Adaptation:
novel to FILM
ch.
pp.
04
86
2014
Adaptation:
novel to FIlM
edited by: Julia HuynH
Contents
Chapter 1
05
The Appeal of Novel-to-Film Adaptations
Chapter 2
29
Movies You Didn’t Know Were Adapted From Books
Chapter 3
37
Film Commentary: Director Joe Wright
Chapter 4
67
Interview: Author Yann Martel
Bibliography & photo Credits
81
Index
82
1801 I have just returned from a visit to my landlord— the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
Wuthering Heights Emily BrontĂŤ
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1
THE APPEAL OF Novel-TO-FILM ADAPTATIONS
Adaptation as interpretation The debate on cinematic adaptations of literary works was for many years dominated by the questions of fidelity to the source and by the tendencies to prioritize the literary originals over their film versions. Adaptations were seen by most critics as inferior to the adapted texts, as “minor”, “subsidiary”, “derivative” or “secondary” products, lacking the symbolic richness of the books and missing their “spirit”. Critics could not forgive what was seen as the major fault of adaptations: the impoverishment of the book’s content due to necessary omissions in the plot and the inability of the filmmakers to read out and represent the deeper meanings of the text. Another point of criticism concerned the perception problems related to the visuality of the filmic medium. The verbally transmitted characteristics of the heroes, places and the spatial relations between them, open to various decoding possibilities in the process of imagining, were in the grip of flattening pictures.
In order to be seen as a good adaptation, a film had to come to terms with what was considered as the “spirit” of the book and to take into account all layers of the book’s complexity. But who could garantee that the image of the work that a particular reader had created in his or her mind was better than somebody else’s? Who could define exactly the elements of the literary work that formed its “spirit” and were indispensable to its recognition in another medium? Who could prove that only a literary approach was capable to reveal finite and ultimative truths about a book’s identity and provide us with exact models of understanding it? Seeing adaptations from the perspective of fidelity revealed itself as too limiting. More and more critics started to believe that literature as art did not desire closure, that it did not satisfy itself with one approach only and did not take refuge behind a virtually constructed order of well-established interpretative procedures. Literature, like other arts, suggested a vast area of communicative possibilities through which it could speak to the audience. According to the theories of an open work of art and to some conclusions of the reader-response criticism, meanings could be seen as events that took place in the reader’s time and imagination. It was therefore necessary to place the emphasis differently, not on the source, but on the way its meanings were reconstructed in the process of reception. Filmmakers had to be seen as readers with their own rights, and each adaptation—as a result of individual reading processes. In the last decade of research there has been a significant shift toward this dehierarchizing attitude. Adaptations are now being analysed as products of artistic creativity “caught up in the ongoing whirl of intertextual transformation, of texts generating other texts in an endless process of recycling, transformation, and transmutation, with no clear point of origin”. An adaptation is seen as interpretation, as a specific and original vision of a literary text, and even if it remains fragmentary, it is worthwhile because it embeds the book in a network of creative activities and interpersonal communication.
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Before Peter Jackson stepped into Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1954 epic The Lord of the Rings had already changed the world of fantasy, having sold more than 100 million copies and given birth to countless fans over multiple generations. One film after another, The Lord of the Rings became a massive fan and critical hit, earning altogether nearly $3 billion, more than 250 film awards (including 17 Oscars) and being hailed as the greatest film trilogy of this generation. An adaptation as interpretation does not have to capture all the nuances of the book’s complexity, but it has to remain a work of art, an independent, coherent and convincing creation with its own subtleties of meanings. In other words, it has to remain faithful to the internal logic created by the new vision of the adapted work. Even if the filmmakers’ reading of a given literary text clushes with our reading, we are willing to forgive all the alterations when they spring from a well thought-out scheme and can lend a persuasive new sense to the text.
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The pleasures of adaptation Such attitude seems to be possible only when we are able to develop a distanced relationship with a literary text. Things look different in the case of adaptations that are based on the books we love and have interiorized so intimately that they have become an integral part of our imagination. Our favourite books possess the ability to plunge us into a magic realm, into an atmosphere that embraces all our senses. By watching an adaptation we want to prolong this magic, but the strong wish to revisit the beloved world of the book through film produces a feeling of hopeful expectation mixed with anxiety because the film is going to interfere with a world that is treasured and cherished in our hearts. An adaptation which does not respond to our personal vision of the book is immediately seen as an attack on our integrity. In spite of the fact that in the case of best-sellers the audience will inevitably declare against all the details of the films that betray the cherished original, adaptations have not lost their appeal for the film industry. Filmmakers know perfectly well that their films are going to be scrutinized for any signs of unfaithfulness to the source. Nevertheless, they expose themselves freely to severe and unfavourable judgments and bring the audience’s favourites onto screen. Observing these “masochistic” tendencies in her Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon wants to find out “why anyone would agree to adapt a work, knowing their efforts would likely be scorned as secondary and inferior to the adapted text or to the audience’s own imagined versions”, “What motivates adapters, knowing that their efforts will be compared to competing imagined versions in people’s heads and inevitably be found wanting?” On the other hand she tries to explain what persuades the readers into going to the cinema or buying a DVD and watching an adaptation although they do not want to see their favourite book changed.
