‘Their Voices Ring in My Ears’: Laura, the Fugue, and Adaptation

Adaptation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A Toth ◽  
Teresa Ramoni
Keyword(s):  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Adaptation Studies

Abstract This essay analyzes Vera Caspary’s novel Laura (1943) and the 1944 film adaptation (Preminger) in order to demonstrate an approach to adaptation studies we call fugal. If a fugue is a composition based on a ‘subject’ or short melodic phrase and its various ‘answers’—in other words, variations that maintain elements of the melody but also play with and revise it—how might we position the film as a variation on, rather than a reproduction of, Caspary’s novel? To explore this question, we analyze the sonic register of both the novel and film. Caspary doesn’t want us to merely read her novel; she wants us to listen to the voices that narrate it and the tunes that populate it. Similarly, listening to the film—not simply the dialogue but also the voiceover narration and David Raksin’s groundbreaking score—allows us to identify content not overt in, and sometimes at odds with, the visuals. When we listen critically and carefully, we can distinguish nuances that get lost in a strict fidelity approach; in particular, we can identify both works’ feminist content, especially their attempts to decentre patriarchal hard-boiled conventions and to confound notions of a singular truth.

scholarly journals Film Adaptation as an Act of Communication: Adopting a Translation-oriented Approach to the Analysis of Adaptation Shifts

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Perdikaki
Keyword(s):  
Film Review ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Film Adaptations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Artistic Value ◽  
Bidirectional Communication ◽  
Communication Context ◽  
Oriented Approach

Contemporary theoretical trends in Adaptation Studies and Translation Studies (Aragay 2005; Catrysse 2014; Milton 2009; Venuti 2007) envisage synergies between the two areas that can contribute to the sociocultural and artistic value of adaptations. This suggests the application of theoretical insights derived from Translation Studies to the adaptation of novels for the screen (i.e., film adaptations). It is argued that the process of transposing a novel into a filmic product entails an act of bidirectional communication between the book, the novel and the involved contexts of production and reception. Particular emphasis is placed on the role that context plays in this communication. Context here is taken to include paratextual material pertinent to the adapted text and to the film. Such paratext may lead to fruitful analyses of adaptations and, thus, surpass the myopic criterion of fidelity which has traditionally dominated Adaptation Studies. The analysis uses examples of adaptation shifts (i.e., changes between the source novel and the film adaptation) from the filmP.S. I Love You(LaGravenese 2007), which are examined against interviews of the author, the director and the cast, the film trailer and one film review.

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS IN DASHNER’S MAZE RUNNER NOVEL AND FILM ADAPTATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-88
Author(s):  
Anggia Putria ◽  
Muizzu Nurhadi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

The research aims to reveal how the application of dramatic elements of Dashner’s Maze Runner is transformed into its film adaptation. To achieve the purpose, the researcher analyzes seven dramatic elements by Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid which consist of exposition, inciting moment, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement. This research uses the descriptive qualitative method. The results of this research are the differences of the dramatic elements in the novel and film adaptation are not significant because only the scenes of exposition and rising action are not similar.

Materializing Ulysses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Forster
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Perceived Power

This chapter compares the reception of Joyce’s 1922 Ulysses with that of Joseph Strick’s 1967 film adaptation of the novel. Although Ulysses had been legally publishable in England for decades, Strick’s film still encountered censorship from the British Board of Film Censors. The chapter argues that Joyce’s novel, for all its obscenity and provocation, mitigated its threat by foregrounding its own printedness, allying its fate to the waning power of print as a bearer of obscenity. Strick’s film, by contrast, activated the perceived power of film. The contrast of the two versions of Ulysses, which are often identical in language, thus offers a valuable window on how obscenity changed across media through the twentieth century. In making this argument, the chapter surveys print strategies of censorship, including the asterisk, and how these strategies operated in a range of works.

scholarly journals Konkretyzacja estetyczna w Zwierzętach nocy (2016) Toma Forda

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrycja Rojek
Keyword(s):  
Complex System ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Communication Situations ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Insight Into

Rojek Patrycja, Konkretyzacja estetyczna w Zwierzętach nocy (2016) Toma Forda [Aesthetic Concretization in Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals (2016)]. „Przestrzenie Teorii” 32. Poznań 2019, Adam Mickiewicz University Press, pp. 401–416. ISSN 1644-6763. DOI 10.14746/pt.2019.32.22. The subject of Austin Wright’s novel Tony and Susan (published in 1993) is the reader’s experience. The peculiar relationship that forms between the main female character - a reader of literary fiction – and the novel itself as well as its author, inspired in 2016 Tom Ford to capture the specifics of the same relationships using the language of moving images. This article presents the effects of studying the complex system of communication situations occurring in the novel and its film adaptation: each of them contains an additional story around which further author-reader relationships are formed. The analysis shows that a significant part of the film’s plot is not a direct insight into the novel, but its concretization projected by a female protagonist. Tom Ford’s film is therefore considered in relation to Roman Ingarden’s theory on aesthetic concretization.

scholarly journals A Tradução Intersemiótica na construção da personagem Holly Golithly em Breakfast at Tiffany’s: entre o romance e o cinema

