Even Peter Cushing, who heretofore performed essentially the most compelling model of Van Helsing in opposition to Christopher Lee‘s Depend Dracula for Hammer, typically misplaced his sense of kindness. Cushing’s dashing vampire hunter tackle the Professor actually had time for moments of empathy, as when he drapes a cloak over a baby virtually consumed by the vampiric Lucy (Carol Marsh) in 1958’s Horror of Dracula. However he stops Lucy not simply by wielding a cross, however urgent it into her flesh, leaving a (actually cool trying) burn on her brow.
To make certain, all of those takes have validity and their charms. Heck, you may even make an argument for Hugh Jackman‘s big motion Van Helsing within the Stephen Sommers film by that title or Mel Brooks‘s Borscht Belt joker in Dracula: Useless and Loving It. However solely Dafoe grounds the character’s oddities in a deep love for humanity, making him the proper counter to the Depend and assist to the story’s true hero, Mina/Ellen.
Van Helsing’s Humanitarian Soul
As in most variations of Dracula, Von Franz enters Nosferatu comparatively late within the story, when a determined Sievers turns to his outdated physician. And, as in most variations, Nosferatu primes viewers to anticipate an idiosyncratic scientist, a sense solely heightened as we comply with Sievers via a maze of stairs and streets into the Professor’s cramped and dusty room. Engrossed in a guide on alchemy, Von Franz doesn’t even have time to search for at his guests; he simply barks “Go away!”
However as quickly as Von Franz acknowledges his outdated scholar, his demeanor adjustments and softens. He embraces the youthful man, not even acknowledging the plumes of mud coming from his jacket. As Eggers just lately informed Den of Geek, he primarily based Von Franz not simply on Van Helsing, however the true life occultist Albin Grau, who really believed in vampires and different supernatural forces.
Greater than only a totally different spin on a personality portrayed by many alternative actors over greater than a century, Dafoe’s humanist strategy underscores a key ingredient of the Dracula story. As a lot as Dracula is a sensual monster, and there’s something seductive to his strategies, he’s essentially undead. Dracula steals life and returns a grotesque perversion of dwelling, an never-ending existence primarily based in servitude and insatiable hungers.
As Dracula’s counter, Van Helsing have to be extra human, in all of its varieties, which is precisely what Dafoe portrays as Von Franz. As a discovered man in nineteenth century Germany, Von Franz respects cause and the brand new scientific arts, as demonstrated by his instruments problem-solving course of. However the place a lot of the Enlightenment dismissed the passions and beliefs as superstitions to be purged in favor of logic, Von Franz remembers that our emotions and religion are simply as a lot of our human expertise as our rational thoughts.
