Vintage vampire in our neck of the woods

The flickering images have all the wide-eyed passion and vampire iconography of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 “Nosferatu.” But Guy Maddin’s “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary” tells the tale with cinematic wit, sensuality and the grace of a ballet.

In fact, members of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet play the familiar roles in Maddin’s mostly silent, mostly black-and-white “Dracula,” which opens Friday for a one-week run at the Nuart Theatre in West L.A.

Maddin, an experimental Canadian filmmaker with a loyal cult following, made the film two years ago for Canadian television based on the dance company’s 1998 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, but it only recently screened in the U.S. at New York’s Film Forum.

Like his other films (such as 1988’s “Tales From the Gimli Hospital” and 1992’s “Careful”), “Dracula” has an anachronistic style, using iris shots, ground fog and titles (“Immigrants!”) to impart the melodramatic tone of the early classics. Bats swoop, translucent gowns flow, vampires tiptoe backward, suitors valiantly donate their uncontaminated blood. Maddin infuses those elements with his own style through the use of color.

In his adaptation, Maddin said, he leaned on elements others have avoided: the suitors’ jealousy that turns into hatred and rage, and the xenophobia sprinkled throughout Stoker’s book.

“I see that story as a great portrait of why men behave badly during mating season, which is all the time,” he said. “When a man senses a sexual rival, he gets terrified, jealous and thinks he is the perfect lover. That’s why Dracula has to be all-powerful, handsome, dashing and wealthy.”

The story’s real villains are the hunters, he said. “They turn their pathetic lust for women into homicidal rage. I find it really interesting.”

While some consider his films camp, Maddin said, “If they want to see it that way, OK. I’ll swear to you right now on this Bible I’m holding, I honestly just love the vocabulary in which I’ve told this story. There’s nothing to make fun of, really, except men themselves. We’re a rotten lot of cowards and there’s much hilarious finger-pointing to be done at ourselves.”

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-- Lynn Smith