Librari[d]an

You probably haven’t heard of the recent controversy spurred by the new Collector’s Edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The color palette of the film has been drastically changed, darkness greatly increased, desaturated, etc. in comparison to earlier mass market releases. According to the motion picture archivist Robert Harris, this is because American Zoetrope has digitally matched the colors to those of the Francis Ford Coppola-approved answer print. According to fans it’s an unpardonable, deliberate revision of their favorite film incarnation of the Dracula story. I honestly don’t care about any of that… as long as consumers have a choice between the two.

My only lingering concern with the Collector’s Edition is that it has been accused of totally altering Eiko Ishioka’s Academy Award-winning costume designs. From very early on in Dracula’s pre-production, Coppola “decided that the costumes would be the set.” (Dworkin 17) When Eiko Ishioka realized “that the costumes would be the key factor in determining the quality of the film itself, I accepted the job.” (Dworkin 21) So that is what this post is actually about. Not the concern for color fidelity in film archiving, but those beautiful costumes - inspired by everything from the Symbolist movement to the Australian frilled lizard - that were conceived of and created by Ishioka. (Dworkin 19, 70)

One of the most memorable garments from the film is Dracula’s “red Oriental-Turkish robe”, which was created to “emphasize the androgynous quality in his character”, “a haunting aura of transsexuality.” (Dworkin 41) In the thematic color of red, Eiko had Dracula’s golden coat-of-arms embroidered on the breast.

This emblem is Dracula’s “identity, similar to the Japanese family crest. I designed a motif of various animals intertwined into a single form.” (Dworkin 42) These included a dragon, wolf, snakes, and birds, as well as fire. (Landau 37) The robe’s voluminous train was constructed to “undulate like a sea of blood.” (Dworkin 41) Not all of Dracula’s planned costumes made it into the film. Check out this sketch of a brocaded vest with red detailing/piping and handkerchief:

The designs for women are the cornerstone of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And why is that? It’s because the original, decentralized story found in Stoker’s novel - told through every character’s point of view except Dracula’s - has been appropriated for Mina. Screenwriter Jim Hart felt that “The key to writing Dracula was to make it Mina’s story.” (Landau 80) Instead of a fragmented narrative, Mina gives it unity and continuity. While it may seem that Mina’s story is framed by Dracula’s historic prologue, the truth is in fact the opposite. Dracula lacks agency. He can merely react as Elisabeta kills herself, as Mina abandons him to marry Harker, as she makes the decision to become a vampire, as she exploits their psychic rapport to assist her friends, and finally as she delivers them both from the unholy covenant Dracula forged with “darkness”.

Throughout the film, Mina’s costumes convey just as much of the story as the actress beneath all that silk. For example, the dress Mina wears in Rule’s Cafe (the absinthe scene) was colored red - Dracula’s color - to convey that Mina would soon be tainted by vampirism. (Landau 127)

Ishioka “carefully considered Mina’s role in the drama” before she chose green as Mina’s thematic color. (Dworkin 61) The color needed to compass the character’s intelligence, sexual naïveté, stoicism, sense, and strong will. Many of these attributes can be seen in the dress she wears on the streets of London and in the cinematograph. The pert hat represents her vivacity and fortitude, the manly lapels her status as a New Woman with a “man’s brain [...] and a woman’s heart“, etc. (Stoker 266)

Winona Ryder wearing the town dress. Photo by Ralph Nelson II. (Landau 80)

Sketch of the town dress by Eiko Ishioka. Photo by Keith Sherins. (Dworkin 60)

Most of Mina’s dresses - including her typing gown - also sport high collars to reflect her modesty and chastity:

Mina’s typing dress. Photo by David Seidner. (Dworkin63)

The high collar can also be seen on Mina’s three-quarter sleeve dress. This dress is rather domestic-looking because of the contrast between the apron and the skirt and wrap. It also lacks leaf embroidery (whose importance will be discussed later) and is almost always worn while in the presence or under the protection of Van Helsing.

Mina’s three-quarter sleeve dress. Photos by Ralph Nelson II. (Landau 129, 125, 141)

As you can see, Ishioka took a predominantly historical, orthodox approach to Mina’s costumes, only pushing boundaries with her creative embellishments. (Dworkin 94) However, “Costumes should be more than just items that explain the role of the actors who wear them”, she stresses. (Dworkin 27) A costume should challenge the actor, filmmakers, and audience. (Dworkin 27) An example of this type of costume is Mina’s wedding dress, which is featured only briefly in the movie. Rather than a virginal white, it is instead a sombre gray-green:

This type of implicit message can also be seen in the final act of the film, in which Mina wears a historically outmoded style. “I designed her cape in the last scene with a strong Renaissance flavor, a Pre-Raphaelite look.” (Dworkin 91) This costume foreshadows Mina’s realization that she is truly the reincarnation of Elisabeta, Dracula’s 15th century bride.

