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This page was moved from "Dracula (1931 movie)" to "Dracula (1931 film)" as per the naming convention set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films) – Ianblair23 (talk) 11:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The now-iconic depiction of Dracula with the widows peak and slicked back, black hair and the high collar is very similar to how Mephisto appears in the German silent film Faust (1926), by F. W. Murnau (beginning with the scene where he gives Faust his youth). Is this anywhere cited as an influence on Dracula, or were these features already internationally common in depictions of evil characters by then? Postdlf 00:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is there no summary of the story? It differs slightly from the novel, so naturally I would assume there'd be a summary. -- St jimmy86 17:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
At Walpurgis Night, after a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Jack Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.216.104.112 ( talk) 01:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
It is mentioned in the movie that Dracula changes into a wolf. In the scene after Van Helsing confronts him with the mirror, Dracula goes out of the room to the balcony. Jonathan Harker looks out and remarks about a big black dog bounding across the yard. WerewolfSatanist 18:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it really advisable to have two plot sections, one summarized and one detailed? This seems rather needless! Isn't one enough? Dutzi ( talk) 21:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
...children of the night. What music they make. -- 62.216.118.84 ( talk) 14:10, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
van Sloan's adress to the audience is featured in the bonus material of the dvd release. It is of rather poor quality, maybe that is the reason for not being included in the restored movie. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.180.109.163 ( talk) 12:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I was just listening to Tchaikovsky, and I believe it is the same music used in the title sequence of Dracula. I think the piece I was listening to was his Sleeping Beauty ballet. although, I'm not certain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Photoactivist ( talk • contribs) 21:07, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
I discovered a mistake in connection with the film. I have seen the film, and the willagers on the beginning of the film are speaking Hungarian, not romanian. Béla Lugosi was a hungarian-born actor, so he spoked hungarian and he worked with hungarians in many of his films ( like in the The Black Cat (1934 film)). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Illes.a88 ( talk • contribs) 08:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
"The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close-ups for dramatic effect, and employs several intertitles "
Since when is "two" considered "several"? "Aboard the Vesta" and "London." These comments are POV and skewed to make the thing sound like a movie made in 1920.
"Intertitles" are a card which contains only text, appearing between movie images, not superimposed location identification. The latter is hardly some sort of obsolete remnant from the silent era; it's still used today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ted Newsom ( talk • contribs) 20:52, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Below information was tagged in 2013 for needing sources. Feel free to reinsert with appropriate references.
Background/Production
|
---|
==Background/Production==
Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel's film rights. Initially, he wanted Dracula to be a spectacle on a scale with the lavish silent films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney, despite Chaney being under contract at MGM. Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic. Browning had already directed Chaney as a fake vampire in the ( lost) 1927 silent London After Midnight. However, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney himself, who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928, succumbed to his terminal illness. Furthermore, studio financial difficulties, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, caused a drastic reduction in budget, forcing Laemmle to look at a cheaper alternative, which meant several grand scenes that closely followed the Stoker storyline had to be abandoned. Already a huge hit on Broadway, the tried and tested Deane/Balderston Dracula play would become the blueprint as the production gained momentum. The screenwriters carefully studied the silent, unauthorized version, Nosferatu for inspiration. One bit of business lifted directly from a nearly identical scene in Nosferatu that does not appear in Stoker's novel was the early scene at the Count's castle when Renfield accidentally pricks his finger on a paper clip and it starts to bleed, and Dracula creeps toward him with glee, only to be repelled when the crucifix falls in front of the bleeding finger. In the analogous scene in the book, Jonathon cuts himself while shaving and is wearing the crucifix which stops Dracula. The eerie speech pattern of Lugosi's Dracula was said to have resulted from the fact that Lugosi did not speak English, and therefore had to learn and speak his lines phonetically. This is a bit of an urban legend. While it was true Lugosi did not speak English at the time of his first English-language play in 1919 and had learned his lines to that play in this manner, by the time of Dracula Lugosi spoke English as well as he ever would. Moreover, the despondent Browning would simply tear out of the script pages that he felt were redundant; such was his seeming contempt for the screenplay. It is possible, however, given that Browning had originally intended Dracula as a collaboration between him and Lon Chaney, his apparent lack of interest on the set was due to losing his friend and original leading man, rather than any actual aversion to the subject matter. Cinematic processThe film/negative format used in the creation of this film was 35 mm. The aspect ratio is the 1930 standard of 0.800 in. by 0.600 in. Original prints were tinted Verdante, a color film stock of the Sonochrome by Kodak. |
DonIago ( talk) 12:58, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
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The result of the move request was: Not moved. RM closed with nominator's agreement. (Non-admin closure). — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:50, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
Dracula (1931 English-language film) →
Dracula (1931 film) – This article should be called
Dracula (1931 film) or
Dracula (film). The
Dracula (1931 film) is an unnecessary disambiguation page created by Fortdj33 in 2014 to "To disambiguate from Spanish-language film". However, the Spanish language film is simply called
Dracula (film) which makes this disambiguation page unnecessary and makes things more complicated while titles should be kept as simple as possible. Or,
Dracula (1931 English-language film) could be simply moved to
Dracula (film) since the article for the English-language film was created before and the English-language film is way more recognizable than the Spanish-language film, hence, people searching on Wikipedia search way more for the English-language film.
