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

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Idiosyncratic Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin resurrects the style and visual grammar of the silent cinema in this ambitious screen adaptation of the Royal Winnepeg Ballet's acclaimed dance production, which incorporates elements of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and F.W. Murnau's film Nosferatu. In 1897, a strange and mysterious visitor from the East, Dracula (Zhang Wei-Qiang), arrives in London, and soon puts the wealthy and pleasure-loving Lucy (Tora Birtwhistle) under his spell. Dracula next sets his sights on the virginal Mina (Cindy Marie Small), but when the vampire's machinations begin to alter her personality, her fiance, Jonathan (Johnny Wright), realizes something is very wrong, and vampire hunter Von Helsing (David Moroni) is brought in to slay the monster. Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary was originally produced for Canadian television; after winning praise from a number of critics, the film was screened at a number of international film festivals before receiving a theatrical release in the United States. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 1
• Audio: Silent
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• 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

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Zhang Wei - Qiang - Dracula
       Tara Birtwhistle - Lucy
       David Moroni - Von Helsing
       Cindy Marie Small - Mina
       Johnny Wright - Jonathan

• Director:

  Guy Maddin

• Producer:

  Vonnie Von Helmut

• Screenwriter:

  Guy Maddin

• Cinematographer:

  Paul Suderman

• From Ballet by:

  Mark Godden

• Editor:

  Deco Dawson

• Production Designer:

  Deanne Rohde

• Co-producer:

  Lesley Oswald

• Associate Producer:

  Danishka Esterhazy

• Executive Producer:

  Robert Sherwin

• Costume Designer:

  Paul Daigle

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Russ Dyck, Bruce Little

• Choreography:

  Mark Godden

REVIEW:

• 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. ~ Elbert Ventura, Rovi