"Dracula has been accomplished for the first time in 2008 at Nickelodeon’s exibition at Milano’s 1000events: Bram Stoker’s Dracula is among the novels which have had the biggest number of film adaptations, we can count approximately 650 out of it. In this work I show the video-screening of eight movies based on transylvanian Count’s history (from 1922 Murnau’s Nosferatu to Herzog one, up to Coppola Bram Stoker’s Dracula, touching 1931 Tod Browning Universal’s versions and 1958 Terence Fisher’s Hammer) made on book backs of about 60 different editions of the novel itself. This work, besides emphasizing the unavoidable diffe rences of interpretation both at a direction level and at a novel translation one, takes hold from the copyright’s concept about the transposition of any given literary work towards film: indeed Nosferatu has been the first acknowledged case of plagiarism made by a director against a novel. Even if Murnau changed the title and the names of the characters, he entirely resumed Stoker’s book plot. The wri 108 ter’s widow sued the director for plagiarism and she won, forcing the director to destroy the movie. Just by chance a couple of copies has been rescued, allowing us to still admire this masterpiece. This case created a judicial precedent and since then the copyright was enlarged to any film transposition of literary works, too."
Andrea Mastrovito in "Easy Come Easy Go" Exhibition catalogue, pp.108-109