out of the three elements of the “Thalberg Formula” were now impossible to use in making Dracula. There would be no elaborate and gorgeous historical sets with thousands of costumed extras because there was no money for those things, and there would obviously be no Lon Chaney, either. What was left was the novel, which seemed to be a human tragedy of the Hunchback of Note Dame, Phantom of the Opera, Man Who Laughs type. However, a closer reading would have revealed that the character Dracula was really nothing like Quasimodo, Gwyplaine or even Erik. We will talk much more about this later.

Part 4 – We will never know what Lon Chaney would have done with the part of Dracula, but my own guess is that he would have created a memorable make-up for the character. But Bela Lugosi wore almost no make-up at all to play the part of Dracula. Tall, dark, handsome, with exquisite European manners and a thick Hungarian accent this was not at all the Dracula Tod Browning wanted. He had imagined filming Dracula almost entirely as a shadow or as being hidden in the shadows, but Carl Laemmle, Jr. would not take such an artistic risk. He told Browning to film it as close to the stage production as possible and in the stage play this was how Lugosi appeared.

This decision by Laemmle had a great effect on Browning. He deeply resented the interference.

Laemmle also insisted on using the same art director who had designed The Man Who Laughs, Charles D. Hall. This also took decision-making power away from Browning. Hall was far more limited with what he could do with the sets and art direction in Dracula because the film had such a small budget. However, the staircase in Dracula’s castle is wonderful and so is the staircase in Carfax Abbey where Dracula takes his female victim and finally kills Renfield. Charles D. Hall was wonderful with staircases!

Part 5 – On the other hand, the interior of the castle where Dracula entertained Renfield when they first met is an odd mixture of satisfying props and sets pieces such as the great fireplace and furniture, but with the walls behind appearing to be cheap construction wood rather than the stone of a castle. You never would have seen such shoddiness in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera or The Man Who Laughs.

There was also little that talented German cinematographer Karl Freund could without Tod Browning directing him and by the start of the production Tod Browning was both rapidly losing interest in the project and falling into one of his depressions. Browning felt that all the important decisions were being taken away from him. In fact, he was right. 

There were numerous other problems with the film. The special effects were very low quality. The bats really did look like puppets on strings (which they were) and instead of a set with bizarre German Expressionist shadows and angles the castle we saw in excerpt #1 just looks like a painted theater set (which it was).  In fact, the entire film feels like what it is: a stage play put on film. But even when the film does feel like a film, it feels more like a silent film than a sound film. Part of this is doubtless because Tod Browning had been a silent film director and this was only his third sound film. Browning was just one of those old Hollywood people who didn’t make the transition to sound very well. It didn’t help that there was no budget for an actual musical score for the film. Browning was forced to use recordings of classical music that generally didn’t match terribly well with the action in the film. Otherwise, there was no music at all in the film. There are also long parts of the film which are actually without either talking, music or sound of any kind. These turn out to be some of the best moments in the film, as when Dracula silently approaches a sleeping victim.

Part 6 – Overall, Dracula was in my opinion, a poorly made film. But, despite all the problems; the deaths of both Paul Leni and Lon Chaney, the very limited budget, the problems with Browning’s direction, the failure to pursue an Expressionist style in camera work, set design or lighting, the generally poor quality sets, low budget special effects, lack of sound or music….Dracula was a huge success for Universal. The film was budgeted at a very modest $355,000 (less than 25% of the budget for The Phantom of the Opera) but it turned a profit of over $700,000. Dracula was Universal Studios most profitable film of 1931 and it helped save the studio from bankruptcy.

Why was the film so successful? The one thing everyone remembers about the film itself is Bela Lugosi. He was nothing like any of the “monsters” seen in Universal’s previous “human tragedy” films. In fact, Carl Laemmle, Jr. himself sensed he had made something different with Dracula because when he was asked the standard question by the Hollywood press: “What kind of picture is this, Mr. Laemmle?”, he suddenly found himself saying, “This is a horror movie, boys”. And so, it was. Dracula was the first film ever to be called that.

This concludes lecture number 9.