Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary

Director: Guy Maddin

Overview

"As director Guy Maddin himself explains in one of the featurettes on the DVD release of Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary, Bram Stoker's timeless novel of love and the undead has been filmed far too many times to justify yet another tired, formulaic r

Product Details

Release Date:	05/18/2004
UPC:	0795975105132
Original Release:	2002
Rating:	NR
Source:	Zeitgeist Films
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[silent]
Language:	English
Time:	1:15:00
Sales rank:	30,759

Special Features

Audio commentary by director Guy Maddin; Behind-the-scenes television special featuring interviews with Maddin, producer Vonnie Von Helmolt and choreographer Mark Godden; Video piece on the construction of the sets; Radio interviews with Maddin and Von Helmolt; Extensive production photo gallery

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Wei-Qiang Zhang	Dracula
Tara Birtwhistle	Lucy Westernra,Lucy
David Moroni	Van Helsing
CindyMarie Small	Mina Murray,Mina
Johnny A. Wright	Jonathan Harker,Jonathan
Matthew Johnson	Jack Seward
Sarah Murphy-Dyson	Vampiress #1
Kerrie Souster	Actor
Gail Stefanek	Maid #3
Zhang Wei-Qiang	Dracula
David Moroni	Von Helsing
Zhang Wei-Qiang	Actor
Tara Britwhistle	Actor
Gustav Mahler	Composer

Technical Credits

Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin	Screenwriter
Vonnie Von Helmut	Producer
Robert Sherwin	Executive Producer
Bruce Little	Sound/Sound Designer
Russ Dyck	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. "Master Is Coming!" [7:49]
2. Lucy Pursued [7:32]
3. Blood Transfusion [5:59]
4. "Vampyr!" [5:38]
5. The Bloofer Lady [7:20]
6. Un-Dead [5:06]
7. Harker and the Fleshpots [4:28]
8. Pink Convent [6:59]
9. Mina's Seduction [5:45]
10. "Unclean!" [5:00]
11. Petticoat [8:00]
12. Comes the Dawn [2:56]
13. End Credits [2:01]

Menu

Side #1 --
Play Movie
Chapters
Audio Commentary
Commentary by Guy Maddin: On
Commentary by Guy Maddin: Off
The Crypt
Behind the Scenes
Play Segment
Making the Sets
Play Video
Play With Interview
Producer Interview
Photo Gallery
Begin

Editorial Reviews

Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary is cult director Guy Maddin's first feature film in six years, and his latest outing since The Heart of the World, his justly celebrated short from 2000. Commissioned by Canadian television to adapt the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's interpretation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Maddin instead came up with this defiantly cinematic fever-dream that bears his unmistakable stamp despite its literary and stage origins. Beginning with the casting of an Asian, Zhang Wei-Qiang, as the feared Dracula, Maddin amplifies the story's allegorical aspect for maximum hysteria. "Others! From Other Lands!" screams the screen upon Dracula's approach by sea. Later, Maddin imagines Dracula's defeat at the hands of Victorian Englanders as a metaphor for imperial adventurism. Filmed in lush black-and-white with a few drops of crimson, and largely silent, but for well-deployed sound effects and wall-to-wall Mahler, this Dracula seems like a mysterious artifact from a nonexistent past -- a description that could apply to all of Maddin's movies. Employing the forgotten tropes of 1920s silent cinema, this postmodern pastiche pulls out all the stops, from showy shadow play to excited title cards to Vaseline-smeared lenses. Almost an afterthought, the ballet numbers actually fit nicely into Maddin's grand scheme, though one wishes that Maddin and editor Deco Dawson had slowed down their hyperkinetic cutting during the dances; it's a minor fault in a major work, however. At once ironic and earnest, ridiculous and sublime, Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary is a definitive exponent of Maddin's willfully anachronistic cinema.