Introduction: Eye-Opener

This chapter focuses on the look of screen adaptation. At first glance, this statement might appear dull, promising to only but skim across the text's surface rather than plunge into the inner depths of the adaptation and the dynamics of its beholder's engagement. However, I argue that the (quite literal) oversight of screen adaptation's look is due to the lingering critical spectres that haunt the discipline. Specifically, I claim that critics have turned away from the sensual allure of the screen, effectively blinding themselves to what may appear as only superficial. While Film Phenomenology and Adaptation: Sensuous Elaboration aims to help return adaptation studies (and adaptation critics) to its senses, the specific task of this chapter is to reveal how critical insight is found in sight.

This chapter primarily draws on two adaptations of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula: the German Expressionist Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992). The gothic tale is well-known: with the help of Jonathan Harker, Dracula—a blood-sucking Transylvanian count—moves to London and wreaks havoc on modern society. Roger Luckhurst notes that Dracula, at its core, stands as an allegory for the way that fin de siecle culture enacted a range of ‘insidious attacks’ that threatened the coherence and integrity of (Anglo-Saxon) identity.