このレッスンの実行方法

レッスン10は4本のビデオレクチャーと3本の動画で構成されています。
このレッスンは、最初にビデオレクチャーを見てください。そして、ページをスクロールダウンしながら順番に動画、ビデオレクチャーを見たりテキストを読んでください。

Part 1 – Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, in contrast to Quasimodo, Erik and Gwynplaine, is a monster who wasn’t the slightest bit ugly, (although he could be very scary). In fact, after the release of Dracula Bela Lugosi, (who was actually quite shy around women) received thousands of fan letters from women who thought he was incredibly handsome and sexy. Many of these letters included invitations for Lugosi to visit the ladies late at night with remarks like “the window will always be open” or more directly “please, bite me on the neck!” This was a new kind of monster. Indeed, Lugosi’s Dracula was a suave, handsome, well-dressed gentleman monster who remained cold and emotionless as he killed. 

The audience did not scream when they first saw him as they did when they first saw the Phantom’s face, but they did recoil as his performance unfolded. His vampire was also nothing like any other vampire seen before such as Max Schreck’s Count Orlock with his long claw-like hands and ratlike teeth or Lon Chaney’s grinning vampire with his mouth full of shark like teeth. Lugosi’s Dracula has no claws, no vampire fangs and he used almost no make-up. Lugosi relied entirely on the power of his performance. As he said in interviews years later ‘It was all in the eyes and the hands”. Indeed, it was. It was his performance that saved this otherwise poorly made movie.

However, there was a problem with Dracula as a character and this was not the fault of Bela Lugosi, or Tod Browning or the screen writer for the film, Garret Fort, or the playwrights Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. The fault went all the way back to the novel by Bram Stoker. Unlike, the novels upon which The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera and The Man Who Laughs are based, Bram Stoker’s novel does not explain the character. Stoker does lead us to believe Dracula is the historical Vlad IV who was a fifteenth century ruler of the principality of Wallachia notorious for his cruelty, but he never explains how or why this man became a vampire.

E. Elias Merhage put that very question into the mouth of his character Albin Grau, the producer of Nosferatu, in his film Shadow of the Vampire, which is the fictional retelling of the story of how Nosferatu was made. Here is that crucial scene again.

Part 2 – The question was, “How did you become a vampire?“ and the answer is somewhat vague. Schreck answers, “It was woman!” and the writer, Henrik Galeen, laughs and says, “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere”. He laughs because men are supposed to believe their problems are caused by falling in love with women. But as Schreck tries to explain what happened all he can remember is that “we were together in the night…” and then somehow they were not. He has had paintings and sculptures of his beloved, but as his existence has decayed so have these. Now, even his memory of her is gone. No wonder this vampire drinks! He is utterly miserable and it does seem to have all started with his love for a woman.

In Shadow of the Vampire, we never learn any more about his past, but there is a film that answers all these questions about Dracula. It is a film I consider to be by far the best modern adaptation of the Dracula story. It is called Bram Stokers’ Dracula (1992) and it was directed by the legendary Francis Ford Coppola.

Part 3 – So, it was a woman! Coppola turns Bram Stoker’s tale of a bloodthirsty vampire into one of a man who was protecting his country, his people and his religion, but more than anything else he turns Dracula into a love story in which Dracula has lost his beloved. The loss of his beloved wife, Elizabeta has not driven him insane, it has driven him to evil because he feels that he has been betrayed by God. Why did he feel betrayed? His wife, Elizabeta, believed he had died in battle and killed herself in despair. It is rather difficult for Japanese to understand what is going on here because in ancient Japan this is exactly what a Japanese noble lady would have done.

The key here is understanding that in Japanese society suicide is not forbidden, though it is a tragedy. No one thinks suicide is good or wished to commit suicide, but in Japan suicide was never considered a sin, i.e., forbidden by religion. Under the right conditions, suicide in ancient Japan was the only honorable option a person might have. In contrast to this, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, suicide is considered a serious sin by both Jews and Christians. The thinking is that God gave life to human beings and it is not for them to disregard this gift. 

Therefore, when Dracula returns to the castle to find Elizabeta’s body, the priest tells him that her soul cannot go to heaven because she has committed suicide. You saw Dracula’s reaction. He goes absolutely nuts. He asks, “Why have I spilled all this blood for a God who denies me the one thing I love?” Then, in a moment that I have to say really scares anyone raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition, he renounces God and calls on the powers of darkness. Dracula is switching sides. I don’t mean he will fight for the Ottoman’s, either, because they also believed in and fought for the same God under a different name. Dracula is now taking Satan as his new master. Who is that? You are going to read all about Satan for your homework reading.

Coppola called his film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but that title is deceptive because Coppola does not tell the story as Bram Stoker wrote it. Instead Coppola answers the questions Stoker left unanswered in his book. By so doing, Coppola solved one of the great mysteries of horror and made the Dracula character far more complete than he had ever been in any other film. Of course, Coppola also changed the story completely. His film is what we call a remake. Remakes are films that attempt to retell the same story an earlier film told, but remakes also often change the stories. Remakes are almost never as good as the original films on which they are based. But sometimes, very rarely, the remake is better than the original. Of course, no one will ever be a better Dracula than Bela Lugosi, (not even Gary Oldman) but Francis Ford Coppola’s film is a far better film than the original Dracula (1931).

In Coppola’s film, it is clear that Dracula chose to become a vampire. The question of choosing to become a vampire is fascinating indeed and brings us to yet one more film. Two years after Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released, another film based on a very popular vampire novel was also released. The film was Interview with The Vampire (1994) and in it a character is faced with a terrible choice.

Part 4 – In conclusion, the reason we are not doing quite as much in lecture and film excerpts this week is because I have a rather long reading assignment for you to do which is important for you to understand as we go forward with our study of not just Dracula and other vampire films, but other horror films we will be studying next semester as well.

In addition to the reading homework, I would also like each of you to consider the choice the vampire Lestat (Tom Cruise) gave Louis (Brad Pitt). The choice was “will you agree to become a vampire like me or do you choose to die?”. There is absolutely no chance for you to escape this vampire or kill him, so you only have those two choices. By the way, the vampire obviously doesn’t have to give you a choice, of course. He is being…well, nice. Really give this some thought and write those thoughts down in your notes.