Film Forum

Canada, 2002
Directed by Guy Maddin
Starring Zhang Wei-Qiang, Tara Birtwhistle, David Moroni
Approx. 75 min. 35mm.

Beautifully transposing the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s interpretation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire yarn from stage to screen, Maddin has forged a sumptuous, erotically charged feast of dance, drama, and shadow. The black-and-white, blood-red-punctured DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY is a Gothic grand guignol of the notorious Count and his bodice-ripped victims, fringed with the expressionistic strains of Gustav Mahler.

35mm print courtesy Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research

Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“An elaborate, self-conscious but arresting take on the Dracula myth.”
– Peter Bradshow, The Guardian

“May be the finest film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel yet made. It’s hard to imagine how this lush, gorgeously expressionistic fantasia could possibly be improved.”
– Mike D’Angelo, Time Out (New York)

“Overtly erotic, willfully archaic, often inspired, uncannily affecting, and beautifully convulsive.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“Quick-witted and dazzling. Imagine Murnau’s NOSFERATU remade by Kenneth Anger, edited by Eisenstein on a cocaine binge, and produced for Masterpiece Theater.”
– Nathan Lee, New York Sun

“It’s sexy, brainy and slightly nuts...”
– Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times

“Poetic and erotic, creepy and melodramatic, overwrought and sometimes mocking, as if F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) had a long-lost musical version... So many films are more or less alike that it’s jolting to see a film that deals with a familiar story, but looks like no other.”
– Roger Ebert

“Maddin has discovered a new kind of cinema, the welding of silent-film technique, avant-garde imagery, and 21st century technology....Victorian sexuality and melodrama are brought together in a shadowy world of expressionistic images and an athletic, almost rabid, choreography.”
– Bruce Diones, The New Yorker

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