Amor e desejo na adaptação Drácula de Bram Stoker, de Francis Ford Coppola: a transformação da personagem Mina

Abstract

Dracula (1897), by Bram Stoker, is the fi n de siècle gothic novel most frequently adapted into fi lms. In the beginning of the 1990s, fi lm director Francis Ford Coppola presented his cinematographicversion of the character Mina Murray/Harker in his film Bram Stoker’s Dracula – role played by Winona Ryder as the ideal of physical beauty at the time and, thanks to the approach adopted by the film concerning its heroin, possibly one of the reasons for its great commercial success. From the ideal Victorian woman admired by men for her sense and chastity, as she is portrayed in the book, Mina becomes an object of sexual desire in the midst of a frenetic narrative, full of special effects, directed by Coppola. Based mainly on the studies by Judith Weissman and Elizabeth Miller regarding the character of Mina and on Linda Hutcheon’s notions on film adaptation, the present article aims at examining the changes promoted in the character in her transition from book into movie, seeking to understand how and why Mina was transformed in the adaptation process.