Mina’s Renaissance cape. Photo by David Seidner. (Dworkin 91)

Elisabeta’s gown, seen at the beginning of the film and later in flashbacks, contains the elements that draw the two (three?) central characters together: Emblazoned on the torso is Dracula’s crest. Elisabeta and Mina’s designs are relatively consistent: On the sleeves and skirt - and even her crown of laurel - is the foliage motif that is often also found on Mina’s dresses. Both have the theme color of green. While Elisabeta wears a farthingale, Mina wears a bustle.

Elisabeta’s gown. First photo by David Seidner, second by Ralph Nelson II. (Dworkin 79, Landau 14)

Ishioka’s desire to design museum-quality costumes and her overall perfectionism meant that making multiple copies of her garments for filming was financially impractical. Richard Shissler, the associate costume designer, said that “We probably should have had duplicates of everything, but we just didn’t have the budget [...] Eiko didn’t want to compromise, so we had multiples only when we really needed them.” (Landau 127) Mina’s costumes were constructed with silk taffeta, imported from France and Italy, by Dale Wibben, a freelance dressmaker from San Francisco. (Dworkin 94) Sally Ann Parsons from Parsons-Meares, Ltd. in New York did the more theatrical costumes for Dracula, Lucy, and Renfield while Vincent Costume, Inc. made the men’s clothing. (Dworkin 94) The elaborate embroidery on many of the costumes was done by Penn and Fletcher and Monogram West. (Dworkin 94)

In retrospect, upon seeing her handiwork, it’s no wonder that Coppola chose Ishioka. However, at the time it was a gamble; she had never worked on the costumes for a film before, only television. Coppola’s “strategy in hiring someone like her - an independent, a weirdo outsider with no roots in the business - it worked in the end. Because I could look at the screen and say, well, these costumes are truly irrational and artistic and absolutely unique.” (Dworkin 93)

If I revisit Bram Stoker’s Dracula again, it will be to talk about the one thing in in the film that is more beautiful than the costumes: Wojciech Kilar’s glissando filled love theme, “Mina/Dracula”. (You can hear it over at YouTube, in this video from 2:00 to the end.)

:: Bibliography ::

• Dworkin, Susan, ed. Coppola and Eiko on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. By Francis Ford Coppola and Eiko Ishioka. San Francisco: Collins Publishers San Francisco, 1992. ISBN: 0002551675.
• Landau, Diana, ed. Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend. By Francis Ford Coppola. New York: Newmarket Press, 1992. ISBN: 1557041393.
• Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1989. ISBN: 0812523016.

Finished Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance back on the 10th. For being one of his earlier novels - it was first published in 1988 - I felt that it was vastly superior to Kafka on the Shore. Here are a few passages from pages that I dog-eared. (My commentary follows the page number.) I didn’t include any part of the Kiki finale because none of the diction struck me as particularly noteworthy. However, the culmination of the “crying” dream is rather impressive in terms of atmosphere, mood, and imagery.

Now on to the fair use quotes / copyright infringement. (Circle one.)

“But as she got out, she asked if I would see her to her door. Probably no reason for concern, she apologized, but every once in a while, late at night, there’d be a strange man in the hall. I asked the driver to wait a few minutes, then accompanied her, arm in arm, up the frozen walk. We climbed the two flights of stairs and came to her door marked 306.” (51) Just a shout out to the stacks folk.

“You can ask the cabbage moth, you can ask the alfalfa. There’s not a human alive who keeps promises better than me.” (163) Japanese proverb? Pop-culture reference?

“Evening was gathering, darker and deeper.” (201) Nice - if a bit common sounding - turn of phrase.

“All of a sudden, I was wandering through the labyrinthine viscera of a large organism. Long-dead, cracked, eroded. By something beyond reality, beyond human rationality, I had slipped through a fault in time and entered this . . . thing.” (269) The maze is an important motif in Murakami’s “progressively post-modern” writing. (Lee) This is more for Googlers than anyone else.

“That was when I noticed a third presence in the room. Someone else was here besides Gotanda and myself. I sensed body heat, breathing, odor. Yet it wasn’t human. I froze. I glanced quickly around the room, but I saw nothing. There was only the feeling of something. Something solid, but invisible. I breathed deeply. I strained to hear.

It waited, crouching, holding its breath. Then it was gone.” (323) Creepy! I love to be thrilled like this. That penultimate sentence made my hair stand on end.

