Listening to director Francis Ford Coppola's first laser-disc audio track may rank with waiting for the movies to talk in the first place. You know that there's something important to be said, on many levels. But "Bram Stoker's Dracula" fails to take you fully into the mind of one of the premier filmmakers of the 20th Century.
In its own frustrating way, it resembles the experience of "The Jazz Singer"--full of promise, innovation and history but more of a preamble than anything else.
Not that the Criterion, three-disc CAV edition of Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" ($125) is not a welcome addition to the serious laser-disc library. It even comes blazing with a few innovative features.
As expected from this prestigious label, the digital transfer in its original 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratio is crisp and rich, with enveloping Dolby digital sound that doesn't disappoint.
The set, with each disc carefully encased in its own sleeve, comes with numerous scenes pictured on the album's interior jacket. There is the by-now almost requisite original theatrical trailer, storyboards included among the discs' supplementary material and an informative, if not overpowering, video documentary on the film's making. And 75 carefully chosen chapter stops.
But of special interest to aspiring filmmakers is the interactive film-editing "workshop"--an opportunity to look at footage and match your cuts against Coppola's. It's almost like taking a multiple-choice exam, without having to wait for the answers.
Also of note is the chapter on Cinefex's special effects, scene by scene--an impressive feature of the film.
The liner notes and essay by David Ehrenstein match in their pretentiousness some of the routine discussion of the film on the second audio track by Coppola, his son Roman Coppola, who supervised special effects and was second-unit director, and makeup supervisor Grego Cannom, who won an Oscar. Cannom seems to monopolize the track with often superficial comments. Still, during the two-plus hours (127 minutes) of the audio track discussion, there do emerge some insights into Coppola's creative filmmaking techniques.
"I felt unless we had a new take on 'Dracula,' it was sort of pointless to do it," Coppola says. He looked to early movie Draculas, especially John Carradine's and the early German "Nosferatu," as well as Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" for inspiration. One of this set's best features is the inclusion of excerpts from these films (among the supplementary disc material) in juxtaposition with scenes from Coppola's film to graphically show the influences at work.
