Bela Lugosi, or Dracula and his descent into hell

“Alfredo Arias emphasizes the endless repetition in which Bela Lugosi had to make Dracula, always associated with other monsters, increasingly depressing, which clearly spoke of a career in clear decline,” says Marcos Montes, who plays Bela Lugosi in “Bela Vamp”, written and directed by Arias, which debuts on Monday in El Extranjero.

Barely ten years after his memorable performance as Dracula, the Hungarian-born actor Bela Lugosi was forced to frequent the slums of the “Poverty Road”, where ephemeral, miserable film studios gathered, capable of producing high-class films in abundance. B, with minimal budgets and an artistic quality that degraded film after film.

Lugosi decides to consult the disastrous psychoanalyst Dorothy Couch, who is famous in Hollywood, the city of dreams: several of her patients ended up shooting themselves. Bela wishes to end her days; her, reach the big screen as a screenwriter and director. The plan is ruthless: the trigger will decide the direction of the therapy.

We spoke with Montes about this one-man operation and the issue of the blow to culture did not go unnoticed: “We must inform the public about what the subsidy system is like because unsuspecting people believe that the money given by the INT is useful for us to live, that We are gnocchi from the State, there is nothing further away. The money that the INT or FNA gives us helps us buy an instrument, collaborate in the assembly of a set, or travel expenses, but it does not give us the money for rent or food. That’s why most actors also do other work to live. A small portion is what the INT’s help contributes to a work, nothing more.”

Journalist: What is Bela Lugosi’s main attraction?

Marcos Montes: He is such an important character in the cinema of the second half of the last century and particularly in Argentina he touched us a lot as the protagonist of horror films that in the 60s, 70s were called class B horror. I saw several of those films as a child, Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, a group of men who enchanted us with their stories, so as soon as Alfredo told me about doing this job, I immediately accepted.

Q: Did you research Lugosi’s history to embody him?

MM: I have not read an extensive biography of him, but I have read material to get an idea of ​​what was happening. But the work is not a historical reconstruction of his life or the vicissitudes he went through or his work, but rather it is fictionalized. The known fact of his desire to die is taken, which was also explored by the filmmaker Ed Wood, and based on that I was thinking about the character that Alfredo Arias proposed from an unleashed fiction.

Q: What traits does the Bela that you play have?

MM: Let’s try to approach the composition from a person who has been disappointed in life and also has something that I observed a lot in my childhood: they were those immigrants who never managed to master the language of the country that receives them and who have a very marked pronunciation. In Lugosi’s case it was not so strong and here it is more exacerbated. I have always observed those immigrants, even though they have been in the country for many years, who use exaggerated accentuation trying to replace with gesticulation the expression of their own language that perhaps does not find an exact reflection in the new language. The linguistic barrier plus the disappointment of his present was the guide to putting together the character.

Q: How is the success of Dracula and the gradual fall of Lugosi shown?

MM: The character lived down a staircase. For someone who had started out as a promising artist in his homeland and then debuted on Broadway, moving into the world of cinema could have been an international boost, but it was a descent. My character adds entry to the world of alcohol, drugs and the absence of Hollywood proposals.

Q: What is the story of the famous Hollywood therapist who treated suicidal actors?

MM: The therapist makes a plan because she has her own interests. She had other artists in charge of her without the projection of Belga Lugosi, with her arrival a much greater spectrum of promotion opened up for her than her previous patients had given her. Surely what she wants contradicts what Bela needed.

Q: What is this metaphor for the life of the artist, the path of the actor who is sometimes on the crest of the wave and other times in the darkness?

MM: This work paints issues of the actor but we can extend it to all people, being in very good moments where aspirations and circumstances meet and others of disagreements with faith, as the tango says. We have to go through all the areas and know that everything is temporary and the moments of success should not be much more resonant than their counterparts of failure.

Q.: What can you say about the theater scene in Buenos Aires and the current moment in theater?

MM: For three decades it has been so thriving, rich, miraculous because of the capacity that we artists have to be able to achieve theatrical events of relevance with something to say in unexpected spaces. This is very much ours, it differentiates us from all the other theater capitals in the world where that independent theater movement with that energy and that production does not exist. It is something we need to care for and preserve. In no way do I assert that all the people who practice this theater will be first artists or stars, there will be selection, the life of the artist is very hard even in Buenos Aires where without being summoned the small theatrical event can occur. It is very hard to maintain that effort for years and maintain a distinct voice and issue, but I believe that if we are so distinguished in the world for this wealth, the State has to recognize it as it did in the last three decades with the systems to promote activities, with the INT, and has to continue promoting it.