“I’m solid with deep inner meaning and pragmatic spirit.”(333) I’d love to hear someone actually say this aloud. The pluck reminds me of Huckleberry Finn and Pollyanna.

“Whenever I’m with you, I feel so relaxed. I never feel the gap. You don’t know how precious that is.” (355) Great use of the word “precious”. I also like how you can read into “the gap”, relating it to the following:

“For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you.” (387) Again, motif driven quotage. I also like just the first sentence. Does a good job of standing alone, no?

:: Bibliography ::

• Lee, Jin Y. Murakami Interview, Part 2. http://selfdivider.com/base/?p=40 (20 February 2008). (Note: A “hasty and imperfect”, unofficial translation by an anonymous blogger. Originally appeared in the January 2007 issue of GQ Korea. See also: Part 1, Part 3, Part 4. Thanks to Ryan for sending it my way.)
• Murakami, Haruki. Dance Dance Dance: A Novel. Birnbaum, Alfred, trans. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994. ISBN: 4770016832.

Shut up! No, really. Shut up. In all likelihood you haven’t even seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), let alone viewed it recently with a critical eye. I was like you once. I thought the film was a joke, the beginning of Hitchcock’s cinematic decline. I have come to realize, over time, that this is far from the truth; Marnie was Hitchcock’s last truly great film.

Marnie falls easy prey to critics for an obvious reason: Like Hitchcock’s Spellbound, the emphasis on psychoanalysis dates the film. (For a bizarre look at the not-so-hidden sexual imagery/dialog embedded in the film, check out this video. I think the creep who made it has to be a total freak, a “sex maniac” if you will.) Marnie lacks the clout that a dream sequence created by Salvador Dalí and star power (Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck) provide. Don’t get me wrong, Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren are stars… However they’ve both developed an air of camp.

So what makes Marnie so good, despite the flaws? (It certainly isn’t the sloppy stunt work with the horse!) And let’s not rely on silly auteur prattle about motifs in Hitchcock’s canon of work. (She’s blonde? Amazing. She adopts a variety of identities? You don’t say!) But let’s begin with that blonde. The blonde with the pinched features and shrill voice. The perfectly imperfect Hitchcock blonde, Tippi Hedren. Hedren became the Galatea to Hitchcock’s Pygmalion because she was a natural in front of the camera. Now, the title role in Marnie isn’t exactly an easy part to play: Sexually frigid. Kleptomaniac safe-cracker. Compulsive and convincing liar. Phobic of the color red and thunder/lightning. (No wonder why the French title is Pas de printemps pour Marnie, “No Spring for Marnie”. This woman’s got problems!) Yet somehow Hedren is able to pull it off. Just look at the film’s infamous rape scene, in which Hedren is equal parts desperate, defenseless child and resistant woman (resistant in terms of her passivity, her utter disconnect from the physical violation she suffers). And what about the scene at the racetrack, where Hedren has to convey the schism between her false persona (socially adept businesswoman) and true one (nervous, saturnine anomic). Of course, there are many scenes in which Hedren simply can’t hold her character together. (”The colors! Stop the colors!”) But who could?

The second redeeming quality of the film is Bernard Herrmann’s lavish, misunderstood score. (Listen to the Prelude in this theatrical trailer for the film. Also, note Hitchock’s hilarious one-liners: “She does seem a rather excitable type” reduced me to tears!) It is mostly considered a melodramatic, Romantic mess of a composition. This may or may not be true. What his music does reflect, however, is an externalization of the emotional, child-like tumult Hedren’s character experiences thrroughout the film. Of course, I would be remiss in not crediting the director, Hitch, for making a contribution or two. Remember the scene in which Marnie robs an employer after hours? The audience is on tenterhooks as she cracks and empties the safe, removes her shoes, and soberly attempts her escape without being noticed by a cleaning woman–only to drop one of her high-heels! This suspenseful sequence alone is worth forgiving Hitchcock the sillier fare in the final reel.

I plan on posting more about the formal achievments of Marnie in the future. Keep an eye peeled.

I read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle last summer and enjoyed it immensely despite reports from Japanese speaking friends that the translation was shoddy. After a glut of library-related non-fiction, I decided I needed another story about a plucky, slightly damaged person overcoming that oh-so-Murakami black, nameless, ancient Evil.

I intended to read After Dark, but it was out of the library. I placed a recall on it - shameless I know - and took out Kafka on the Shore.

