Despite being less faithful to the original text, Coppola's Dracula is the better movie.
The Big Picture It’s one of the great pieces of lore in gothic fiction: Frankenstein and Dracula both emerged from that fateful Year Without a Summer, 1816, when Mary Shelley participated in the writing contest that spawned her modern Prometheus and John Polidori’s novella The Vampyre, later fleshed out by Bram Stoker into his immortal count.
'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula' Both Stray From the Book It’s no secret by now that the title Bram Stoker’s Dracula is, if not false advertising, more than a little misleading. Oh, it follows the letter of Stoker’s novel more closely than most cinematic Draculas have. Every major character is present, has their proper name, and meets their intended fate. The major plot beats are all there and happen when they’re meant to happen, to whom they’re meant to happen.
Branagh’s 'Frankenstein' Is More Faithful Than Coppola's 'Dracula' The issue with the changes made to Bram Stoker’s Dracula so far as claims of faithfulness are concerned is the impact they have on the story’s spirit. Stoker’s Dracula is an unambiguously predatory and invasive monster, bound for England for blood and conquest.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein stays much closer to its novel’s spirit. Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein thought second of resurrecting the dead and first of glory and achievement. The film reverses his priorities but keeps both in play, and Frankenstein’s delusions of cheating death reinforce the story’s themes of man treading ground not meant for mortals.
Coppola’s Dracula – and it is far more his than Stoker’s – is a narrative mess. But before it’s a narrative, that film is an experience. There was a unifying concept behind its production, that of a “dark, erotic nightmare” in Coppola’s words, realized through 19th-century special effects and a visual style set by the Symbolist and Pre-Raphaelite artists of Stoker’s time.
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