Comparing The Novel And Film Extracts Of Bram Stoker's Dracula

Hollywood in known for making literary adaptations, and such adaptations will exploit context. Movies bring literary properties to the public that otherwise would not bother to read them. However the "marriage" of literature and film holds their own separate qualities.

It is precisely the point that Hollywood distorts and corrupts serious literature for the entertainment pleasures of a mass audience. In the task of comparing and contrasting the novel of "Dracula" to film extracts of "Bram Stoker’s Dracula", values, meaning and context discovered lie between discrepancy and similarity. The change from differing mediums, novel and film, reveal characteristics and possibilities of narratives. Through the advancement of technology, modern writers

The introduction of Mina, starting of with a medium long shot of her in the Westenra house, which allows the audience to pay more attention to what is happening in the background, the mise-en-scene being a large decorated room of the Victorian era, including plants, chairs. The setting of the whole room is surrounded by glass, which has the ability to allow natural light. This shot slowly zooms in to the sound of the typewriter and turns into a reverse shot that is a close up on the face of Mina Murray. Her diligent use of the typewriter allows the background noise of chirping birds add to the innocence of her character. Lucy then enters the shot, which goes back to a medium long shot. Lucy and Mina are contrasted; Lucy represents threatening sexuality, whilst Mina represents socially accepted sexuality. Lucy before being vamped contains personality characteristics that are classified as unacceptable in Victorian society. In the film extract, the significance of Arabian Nights reveals Mina’s sexual inquisitiveness in contrast to Lucy’s fantastical application. The neat brown hair and conservative green dress of Mina in comparison to Lucy’s wavy red hair and flowing white dress, emphasize, from Coppola’s deliberate use, the wild passions of Lucy and steadiness of

Lucy poses a threat to the Victorian ideology by exposing herself as a danger to sexual propriety. She remarks about wanting to have more than one husband, which displays promiscuity, “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men or as many as want her?” this statement works as a threat which comes to fruition after Lucy is bitten. Once infected by Dracula, Lucy becomes sexually overt and aggressive; and is portrayed as a monster and a social outcast. She transforms into a fiend and feeds on children making her the maternal antithesis as well as a child molester. Coppola mimics the book onto the film with a degree of exactitude in the staking scene. In which the entrance of the tomb has a spooky minor tune is played to add another layer of horror to the gothic setting of the tomb. As the men open Lucy’s coffin, an aerial shot notifies the empty contents and a reverse angle shot is used of the dominant figure of Arthur looking into the coffin. The viewpoint of this shot highlights the submissiveness of women and dominance of their partners in Victorian England. A supernatural force was surrounded by Lucy when she, herself, entered the tomb, this, Coppola’s addition of candelabras instantaneously lighting themselves when Lucy draws nearer, highlighting her supposed fantastical