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (44) ◽  
pp. 246-259
Author(s):  
Sinara De Oliveira Branco ◽  
Mariana Assis Maciel
Keyword(s):  
Image Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Multimodal Corpus ◽  
The Relationship

The purpose of this text is to analyze the intersemiotic construction of Holly Golithly in two contexts: the novel and the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Along the film adaptation, the focus will be on the observation of how people and places influence her behaviour, taking into consideration the relationship between the imagetic and the verbal contexts (word-image relationship). The theoretical framework used is based on the Theory of Adaptation; the Intersemiotic Translation; Subtitling; Image Analysis and Film Narrative. The multimodal corpus compiled involves the selected scenes from the film, offering frames and subtitles, as well as excerpts from the novel. Results have shown how the character has changed in the film adaptation regarding her construction in the film narrative. With the application of intersemiotic translation, it was possible to observe how the analysis of the scenes and subtitles help with the construction and the interpretation of the character.

Michael Winterbottom’s The Claim (2000) as a transnational and transcultural adaptation of The Mayor of Casterbridge

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarida Esteves Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Community Construction ◽  
Transcultural Adaptation ◽  
Film Productions ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Transnational Film

In this article, we will be focusing on issues of transnational and transcultural film adaptation using as a case study a particular screen adaptation of the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy entitled The Claim (Michael Winterbottom 2000). The article aims to analyse the film in relation to these issues, taking into account notions of transcultural adaptation and transnational film productions, as well as mobility and migration in the context of a nineteenth-century film text. It is not only a text that relocates Hardy’s narrative into a new geographical/cultural dimension, but also it is itself a transnational production. Moreover, in the case of The Claim, there seems to be a clear understanding of processes of intercultural community construction that are particularly productive to look at. The article establishes a link between the particular transcultural perspective raised in this film and Michael Winterbottom’s oeuvre, taking also into account other adaptations of Hardy’s novels by the same director and the Western genre that underlies this film production.

Seducing-Machines

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean McQueen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Car Crashes ◽  
Primary Focus

This chapter turns to the 1973 J.G. Ballard novel Crash as well as its 1996 film adaptation by Cronenberg. It aims to make careful distinctions between Deleuze and Baudrillard and show why they gravitate to Crash. The primary focus in the novel is a cult of bored, middle-class professionals who feel alive only after modifying their bodies via staged car crashes. From here, the chapter reveals that Crash is notably quite flexible and can be subjected to many theoretical approaches, at times producing contradictory readings as a result. While Crash the novel might be a distinctly Baudrillardian creature, for example, Crash the Cronenberg film appears to lean more toward Deleuze.

“The Soviet Abroad (That We Lost)”: The Fate of Vasilii Aksenov’s Cult Novel A Starry Ticket on Paper and on Screen

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Boele
Keyword(s):  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Positive Development ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
Thaw Period ◽  
Generational Divide

This chapter explores Aleksandr Zarkhi’s film adaptation of Vasilii Aksenov’s 1961 “youth novel” A Starry Ticket into My Younger Brother just a year later. Despite the relative liberalism of the Thaw period, ideological strictures had to be adhered to, and this necessitated correction of the novel’s “flaws,” namely Aksenov’s use of youth jargon, his focus on the generational divide in Soviet society, his undermining of the the myth of a big Soviet family, and the lack of positive development in the hero. The film simplifies and sanitizes the novel by removing the generational conflict and transform the novel’s ambiguous conclusion into a more optimistic vision of social progress and personal maturation.

Sakyo Komatsu’s Planetary Imagination

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Tatsumi Takayuki
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Japanese Science ◽  
Eastern Japan

This chapter explores major works of Sakyo Komatsu, one of the Founding Fathers of contemporary Japanese science fiction, with special emphasis on his 1964 novel The Day of Resurrection, along with Fukasaku Kinji's 1980 film adaptation Virus. While his first novel, The Japanese Apache (1964), narrates the way postwar Japanese have reconstructed their identity as cyborgian, this second novel, The Day of Resurrection, dramatizes how full-scale nuclear war is ignited by the possible coincidences between natural disaster and artificial disaster, which we were to witness nearly fifty years after original publication of the novel—in the multiple disasters in eastern Japan on March 11, 2011. The chapter also speculates on the transnational impacts of the novel upon Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008).

Theorizing Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-172
Author(s):  
Kamilla Elliott
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Theoretical Pluralism ◽  
Literature And Film

Chapter 4 traces the expansion of adaptation studies to new media and new theories in the twenty-first century. By 2006, literary film adaptation studies outnumbered general literature-and-film studies, and Linda Hutcheon authoritatively opened adaptation studies beyond literature and film and beyond dyadic disciplines and theoretical camps into a pluralism of media, disciplines, and theories, although debates between pre–theoretical turn and post–theoretical turn theories have continued. They continue because new theories have not resolved the problems of old theories for adaptation, so that scholars return to older theories to try to redress them. New theories have done a great deal for adaptation, but they have also introduced new theoretical problems: so much so, that the latest debates in adaptation study no longer lie between theoretical progressivism and theoretical return but between theoretical pluralism and theoretical abandonment. Beyond specific theories and differing modes of pluralism, this debate points to theorization’s failure to theorize adaptation more generally.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document