moment, are Arthur Lubin’s Technicolor PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943) and Jack Arnold’s CREA- TURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954), the lat- ter of which is offered in both its flat and 3D versions—not anaglyph 3D, but the contemporary kind that requires a special 3D player and monitor. Most of these titles made their first high-defini- tion appearances on the much-missed VOOM chan- nel Monsters HD, where early 1080i versions were first broadcast in 2008. These presentations are not to be confused with those produced as part of Universal’s centenary project, which benefit from more recent technological innovations and which extended the company’s reach beyond their own immediate storage facilities to other archives, such as the Library of Congress. It must be said that all of the titles gain considerable beauty, clarity and detail from their restoration, in ways that peel away the mists of time from long-hidden details in their cinematography, art direction, even in subtle nuances of performance.
The most significantly enhanced, rejuvenated and clarified is the oldest, Tod Browning’s DRACULA. It is also the only title of the main eight that the studio felt warranted a documentary short (8m 46s) demonstrating the nature and extent of the restorative work undertaken. In this featurette, various technicians from different studio depart- ments explain that Universal’s records tracked the best surviving 35mm elements on the 81-year-old film to a nitrate lavender positive print held at the Library of Congress. Scratches, splices and other
visible blemishes were meticulously erased by hand or via wetgate scanning, and the audio was also thoroughly readdressed, toning down film hiss to no more than an acceptable presence, repairing clicks and bumps as well as a tape-jerking “wow” formerly heard during the “Swan Lake” excerpt that plays under the main titles.
The former fuzziness of the matte paintings has been honed to reveal a fine mineral touch worthy of the hand of Gustave Doré, and the feral howl of the winds assailing Castle Dracula are now clearly separated from hissing celluloid. The result of all this replenishment is an opportunity to experience DRACULA in a wholly new way, a way that some- how differently underscores the specific contribu- tions of Bela Lugosi and Dwight Frye to the picture, while making it easier to appreciate what the film intended to be, separate from the character imposed upon it by the ravages of its age. The film’s creakiness has long been accepted as part of its essential substance, and this misun- derstanding has encouraged other misreadings— for example, the common comparison of Dracula’s and his brides’ movements to ballet. It’s likely that the melodramatic presence of “Swan Lake” en- couraged such thinking, but now we can simply look at Guy Maddin’s DRACULA: FROM THE PAGES OF A VIRGIN’S DIARY to see what such a simile would really look like. What DRACULA is, is theatrical, and thus perfectly in keeping with Browning’s well-known fascination with unwhole- some entertainments and stagecraft. Browning’s
A scene curiously absent from both the American and Spanish versions of Universal’s DRACULA: Renfield (Dwight Frye) grovels before Dracula in his Carfax Abbey crypt.
41
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
