Maddin's first feature-length commissioned work that he didn't originate, and in this case didn't write either. Very different stylistically from the following film ("Cowards Bend the Knee"), this is the film of a ballet by Mark Godden for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, based on Bram Stoker's novel, with music taken from Gustav Mahler's first and second symphonies. Not typical Maddin material at first glance perhaps but the psychosexual nature of the Dracula story melds surprisingly well with Maddin's aesthetic, offering a more dreamlike and romantic vampire tale than usual, but also one in which the violence and hatred in the bigoted Victorian English men who confront the vampire is made almost as explicit as Dracula's own hunger.I'm not going to go into any great detail about the story, as it follows the fairly typical Dracula pattern; suffice it to say that young Lucy Westernra (Tara Birtwhistle) is seduced by Dracula, turns vampire and is ultimately killed; her husband-to-be has enlisted the aid of Van Helsing (David Moroni) who tracks Dracula to his lair by means of a new potential victim, Mina (CindyMarie Small) being used as bait. Finally, a confrontation between the lord of the night (Wei-Qiang Zhang) and Van Helsing's group ensues in the vampire's underground abode.This is very different-looking from the succeeding film, indeed rather different from any of the director's other films. Much of the film is shot in sharp and crisp 35MM as opposed to his more usual super-8 and 16mm (though I believe he uses some of those as well), many of the shots are longer and more fluid, and there is a dramatic use of color, digitally painted on in just a few bold strokes - red blood on the neck, Dracula's bold and frighteningly large red cloak, green money, yellow digital titles. The longer, more "balletic" and graceful shots contrast strongly with the rapid cutting in the action scenes and really help to highlight the sense of fear and unearthliness, and the casting of a Chinese-Canadian as the dreaded count emphasizes the xenophobia inherent in the novel and in the Victorian mindset generally.Gustav Mahler was a rough contemporary of Stoker's, and his first two symphonies premiered in the early 1890s roughly when Stoker was writing Dracula. I've been a huge fan of Mahler for years and at first I wondered how appropriate these works would be, but they fit this work almost like a glove - the glory of nature expressed in the first movement of the first symphony perfectly expresses the freedom that this bold, sexual and luminous being Dracula brings to the young repressed maidens of stuffy English society, and the "Resurrection" symphony (the second) is perfectly appropriate to many of the themes inherent in the vampire story. Also, their placement as late romantic works on the cusp of modernity seems to jibe well with Maddin and Godden's vision of Dracula as a 20th century, threatening, alien creature who may offer promise and a bold and liberated way in the world, but who the world is just not ready for.Beautifully and expressively dance, wonderfully shot and edited, if there's a problem here it's that Maddin's trademark strange humor seems to me at times a little out of place -- many of the titles are deliberately exaggerated, particularly at the beginning of the film. But this is a small qualm, and the beauties and emotional power of the story soon leave the few goofy elements behind. Gorgeous and visionary and proof that Maddin can do quite well with someone else's ideas to work from.

The erotic aspects of Dracula are enhanced in this visual spectacle by Guy Madden. He uses the techniques of silent film and the Canadian Royal Ballet to produce a dream-like story of Dracula that is stunning and faithful. Even Dr. Van Helsing's examination of Lucy seems charged with eroticism.Madden's love of the cinema of the 20s and 30s is evident in this avant garde film. Using Wei-Qiang Zhang as Dracula also adds a bit of xenophobia to the film. It would certainly have the stamp of approval from Lou Dobbs.The use of color for emphasis was exquisite; and the dancing was absolutely beautiful. An amazing film.

I enjoy ballet, and I like vampire films (especially the old ones), so why did this just not work for me? Well, I seemed to spend most of my time distracted by the dancing, or rather by the fact that the dancing was so difficult to watch because the dancers' feet were so seldom shown.I know these days showing off camera technique is considered more important than enabling audiences to get a proper look at the skills of dancers, ice skaters and gymnasts, who regularly seem to get the relevant parts of their bodies cut off on TV, but it does limit one's enjoyment.

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a silent version of author Bram Stoker's Dracula that also incorporates many ballet-oriented scenes.My two principle reactions to the film were surprise and delight. I was surprised that the film is so traditional--the silent footage often looks like one is simply watching a film from the 1910s or 1920s. This is heightened by the score, which is extremely conservative, traditional classical music. This surprised me because the Sundance Channel promos for the film kept repeating, ". . . from avant-garde director Guy Maddin". There is not much avant-garde about this film, either in the literal translation of that phrase, as "new wave", or in the more popular sense of "experimental/uncompromisingly different and unusual". Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is decidedly old wave, and never more experimental, different or unusual than a couple small production design touches that might have been gleaned by anyone who is a big fan of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983).Even citing those two influences might be misleading. The Brazil influence is primarily present in a single device--Mrs. Westerna's (Stephanie Ballard) ventilator, and the Rumble Fish influence primarily in the recurrence of red (and occasionally green and gold) within the context of mostly black and white photography (with occasional, very traditional silent film tinting for various scenes). But Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is so traditional that Maddin frequently even went for German expressionist influenced set design. The sets are wonderful at that, however, and occasional they're more surreal.It's not that the film is bad for being so traditional, but it took me awhile to adjust my preconceptions, which were misled from the Sundance promo. However, the silent film aspect didn't exactly work well for me, either, and the ballet was a bit blase when it was present, which was less often than I expected. Most of the time I was wondering what the motivation was for the silent film aspect, aside from an exercise in nostalgia and/or cribbing a style of a bygone era, like trying to create a painting that looks almost exactly like Titian, say. On the other hand, it was effective in a couple instances, such as one decapitation-by-shovel (shot from an angle that allowed for minimal gore, to my dismay), where Maddin introduced foley "sound effects" that amped up the impact of the scene. The instances of bright red in the cinematography were also very effective, and not dissimilar to M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), which postdates this film by 2 years.My delight reaction arose when I realized that much of Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary can be read as an anti-immigration parable. This help explains why Dracula is Chinese here, rather than East European. Under this interpretation, the immigrant Others are invading white Anglo-Saxon shores, usurping authority, "stealing" women and economic power, and so on. It's also notable that Maddin's means of dispatching Dracula in the film is very similar to punishments meted out by Dracula's real-life basis, Vlad Tepes, aka "Vlad the Impaler" (and aka "Dracula" by the way). One popular theory has it that Vlad the Impaler's motivation for his atrocities was primarily to protect the integrity of his Wallachian burg, against what he saw as foreign political and cultural invaders. This makes Dracula's finale in the film fittingly ironic in light of the anti-immigration subtext.Maddin's film is also interesting for presenting the story in two halves, the first solely centered on Lucy Westerna (Tara Birtwhistle), and the second on Jonathan Harker (Johnny Wright) and Mina (Cindy Marie Small). A pervert rendition of Dr. Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) was also unusual and amusing, but Renfield (Brent Neale) was mostly wasted.Of course a potential audience for Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary has to be amenable to silent films, and not averse to ballet or traditional classical music. If you fit that bill and you have a taste for horror or an interest in Dracula, this film may be just up your alley.