BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) – VAMPIRIC PROJECTIONS II: REGRESSION/REVERSAL & SLOWING

Bram Stoker’s Dracula USA 1992 Regi Francis Ford Coppola Manus James V. Hart Foto Michael Ballhaus Med Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves 2t 8m DCP Engelsk tale, utekstet Aldersgrense 15 år

Often said to be one of the most faithful adaptations of the novel, despite screenwriter James Hart’s elaborate addition of a romance with the otherwise monstrous vampire, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) truly rooted the vampire into a solid cinematic Gothic setting.
Coppola was keen on opting for analog, in-camera practical effects, against the vogue of computer graphics from the early 90’s, employing his son Roman in this department (link here to interview with Roman Coppola on executing the effects). Instead, this choice gravitated towards the aesthetics of the early days of cinema, or ‘cinema of attraction‘, as Tom Gunning called it. 1897 was the year of the publication of Stoker’s novel, 2 years after the genesis of the cinematograph. The filmmaker had the latter invention figure in the 1992 film’s diegesis, shooting a scene with a hand-cranked Pathé camera from that period.

One of the common techniques in Dracula, from the old-fashioned school, was filming scenes in reverse. For example, candles that are filmed as they’re being put out, will achieve the effect of lighting on their own, when played in reverse. Some actors also performed in reverse in some sequences. This latter gesture is very fitting of the undead’s motion, within Vampiric Projections‘ second chapter, titled Regression/Reversal & Slowing:

It has been observed that the vampire(s) can perform backward displacement. For instance, they can retreat backwards when their powers are compromised, or regress in the case of a servant vampire induced into trance/hypnosis by their master.
Film theorist Jacques Aumont, in his in-depth analysis book on Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), wrote much about the vampire’s reversal of their: shadow, actions, and body poses inside many of the film’s frames.