SirEdimon (
talk) 22:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
Just a heads-up to people, i'm slowly working on an entire re-write of this article in my draft page [[User:Andrzejbanas/sandbox|here]. Although I'd rather people not edit it until its ready, I figured i'd give anyone a heads up if they are planning to do some major edits to the article. Andrzejbanas ( talk) 13:42, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I have changed the image caption from "colorized stills" to "colorized lobby cards" (per the credit and description accompanying the images), lest anyone think they were from a "colorized" version of the film. (The images are cropped, but including that info in the caption would be too verbose.)
When I first saw these, I was aghast thinking that Wikipedia would stoop to including film stills from a "colorized" version; fortunately that was not the case. BMJ-pdx ( talk) 11:15, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
I tried to explain the characters in this movie and add facts about the characters they're playing, here they are, the facts from IMDB:
94.201.206.212 ( talk) 15:05, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Why use a digitally colored lobby card when the original file was black and white? Somebody felt artistic? 2A02:AA1:1646:F9C8:716C:C9FF:C998:1262 ( talk) 01:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Dracula (1931 English-language film) article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
![]() | This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page was moved from "Dracula (1931 movie)" to "Dracula (1931 film)" as per the naming convention set out at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films) – Ianblair23 (talk) 11:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
The now-iconic depiction of Dracula with the widows peak and slicked back, black hair and the high collar is very similar to how Mephisto appears in the German silent film Faust (1926), by F. W. Murnau (beginning with the scene where he gives Faust his youth). Is this anywhere cited as an influence on Dracula, or were these features already internationally common in depictions of evil characters by then? Postdlf 00:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is there no summary of the story? It differs slightly from the novel, so naturally I would assume there'd be a summary. -- St jimmy86 17:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
At Walpurgis Night, after a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire. Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Jack Seward who then calls in a specialist, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the undead.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.216.104.112 ( talk) 01:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
It is mentioned in the movie that Dracula changes into a wolf. In the scene after Van Helsing confronts him with the mirror, Dracula goes out of the room to the balcony. Jonathan Harker looks out and remarks about a big black dog bounding across the yard. WerewolfSatanist 18:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it really advisable to have two plot sections, one summarized and one detailed? This seems rather needless! Isn't one enough? Dutzi ( talk) 21:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
...children of the night. What music they make. -- 62.216.118.84 ( talk) 14:10, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
van Sloan's adress to the audience is featured in the bonus material of the dvd release. It is of rather poor quality, maybe that is the reason for not being included in the restored movie. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.180.109.163 ( talk) 12:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I was just listening to Tchaikovsky, and I believe it is the same music used in the title sequence of Dracula. I think the piece I was listening to was his Sleeping Beauty ballet. although, I'm not certain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Photoactivist ( talk • contribs) 21:07, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
I discovered a mistake in connection with the film. I have seen the film, and the willagers on the beginning of the film are speaking Hungarian, not romanian. Béla Lugosi was a hungarian-born actor, so he spoked hungarian and he worked with hungarians in many of his films ( like in the The Black Cat (1934 film)). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Illes.a88 ( talk • contribs) 08:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
"The film also employs extended periods of silence and character close-ups for dramatic effect, and employs several intertitles "
Since when is "two" considered "several"? "Aboard the Vesta" and "London." These comments are POV and skewed to make the thing sound like a movie made in 1920.
"Intertitles" are a card which contains only text, appearing between movie images, not superimposed location identification. The latter is hardly some sort of obsolete remnant from the silent era; it's still used today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ted Newsom ( talk • contribs) 20:52, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Below information was tagged in 2013 for needing sources. Feel free to reinsert with appropriate references.