Kafka on the Shore surprised me. It started off amazingly well with pseudo-historic military documents chronicling a strange event (the “rice bowl” incident) in a remote Japanese village during World War II. However, it soon veered into melodrama. (Truth be told, I’m not sure it ever navigated back out.) A story about a bodybuilding, fifteen year-old runaway? No thank you. Although still turning the pages, the story didn’t really engage me again - save for a confessional-esque return to the “rice bowl” - until Miss Saeki showed up with her enigmatic song, elegant mien, and nebulous back story. In retrospect, I think Kafka on the Shore was a pretty good novel; occasionally heavy-handed, it was not as compelling or finely crafted as Wind-Up Bird, but not too far off.

After Dark, in comparison, blew my socks off. The power of this book comes from it’s very brevity. Murakami can be verbose; after the fifth or sixth time he has his characters talking about how this-or-that is like a metaphor you may imprecate carpal tunnel on the man. In After Dark the time constraint (approx midnight to seven p.m.) forces him to cut away the dead wood and forge only the most interesting, adamantine bonds between his motifs: The invariably male embodiment of the id/Evil, the hero(ine) striving to regain an interpersonal rapport thought severed forever, the fear that H/historical damage may be irreparable, etc.

The invariable question: Is After Dark better than Wind-Up Bird? I don’t know. I think it might be. However, it does lack the magnificent historic scope we found in the latter work. In short, the jury’s still out on that one.

L’amour de l’étymologie is a feature exploring the etymology of English words. Today’s entry: the noun vertigo! You may rarely find this word spelled (vertego, verteego, virtigo) and pronounced (although this is the standard pronunciation) in any number of ways. If you’re feeling adventuresome, branch out and use related words such as the adjective “vertiginous”!

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Vertigo should not be confused with acrophobia, the fear of heights.

I have been consistently fascinated by the word vertigo since childhood, having seen Hitchcock’s classic of the same name at a tender age. Hypnotized by the film’s salient imagery, captivating score, and general pathos, I found myself returning to the term time and again. Only about a year ago I discovered that the title - Hitchcock’s personal favorite for the film - barely survived the journey to the marquee. (There were around fifty suggested titles ready and waiting to oust Vertigo.) In late October of 1957 the studio asserted that “No execs like Vertigo and believe it handicap to selling and advertising picture whether potential customers know what word vertigo means or not”. (Auiler 113)

This quote most likely explains why the original trailer for Vertigo opens with a shot of a dictionary. The book opens and the camera zooms in on a page as a quick dissolve takes viewers to a detail shot of the entry for “vertigo”. A voice-over informs the audience that the word means “a feeling of dizziness … a swimming in the head … figuratively a state in which all things seem to be engulfed in a whirlpool of terror.” As the book spins and dissolves into one of Saul Bass and John Whitney’s iconic spiral motifs - known properly by the name “Lissajous spirals” - it seems reasonable to ask just how much of this definition is fact and how much is hyperbole.

In truth, the clever mind that thought up this educational prelude got the meaning pretty much right.

In the original Latin, vertigo meant “a turning around, giddiness”. The Romantic languages inherited this term, and it can be assumed that Anglophones adopted the word from either French or Spanish. The first known use of vertigo in English has been dated to 1528 in Paynell’s Salerne’s Regim, which describes “The heed ache called vertigo: whiche maketh a man to wene that the world turneth”. The main gist of vertigo has followed this pathological assessment. The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary entry: “A disordered condition in which the person affected has a sensation of whirling, either of external objects or of himself, and tends to lose equilibrium and consciousness; swimming in the head; giddiness, dizziness”. The term can also be applied to animals such as horses, sheep, and hawks–although any link between dizziness and these animals’ diseases seems tenuous.

All that jazz is without adding an article. You can slap an “a” or “the” before vertigo if you don’t mind sounding a bit backward. Similarly, using plural forms (vertigos, vertigoes, verteegoes, vertigines) may sound awkward to contemporary ears.

Figurative uses of the word came along later, with the first recorded use in 1634. Vertigo in this case means “A disordered state of mind, or of things, comparable to giddiness.” The OED quotes people who wrote that art, power, and intellectualism may induce this state.

The final use of vertigo is as a noun which encapsulates the “act of whirling round and round.” Although loaded with poetic potential, this usage seems relatively rare; the only historical quote the OED cites is 19th Century writer Thomas de Quincey’s use of the word to describe a top in his Autobiographical Sketches.

That’s all she wrote. Stay tuned for more etymologies and musings on Hitchcock’s Vertigo!

:: Bibliography ::

Auiler, Dan. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. ISBN: 0312169159.

“Vertigo.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2008. 2 Jan. 2008 <http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/findword?query_type=word&queryword=vertigo&find.x=0&find.y=0&find=Find+word>.