ForgotPassword?
Sign Up
Search this Topic:
Forum Jump
Mar 15 15 10:48 PM
Mar 15 15 10:54 PM
Wich2 wrote:>Yes, but must it be with the same exact point every time? Can you perhaps think of something new to add?< Clark, I will if you will!
Wich2 wrote:Kerry, Gary most emphatically acknowledges edit changes throughout post, including integrating reshot material. But he makes a very strong case that none of this was to alter Browning's vision; rather, that it's likely he was involved in/aware of such adjustments. -Craig
Mar 15 15 11:00 PM
Mar 15 15 11:03 PM
cjh5801 wrote:Casey62 wrote:On pages 181 and 182, Gary explains that budgetery restrictions prevented the churchyard and its gate from being built. The gate we see when the bobby bicycles by and Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield is from the existing Carfax Abbey set, which Browning also had to improvise to suggest Lucy is stalking children near the abbey, instead of the churchyard. This is why we see Lucy walking through a wooded area with no tombstones or vault in sight - no such set was ever built. Except the long shot of Carfax Abbey as seen in the Spanish-language version looks to be a matte painting or model. Except for Dracula leading Mina through the courtyard (which has no gate) and Renfield running down to the backdoor, there are no Carfax Abbey exterior sets, so where is Gary getting the impression that the gate is from the existing Carfax Abbey set?
Casey62 wrote:On pages 181 and 182, Gary explains that budgetery restrictions prevented the churchyard and its gate from being built. The gate we see when the bobby bicycles by and Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield is from the existing Carfax Abbey set, which Browning also had to improvise to suggest Lucy is stalking children near the abbey, instead of the churchyard. This is why we see Lucy walking through a wooded area with no tombstones or vault in sight - no such set was ever built.
Mar 15 15 11:13 PM
Wich2 wrote:As to your last, I think you have misread that section of the book. -Craig
On page 178, Gary states that "...the key change with regard to these scenes is the number of onscreen visits that Dracula makes to Mina's bedroom. The final shooting script includes only one such visit, whereas the edited film shows two. While it is indeed possible that this change occurred during editing, there are two reasons to suspect this decision was made during the production phase." [Emphasis added.]
Wich2 wrote:>Yes, but must it be with the same exact point every time? Can you perhaps think of something new to add?< Clark, I will if you will! And Casey, you're dead-on. Much evidence is missing, so Rhodes sometimes surmises - and sometimes I agree with him, sometimes not. BUT - there IS evidence extant. And he marshalls a great deal of it in his excellent chapters on the film's production and post-production. It all makes clear that as Casey says, the film morphed much as it was shot, and through reshoots - the script was far from an ironclad template. And things were changed more, during a period of editing, previewing, and reediting. (All of which in fact, was the common system then.) There is no evidence at all for any formulation anywhere near as simple as "there was Browning's cut - and then there was Laemmle's cut." Nor is there any evidence that Browning was shut out of these processes at any time; in fact, there's a fair amount of evidence to the contrary. -Craig
Mar 15 15 11:15 PM
Casey62 wrote: I'd assume the gate is just another section of the abbey set.
Mar 15 15 11:17 PM
Ted Newsom wrote:I have not had the pleasure of adding the book to my library yet, to my eternal emotional loss and intellectual detriment. Does the author acknowledge the interview from Scarlet Street (or was it Filmfax?) from about 9 years ago in which an actress, neighbor, friend of Browning's for about 20 years after he forsook directing for growing radishes, constantly complained to her that Universal screwed up the editing of his movie? Or the easily-verifiable fact that he never worked for that studio against after 1931? Or don't those facts fit into the MovieMetric Measurement theory?
Mar 15 15 11:28 PM
cjh5801 wrote:On page 178, Gary states that "...the key change with regard to these scenes is the number of onscreen visits that Dracula makes to Mina's bedroom. The final shooting script includes only one such visit, whereas the edited film shows two. While it is indeed possible that this change occurred during editing, there are two reasons to suspect this decision was made during the production phase." [Emphasis added.]Perhaps you misread that portion of the book.
Mar 15 15 11:39 PM
Wich2 wrote:I don't think so; I did read more about the scenes you mention, though, and it's a good deal more than those three sentences.