Background/Production
|
---|
==Background/Production==
Enthusiastic young Hollywood producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. also saw the box office potential in Stoker's gothic chiller, and he legally acquired the novel's film rights. Initially, he wanted Dracula to be a spectacle on a scale with the lavish silent films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Like those films, Laemmle insisted it must star Lon Chaney, despite Chaney being under contract at MGM. Tod Browning was then approached to direct this new Universal epic. Browning had already directed Chaney as a fake vampire in the ( lost) 1927 silent London After Midnight. However, a number of factors would limit Laemmle's plans: Firstly, Chaney himself, who had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 1928, succumbed to his terminal illness. Furthermore, studio financial difficulties, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, caused a drastic reduction in budget, forcing Laemmle to look at a cheaper alternative, which meant several grand scenes that closely followed the Stoker storyline had to be abandoned. Already a huge hit on Broadway, the tried and tested Deane/Balderston Dracula play would become the blueprint as the production gained momentum. The screenwriters carefully studied the silent, unauthorized version, Nosferatu for inspiration. One bit of business lifted directly from a nearly identical scene in Nosferatu that does not appear in Stoker's novel was the early scene at the Count's castle when Renfield accidentally pricks his finger on a paper clip and it starts to bleed, and Dracula creeps toward him with glee, only to be repelled when the crucifix falls in front of the bleeding finger. In the analogous scene in the book, Jonathon cuts himself while shaving and is wearing the crucifix which stops Dracula. The eerie speech pattern of Lugosi's Dracula was said to have resulted from the fact that Lugosi did not speak English, and therefore had to learn and speak his lines phonetically. This is a bit of an urban legend. While it was true Lugosi did not speak English at the time of his first English-language play in 1919 and had learned his lines to that play in this manner, by the time of Dracula Lugosi spoke English as well as he ever would. Moreover, the despondent Browning would simply tear out of the script pages that he felt were redundant; such was his seeming contempt for the screenplay. It is possible, however, given that Browning had originally intended Dracula as a collaboration between him and Lon Chaney, his apparent lack of interest on the set was due to losing his friend and original leading man, rather than any actual aversion to the subject matter. Cinematic processThe film/negative format used in the creation of this film was 35 mm. The aspect ratio is the 1930 standard of 0.800 in. by 0.600 in. Original prints were tinted Verdante, a color film stock of the Sonochrome by Kodak. |
DonIago ( talk) 12:58, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians, I have just modified one external link on Dracula (1931 English-language film). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
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An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 15:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians, I have just modified 3 external links on Dracula (1931 English-language film). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 18:45, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians, I have just modified 2 external links on Dracula (1931 English-language film). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:24, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Not moved. RM closed with nominator's agreement. (Non-admin closure). — Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 01:50, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
Dracula (1931 English-language film) →
Dracula (1931 film) – This article should be called
Dracula (1931 film) or
Dracula (film). The
Dracula (1931 film) is an unnecessary disambiguation page created by Fortdj33 in 2014 to "To disambiguate from Spanish-language film". However, the Spanish language film is simply called
Dracula (film) which makes this disambiguation page unnecessary and makes things more complicated while titles should be kept as simple as possible. Or,
Dracula (1931 English-language film) could be simply moved to
Dracula (film) since the article for the English-language film was created before and the English-language film is way more recognizable than the Spanish-language film, hence, people searching on Wikipedia search way more for the English-language film.
SirEdimon (
talk) 22:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
Just a heads-up to people, i'm slowly working on an entire re-write of this article in my draft page [[User:Andrzejbanas/sandbox|here]. Although I'd rather people not edit it until its ready, I figured i'd give anyone a heads up if they are planning to do some major edits to the article. Andrzejbanas ( talk) 13:42, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
I have changed the image caption from "colorized stills" to "colorized lobby cards" (per the credit and description accompanying the images), lest anyone think they were from a "colorized" version of the film. (The images are cropped, but including that info in the caption would be too verbose.)
When I first saw these, I was aghast thinking that Wikipedia would stoop to including film stills from a "colorized" version; fortunately that was not the case. BMJ-pdx ( talk) 11:15, 10 June 2022 (UTC)
I tried to explain the characters in this movie and add facts about the characters they're playing, here they are, the facts from IMDB:
94.201.206.212 ( talk) 15:05, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Why use a digitally colored lobby card when the original file was black and white? Somebody felt artistic? 2A02:AA1:1646:F9C8:716C:C9FF:C998:1262 ( talk) 01:27, 24 December 2023 (UTC)