Dracula - Masterpiece Theatre
by Bill Eagles
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Suchet, Marc Warren, Sophia MylesDirector: Bill Eagles
Brand: Wgbh Wholesale
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); German (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-06
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: PBS
Product features:
- Masterpiece Theatre presents a stunning new dramatization of Bram Stoker's terrifying horror story. A young aristocrat with the world at his feet is about to marry the love of his life when he discovers he's inherited an horrific disease. But his desperation to cheat death could bring destruction to all those around him--including his new wife--as he becomes embroiled in a sinister cult an
Movie Reviews of Dracula - Masterpiece Theatre
Movie Review: Fascinating Yet Flawed
Summary: 5 Stars
The Gothic, nightmarish, vampire context of Bram Stoker's Dracula has long captivated and enthralled readers for 100+ years.
Many readers - from literary critics to folktale scholars to historians et al - have long asserted that Stoker's motif of vampirism is a metaphor illustrating the freedom and morality (and lack-thereof) of sexual exploration and sexual lasciviousness, and the grueling consequences that accompany both.
Syphilis has been identified by readers as one of the main consequences that Stoker was alluding to; syphilis was a disease that permeated Stoker's Victorian era environment, and undoubtedly influenced his thematic crafting of Dracula.
With the exception of the ending, the 2006 BBC production of Dracula masterfully strips away the supernatural metaphors of Stoker's novel and replaces them with reality: sexually oppressed people grappling with their sexual desires, their awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, and their moral and religious obligation to uphold unspoken social norms (remaining virtuous until married); also depicted is the psychological and physical effects of syphilis that literally ravage the body and mind.
One fantastic and unexplained dynamic of the plot line is the nature of Dracula's (and Lucy's) vampiric visions and tendencies: has syphilis made the Count insane enough to think he is a vampire, and thus he acts the part? We never find out, and, to complicate this intriguing seed of thought, the film's denouement concludes with a typical stake-in-the-heart resolution, which can either indicate that the Count was a vampire, or that Van Helsing, Seward, Holmwood, and Mina were unaware of the psychiatric abnormalities that syphilis caused and thus erroneously attributed vampirism to the Count's idiosyncratic actions.
The 2006 BBC version is filmed like a stage play, which enables the viewer to feel the emotional elements of the entire production: Holmwood's urgent desire to cleanse his syphilis-plagued blood, Mina's devastating loss of Harker, Lucy's burning desire to be physical with her husband, Seward's angry pursuit to revenge Lucy's demise, and Van Helsing's determination to kill Dracula.
The production is brilliantly cast "against the type:" virginal, sweet-faced Sophia Myles is cast as Lucy, a flirtatious, lusty young lady; exotic, sensual-looking Stephanie Leonidas is cast as the pure, plain-looking Mina; noble, dignified, handsome actor Tom Burke is cast as the lonely and rejected Dr. Seward; the awkward, boyish-looking Dan Stevens is cast as Lord Holmwood.
Brilliantly and perfectly cast, yet tragically and criminally underused, are Marc Warren as Dracula, and David Suchet as Van Helsing.
Marc Warren, whose cold-eyed, cruel-lipped and cruel-jawed physicality matches Stoker's description of Dracula, had virtually no dialogue and little physical movement in this production. Warren is naturally sexy and sensual, has a unique style of vocal intonation, has deadly penetrating eyes, and cruel facial expressions. He has given powerful, electrical, overlooked performances in Oliver Twist, The Principles Of Lust, Band Of Brothers, The Bombmaker, Green Street Hooligans, and Boston Kickout.
David Suchet, a master at portraying detective Hercule Poirot (replete with Poirot's famous and unforgettable nuanced Belgium accent), is only given a few scenes with which to create and embellish one of the greatest minor literary characters of all time - the intriguing, erudite, charming, enigmatically spellbinding, Dr. Van Helsing.
The technical production of this 2006 Dracula is the syphilitic plague that has marred this film. Choppy fast-paced scene-to-scene editing, unnecessary jerky camera movements, undistinguished/uninspiring camera angles, lack of impressionable art direction, lack of Victorian era local scenery and antiquity, lack of Transylvanian local scenery, lack of a garish-nightmarish colour scheme, and unaesthetic distant shots of toyish -looking castles failed to invoke an ominous, macabre, phantasmagoric ambiance that is a categorical essential to all Dracula productions.
The soundtrack score by Dominik Scherrer is one of the most dazzling and scintillating scores, resplendently dirgelike and requiemesque, that has ever graced a BBC production.
Hopefully the plot line seeds of this fascinating yet technically flawed version will be contemplated by viewers, and resurrected and refashioned and polished in future Dracula productions.
Summary of Dracula - Masterpiece Theatre
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