Bram Stoker's Dracula

What exactly is required to make a classic novel into a successful film? How do directors effectively construct a highly visual movie from a descriptive, yet still ambiguous book? Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a classic novel that tells the story of the monstrous Count Dracula and the poor souls who come across his path. Stoker describes characters and places as well as certain scene in depth. Nonetheless, many of the actions in some of the more improper scenes involved are implied rather than clearly stated, such as the scene with Jonathan and the brides (Stoker 64) or when Dracula forces Mina to drink his blood (Stoker 285). When adapting the novel into a film, Dracula (1931) director, Tod Browning realized that various changes needed to be made

In the novel, Jonathan’s journal entries provide a detailed description of his extensive visit to the Count’s abode. He spent weeks as a prisoner in Dracula’s castle. In the movie, Browning opted to change the role, instead sending Renfield to the castle to do business with Dracula. He spends only a night, however, is bitten by the Count during his stay. Leaving for England with Dracula the next morning, Renfield goes insane on the journey and is found to be under Dracula’s control. Browning made the decision to send Renfield to the castle instead of Jonathan to give a clear backstory to how Renfield ended up how he did. In the novel, the reader knows that he is following the Count’s orders later in the book, however, it is never explained how he came to be that way. Browning’s change made the storyline clearer for the audience by showing the reasoning behind Renfield’s actions. Without knowing he was bitten by the Count, the audience would be confused as to why he is doing what he is and how it all relates back to Dracula. It is a critical change that allows the audience to become more invested in the plot rather than spending most of the movie wondering who Renfield is and why he acting the way he

Bram Stoker utilizes the brides and Lucy to represent “bad women.” Throughout the novel they exemplify overly-sexual, nonmaternal women who need to be punished. This idea is evident in the scene where the brides find Jonathan while he is visiting Dracula’s castle. They enter the room he is lying in and Jonathan describes one. “There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck and actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth” (Stoker 64). Meanwhile, there is no such scene in the movie. Browning instead uses the brides in an extremely limited role. The audience can only see them wake up from their dirt boxes and approaching an unconscious Renfield. Before they can make their move on Renfield, Dracula comes in and sends them away. Browning makes this significant change because it would have been incredibly difficult to draw an audience that would be willing to view the type of scene that Stoker implied in his book. In the 1930s people were not open about topics such as sexuality and would have never paid to see a movie that heavily involved those themes. Appealing to a much greater audience for the time required Browning to