Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Perhaps not unexpectedly, this is probably Maddin's least essential film, but at the same time it's remarkable how of a piece with the rest of his work it does ultimately end up being (again, perhaps not unsurprisingly considering how much films like Vampyr and Nosferatu were already clearly important touchstones for Maddin's style to begin with). One might think that his rapid-fire montage techniques would be at odds with capturing ballet well on screen, but it actually works (for me anyway).

Guy Madden is so close to being one of cinemas true originals. But instead he mixes the ingredients of filmmakers most directors have forgotten about and has fused together a production eerily familiar yet an experience like no other. Perhaps the best Dracula adaptation.

Overall I feel the bad decisions out weigh the good ones: Too much focus on Lucy, Dracula bites Lucy again on the neck AFTER she becomes a vampire, Mina wants to give Harker a blow job (before she meets Dracula), Dracula steals money from England and bleeds coins. What the hell were they thinking?

"A master conservationist and expert image-maker, Madden reimagines Bram Stoker's classic text as a feverish vision of Christian angst and cultural invasion." - Ed Gonzalez

79.000

80.500

Star Rating: ★★★1/2

The first part, the one of Lucy, it is kind of too long, the rest is at least watchable.

If you wanted to see Bram Stoker's story told via interpretive dance in silent film pastiche..well, here it is.

Is it weird that a 2002 silent movie ballet version is probably the most accurate (which doesn't necessarily mean faithful, though it is that too) adaptation of Bram Stoker's story? Dracula is explicitly the Dangerous Foreigner coming to pollute the pure blood of the English, the slaying of Lucy is an honour killing, and at the end we courteously decide to cover up that an English Lady got horny. Brilliant.

Hey, let’s adapt the second half of DRACULA into a ballet, then shoot it like a silent German Expressionist film set to a booming Mahler score. Fun!

Maddin usually misses for me, but I felt that for the most part this works really well. He has a good grasp of his silent aesthetic schtick and it's only when he gets carried away with extraneous stylistic flourishes (the partial colourisation for instance) that it becomes cheapened. I'm not a big fan of his sense of humour either. Still, these are minor quibbles, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed the marvelously edited, shot and choreographed ballet cinematique.