Bram Stoker's Dracula
Page 21
Van Helsing held up a hand, indicating to both men that they should be still.
Inside the chapel, Mina had the perception that old altar candles, dead for centuries, seemed to be lighting themselves. Perhaps it was only that her tears dimmed her vision; or that the last glories of the sunset were coming in so redly through the glass, which was still intact, of the tall window just behind the plain altar with its towering cross.
The shadow of that cross fell down the steps upon the two still-living bodies lying there.
The woman raised her body into a crouch and murmured to her beloved: "An arrow flew through my window—a message was fixed to it. And it was too much. I could bear no more."
Slowly, weakly, Dracula opened his eyes, to see who was bending over him. He smiled… it was Elisabeth.
Again she whispered to him. "I could not bear the thought of life without my prince. But I see you are not among the dead. You live, my love."
And now her capable hands—they were Mina's hands, and Elisabeth's as well—once more clutched the knife whose point lay in his still-undying heart.
Quaking, praying for strength to do what she must do, she closed her eyes and fell on him, driving the long bowie blade in to the hilt.
When Mina opened her eyes again, the face of the man beneath her was deathly still. It was quite young, and peacefully, beautifully human.
Slowly Mina got to her feet and moved toward the closed door of the chapel. At that moment Jonathan, unable to wait longer, pushed the barrier open and rushed in to take his wife in his arms. And Mina knew, by the joy in her husband's face when he beheld her, that the snow was not more stainless than her own forehead. The scarlet curse of the vampire had passed away. The warrior prince was at peace.
* * *
AFTERWORD
by Francis Ford Coppola
I think the first Dracula film I ever saw was the John Carradine House of Dracula. I adored Carradine, with his gaunt face and how he would actually lift his cape and turn into a bat—he is my prototype Dracula…
I had read the book when I was pretty young and loved it. Then as a teenager, I was the drama counselor at a camp in upstate New York, and had a bunk of eight- and nine-year-old boys. I would read aloud to them at night, and one summer we read Dracula. And when we got to that chilling moment—when Harker looks out the window and sees Dracula crawling across the face of the wall like a bug—even those little boys knew, this was going to be good!…
Excerpted from Bram Stoker's Dracula—The Film and the Legend by Francis Ford Coppola and James V. Hart. Copyright © 1992, Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. Published by Newmarket Press, New York. Reprinted by permission.
When I read Jim's script, I thought he had made a brilliant innovation by using that history of Prince Vlad to set the frame for the whole story. It was closer to Stoker's novel than anything done before…
I noted, watching all the other Dracula films, how much they held back from what was written or implied, how they played havoc with the characters and their relationships. In our movie, the characters resemble Stoker's in their personalities and function, including many characters that are often cut out. And then the whole last section of the book—when Van Helsing is uncovering Dracula's weaknesses, and the Vampire Killers pursue him back to his castle in Transylvania, and the whole thing climaxes in an enormous John Ford shootout—no one had ever portrayed that…
Doing justice to the complex character of Dracula was one of our main goals. He's been portrayed as a monster or as a seducer, but knowing his biography made me think of him as a fallen angel, as Satan. The irony is that he was a champion of the church, this hero who singlehandedly stopped the Turks, and then he renounced God because his wife was a suicide and was denied holy burial. When great ones fall, they become the most powerful devils—Satan was once the highest angel.
Man's relationship with God is sacramental; it's expressed through the symbol of blood. So when Dracula rejects God, blood becomes the basis for all kinds of unholy sacraments in the story: baptism, marriage, and Mass…
Blood is also the symbol of human passion, the source of all passion. I think that is the main subtext in our story. We've tried to depict feelings so strong they can survive across the centuries, like Dracula's love for Elizabeth. The idea that love can conquer death, or worse than death—that she can actually give back to the vampire his lost soul…
Usually Dracula is just a reptilian creature in a horror film. I want people to understand the historical and literary traditions behind the story. To see that underneath this vampire myth is really fundamental human stuff that everyone feels and knows… Even if people today don't feel a sacramental relationship with God, I think they can understand how many people renounce their blood ties to the creation—to the creative spirit, or whatever it is—and become like living dead. The vampire has lost his soul, and that can happen to anyone.