Mar 15 15 11:40 PM
Rick wrote:As for the one or two visits that Dracula makes to Mina's room...here I must confess to being pretty wool-headed. I've read that portion of Gary's book, and I've read Clark's explanations on the board, and I've watched the 1931 film a zillion times, and Clark's revision at least 4 times...and I just can't make heads or tails of what anybody's saying about those scenes, what's in the script, what's in the film, what was or was not lifted from another scene. I know I'm just so damn old, but it makes me dizzy to try to figure it all out.
Mar 15 15 11:54 PM
Ted Newsom wrote:Does the author acknowledge the interview from Scarlet Street (or was it Filmfax?) from about 9 years ago in which an actress, neighbor, friend of Browning's for about 20 years after he forsook directing for growing radishes, constantly complained to her that Universal screwed up the editing of his movie? Or the easily-verifiable fact that he never worked for that studio against after 1931?
Mar 15 15 11:57 PM
Burgomaster
Burt Wilson wrote:Craig and Casey are voices of reason here. Fan edits are great and fun. Yet nothing here I've read shows it's a "restored" version.
Tim, note that the "restored" is in quotes. I believe that it's the best we can reconstruct based on the shooting script and the surviving elements. My premise is that the film was radically altered in the pre-release re-edit, but it's just that--a premise. All we know for sure is that a magazine article from the time reported that after screening the initial cut, Carl Laemmle Sr. ordered that the film be re-edited because it gave him the "heebie-jeebies" (according to David Skal). What truth there is in this report is a matter of conjecture.
Of course this involves a certain amount of speculation. There probably never was a "Browning cut". And nobody is saying they know exactly how Browning would have cut the film if he were doing it himself, but that's not the point. We do know how the movie was intended to be structured according to the script and the assumption is that browning was filming it as scripted. The incomplete scenes and some production stills show that Browning followed the script closely during filming, just as Melford did. But, unlike the Spanish language version, what Browning filmed was later put together with parts of scenes missing or in a different order. In the factory-like studio system of that time, most directors didn't have "final cut" on their films and Browning probably had little or no say in the final editing of the movie. There would not have been much reason for that since the fairly stage-bound movie had little in the way of tricky action scenes or other things requiring much in the way of creative decisions by the editor. He simply had to splice the scenes together in the correct order. It seems more likely to assume that someone higher up at Universal didn't like movie as shot and got their fingers in the pie. MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is another early '30s example of Universal tampering with a movie after filming. In that case the director was also one of the writers so it's highly unlikely he was the one who chose to arrange sequences in a different order than originally intended when he shot them. It seems perfectly legitimate to use the shooting script and the simultaneous Spanish language production as a guide to recreate the film as it was almost certainly originally intended to be at the time it was in production.
Mar 16 15 1:15 AM
Casey62 wrote:cjh5801 wrote:Casey62 wrote:On pages 181 and 182, Gary explains that budgetery restrictions prevented the churchyard and its gate from being built. The gate we see when the bobby bicycles by and Van Helsing and Harker see Renfield is from the existing Carfax Abbey set, which Browning also had to improvise to suggest Lucy is stalking children near the abbey, instead of the churchyard. This is why we see Lucy walking through a wooded area with no tombstones or vault in sight - no such set was ever built. Except the long shot of Carfax Abbey as seen in the Spanish-language version looks to be a matte painting or model. Except for Dracula leading Mina through the courtyard (which has no gate) and Renfield running down to the backdoor, there are no Carfax Abbey exterior sets, so where is Gary getting the impression that the gate is from the existing Carfax Abbey set? I'd assume the gate is just another section of the abbey set.
Mar 16 15 1:24 AM
Mar 16 15 1:29 AM
Mar 16 15 1:32 AM
Wich2 wrote:Those facts are addressed, Ted. The first one is demolished rather handily;
Mar 16 15 1:37 AM
Mar 16 15 1:40 AM
Casey62 wrote:It seems to me the script was problematic from the start with several treatments submitted, each handling certain things in drastically different ways, yet only Garrett Fort got screen credit. The tinkering continued throughout the production, which tells me they were never satisfied even with the so-called final shooting script.
To a great extent, that's what happens with any movie. You adjust, you compromise, you flip coins. A single credit on a film is standard. Split credit happens occasionally, but prior to the foundation of the WGA in the late 30s, assignment of credit was arbitrary, at the whim of the studio. Rarely after 1950 will you see more than 4 or 5 writers given credit, and then usually only one or two as screenwriter, perhaps another one or two for "story," even if you had 15 or 20 people contribute to the script over a period of years.
Share This