Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Photography major - Which 1931 version of Dracula do you prefer? American or Spanish version?

Which 1931 version of Dracula do you prefer? American or Spanish version?

Gee, that’s toughness.

US version

Spanish version

Before answering, this is a bit of movie history. Today, all American blockbusters are dubbed foreign markets, which are more profitable than the United States.

This is not new. Since the advent of Hollywood in the early 1900s, American films have been distributed to foreign markets. In the silent film days it was so easy, everyone could understand what the actors were doing, of course you needed title cards to explain the plot, but you could just replace the English cards with ones written in any language.

By 1930, however, the game known as "Talkie" had changed. In the early 1930s, audio dubbing and sound synchronization were not yet perfect, and it was impossible to dub an American film into another language.

Suddenly, Hollywood had no choice but to abandon most foreign markets. But someone had a brilliant idea. Mexico and Latin America are the most profitable foreign markets, and Hollywood has many actors whose native language is Spanish.

Look! Since movies at the time usually stopped filming around 6pm and the movie machines only sat at night, it was decided to take the Hispanic actors and actresses in the evening and use the same movie machines in Spanish to make the same movie. By the end of 1930, all major studios had Spanish-speaking casts and crews on their evening shows. However, Universal Pictures is hesitant. They made two versions of the movie "Cat Crawl" and "Dracula" was the second version.

Of course, Hispanic actors are treated and treated like second strings. They didn't mind, it was the Great Depression and American actors were starving, and it was even worse for Hispanic actors.

Seventeen-year-old actress Lupita Tovar, who starred in the Spanish version, recalled:

The American crew left at 6 p.m. and we had Ready. We started shooting at 8 o'clock, and at midnight they called us to have dinner. They didn't pay us much but we didn't complain, a lot of actors were starving.

The American version of Dracula is a classic. Even young people who hate black and white but have never seen the movie can recognize Bela Lugosi's subdued, sexual, and well-dressed antihero. The first American horror film from a major studio, it shocked, horrified, and mesmerized audiences. It started the explosion of all horror movies and was a trendsetter. In recent years, however, critics have become increasingly disparaging. This movie really does have a lot of flaws.

Universal was wrong to think that the Spanish version would be bad.

The American version is directed by Tod Browning. He was a great director during the Silent Era who had become an alcoholic and was fired from other studios. He had a special affinity for silent legend Lon Chaney (Sr) and was devastated by his death, while Bela Lugosi was Dracula.

His direction is bad. In fact, Hollywood's top cinematographer, Karl Freund, was a legend who went on to develop modern television filming techniques on "I Love Lucy."

The Spanish version was produced by Paul Kohner and directed by George Medford. They are ambitious hotshots. Universal may have expected them to swoop in, but they had other ideas. Every night they watch the American version of the dailies and are frankly baffled by the amateur guidance.

Universal Pictures assumed that the production would be a digital copy of the English version and ensured that the dailies were available so that The Night Shift cast could copy the American.

Medford and Kohner prohibited their actors from making this decision, instead directing them based on their strengths. They believe actors can deliver unique performances.

They flatly refused to copy Browning. Some things they do are different.

In the American version, when Dracula steps out of the coffin, you see the lid move and the camera pan, then return to where you saw Dracula standing. In the Spanish version, the coffin lid moves and then the double exposure creates fog from which the vampire transforms.