few days ago I discussed with a distinguished artist and thinker end just as the cinema has coined by the characteristics of the other arts, reaching its artistic autonomy and formal, and as yet remains an attitude that sees a seventh art behind.
Some discussions are good, because they reflect. So I thought about the literature and the age-old question of adaptation.
I once read about a piece of paper fluttering in a showcase academic "unfaithful adaptation." Apparently cryptic title but a revelation so clear and natural as to be disconcerting. In short, these two little words that were meant translating a book into film have to be unfaithful. And I add, rightly unfaithful.
is a classic feel to emerge from the noise of people leaving the cinema an exact phrase: " But the book is better," referring to the result of a film adaptation. Often this attitude masks a bias: the reader goes to see the film of the book read, knowing that will not like. Indeed, often the reader goes to see this movie just to flush out the errors only and exclusively, without thinking about watching the movie just . Now I want to do a little reasoning, hoping not to appear too presumptuous: it makes no sense to say "the book is better than the movie." If anything, "the book I liked most "or" I liked the movie more. "In short, a review of taste. Saying "The book is miles hours of film" (but also the opposite, of course) is to compare the incomparable. You look like Cupid and Psyche by Canova and think that the story of Apuleius is best sculpture.
short, this is to compare the art of words to the images. It is not an exact comparison. Firstly, because the base material is different: literature is being built in words, images for cinema, and secondly because the film has to tell in pictures and in a limited period of time that the book is written and has more time dilated, and finally, because the film is filtered eye and mind of an author who (often) not the author of the book.
It is clear that this attitude is dictated by the fact that the reader, reading the book, you their films. What you will see is inevitably a different construction than what he had done. It is the construction of the director, the vision of the writer, seasoned with a little 'of critical thinking skills.
Now I will start flying high. The first three examples in mind that I could almost pass for aesthetic perfection in their books. I think Kubrick and Lolita, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick was probably the biggest critic of these three books, a critic extremely creative and visionary. The endless and evocative descriptions of Nabokov are transformed in the movie - just to name one - the figure in the ongoing objectification of Lolita, that person becomes more than a fetish (framework). Shining up I have little to say ... I could not pass the fifty page book by King. But the film has something extremely proud. Those labyrinthine tracking shots and perfect for the Overlook corridors, as well as doing school, as well as being one of the Kubrick style figures are there to smother the viewer and to build a horror. Eyes Wide Shut is very similar but also completely Double different from Schnitzler's Dream. And despite the large and obvious differences, Kubrick was able to maintain the same climate of anxiety and eroticism suspended between dream that's in the book.
What I had madly possessed was not she, but a creature of mine, a Lolita fantasy perhaps even more real than Lolita; someone who overlapped and embraced, someone who hovered between you and me, without will or consciousness - indeed, without even a life of its own.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
In the room opposite [...] women were property, the head, forehead and neck wrapped in dark veils, black lace mask on the face, but otherwise completely nude. Fridolin's eyes wandered from the greedy slim to plump, delicate by the beautiful and thriving, and as every one of those nude figures still remained a secret from templates and large black eyes were turned toward him as radiant as none of the puzzles, the 'ineffable pleasure of having turned into an almost unbearable torment of desire.
Arthur Schnitzler, Dream Double
The problem is this: not so much to maintain dialogue, time, scenarios and characters as close as possible to the description of the writer. The problem is to keep a sense of the book in the film. And the sense of the book, the film achieves with its own power.
André Bazin wrote that the film could be said to be effective and their artistic autonomy and formal primarily due to adjustments. You get a book and translate that into film which highlights the specific characteristics of film, its building capacity of the arts. He wrote talking about the Diary of a Country Priest Bresson, adapted from the novel by Bernanos. It stressed that bringing such amazing film that is the mystery of Picasso Clouzot. As you can gather and stop the act and the artistic genius of an artist like Picasso? Interspersed with some dialogue with the crew of Picasso, the film shows the canvas to fill with colors and images: the camera takes it filling the screen, Picasso, behind, can paint safely without being seen looks like a painting that seems to take themselves life. The mystery of Picasso
Think of the theater: the theater there is text only. Each performance is always different and never repeated the same way. The staging is a betrayal than the text. The cinema has often drawn from the plays, especially in the beginning. Any film based on a play is therefore something more from the text itself. I think of a clever adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet: The bad sleep in peace master Kurosawa. In the Japanese film is all of the Shakespearean text. But it is also quite different: we are in Japan in the fifties. There is no Prince Hamlet, but a young Mifune struggling with his father's fake suicide, thrown by one of the top floors of the company he worked for. The young man married the daughter of the assassination of his father, and stages a Mousetrap worthy of Shakespeare's: Kurosawa puts his start in film, not a play but with a giant cake that depicts the building of the large company which has plunged the father. Kurosawa distorts everything, but leaves the deeper meaning of Shakespeare's tragedy, while at the same time talking about the corrupt Japanese society. A unique film from the composure, the only drama (in the theatrical sense of the term): Kurosawa, in fact, constantly stresses the theatricality of the events. Everything is admittedly staged and theatrical sense of Hamlet models the shape of the film (and for this I refer not only to the sequence opening, to the masterful closing ...).
Please reads the joke as I told myself, agile on ling ua. If you are mitered as many of our players, we might as well give the verses to the auctioneer. [...] Ah disturb me in the depths of the soul that you hear a ravening madman imparruccato a passion, reduces rags, to deafen the audience, which mostly does not appreciate that mimes and senseless noise.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Pasolini, as well as being a director, was also a writer and poet. What better example for this post. Take Theorem Theorem novel and film (screenplay romanzo! not as many believe): the novel, experimenting continuously, alternating prose and poetry. Often the prose is more poetic, and poetry, or move forward through the action focuses deeper reflection of the author. In prose we find the same relationship with the sunlight that Pasolini continually emphasizes in the film playing with the camera. On the contrary: the river of words in the novel is translated into an almost totally silent film, in which a lord it is image building. Theorem is not the only relationship between literature and cinema in which he has experimented with Pasolini. Think of Accattone, which becomes the summation of the film A violent life and boys life. The trial on the sacred borgatari fifties is realized in a meeting between high-and Roman dialect poetry; in the film, however, Pasolini puts aside the words and acts on the photo, is inspired by Masaccio, use Bach, and works on the target on the film to get the feel of a body stunned by sunlight.
It was a warm south wind that was not and was not burning, but it was only warm. It was like a coat of paint on the breeze, Gialletti on the walls of the village, meadows, on carts, on buses with clusters at the counter. A layer of color that was all the fun and the misery of the summer nights in the past and present.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Boys Life
Flying high with such examples - albeit briefly treated - makes us realize how independent cinema is the literature and As the art of words and moving images that have nothing to envy each other. In fact, you can also say that the cinema, by virtue of its different material than that of literature, is able to see past or see what the book is not so obvious (and vice versa of course). The film can extend the meaning of the book, and can extend in any event can play with it.
However, the crucial thing to understand is that reading a book and a movie are two different experiences fruition. The Lolita of Kubrick not the Lolita of Nabokov. Often the attitude of many content or the simple fact of considering the words above the picture becomes a problem for the cinema. It's like saying that the film belittles, numb, lose the relationship with reading. You can not say that the cinema be art. Reading is one thing, a movie is another. As well as having to do with the art of words is very different from being able to do with art images.
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