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Our favourite books possess the ability to plunge us into a magic realm, into an atmosphere that embraces all our senses. By watching an adaptation we want to prolong this magic.
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It appears almost certain that the appeal of adaptations lies in their mixture of repetition and difference, of familiarity and novelty what can be compared with a child’s delight in hearing the same nursery rhymes or reading the books over and over. Like ritual, this kind of repetition brings comfort, a fuller understanding, and the confidence that comes with the sense of knowing what is about to happen next.
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The repetition must be, however, accompanied by creation, by a reinvention of the familiar world and shaping it into something new. According to Hutcheon, the real comfort lies in the experience of tensions between old and new, “in the simple act of almost but not quite repeating, in the revisiting of a theme with variations”. Watching the film that resonates with echoes of a well known world, that emerges from a confluence of pleasurable memories and new ideas, is like prolonging the myth that lies at the origins of our being and does not cease to intrigue us and give us force. The appeal of adaptations is therefore rooted in the desire to witness a rebirth of this myth. The different filmic versions of one single book are all manifestations of the same wish to revisit “an old friend”. The power which attracts the filmmakers is the desire to recreate and add some freshness to the familiar world. The power which draws the audience to an adaptation is the possibility offered by the film to see and hear what they imagined and learned to love in their own imagination, the wish to enter in a more sensual way into the beloved world created by the book.anxiety because the film is going to interfere with a world that is treasured and cherished in our hearts. An adaptation which does not respond to our personal vision of the book is immediately seen as an attack on our integrity.
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The complexity of a literary work represents a great challenge to every reader because the world it evokes is an open-ended world that is left to be completed in the process of reading. The readers create their own private ideas about this world by piecing together fragmentary visions of both the directly articulated and indirectly suggested parts. An adaptation invites the viewers to discuss not only the film itself but also their private readings of the adapted text, for it gives them an opportunity to see how the cinematicly active readers have responded to the book. When we watch the film, our private form of filling in the gaps is revitalized by the confrontation with the way another creative mind has filled in the same gaps. We become part of an interpersonal artistic communication which is very rewarding because it allows us to get insight into an artist’s creative mind and through this creative mind to the literary work. This combines the pleasure in exploring the literary text through the lenses of an artist with the pleasure in participating in the inner world of that artist. We are interested in the way the authors of the film respond to the significant parts of the literary work, how they transform the relations between the characters, structures and objects, how they mold the characters, how they add richness to their portrait, how they reconstruct the latent subtexts and how they shape visually and aurally all that lies beneath the surface of the verbally articulated work. The way the filmmakers link the details of the meanings into new meanings tells us a lot about how they see the world. Another source of pleasure lies in observing the unity of the artistic communication across media. Films contextualize books in a visible and audible atmosphere and invite us to discover the unsuspected ways of seeing and hearing things. A specific combination of images and sounds can provide insights into the nature of the deepseated meanings that do not lend themselves easily to verbal exploration. The ideas mystified in symbols and the veiled references to different aspects of life that we once decoded in a particular way speak to us from a new perspective and we learn to appreciate a literary text on a different level, we begin to notice that many of its elements gain a new life when interpreted in the context of the new medium’s specificity.
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Some theorists argue that it is a great mistake “to make absolute, unreconcilable distinctions between visual and verbal texts� and that in a certain way all works of art offer multilayered modes of communication that break through the virtually established barriers between the different media. Each work lays the groundwork for many possible adaptations because each art can play with elements of other arts. Artistic devices such as metaphors or symbols are not just literary means of conveying significance, symbolic structures exist in all forms of artistic activity, in all fields of human creation, and using some of the devices that are characteristic of other media cannot be seen as borrowing from other arts, but as choosing from the broad range of mediatic possibilities offered by the nature of the world and deriving from the desires of the humans to communicate and to address all human senses. Works of art are made for people seen as a unity of body and soul, where the mental perception of the world is possible through the unity of senses, therefore they cannot be seen in isolation and with the focus on a small range of sensual possibilities offered by a specific medium. A literary work speaks to us not only through its words printed on paper, it can be also read to us, so that we get to know it by listening to a human voice. A painting is not only an image but also the temperature of
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the colours, their texture and the story the patterns and the colours tell us. These faculties of all forms of artistic expression prove their transitional and mediating nature and invite to translations and neverending decoding and encoding transformations. A filmic adaptation is particularly pleasurable because it combines the conceptual world of a literary text with images and sounds and brings literature back to its original unity of spoken word underscored by music and accompanied by the physical presence of the performing artist. This bodily presence of a human being seems to appeal most forcefully to our senses and is the starting point of another sort of pleasure—the fascination with the performers. Comparing various adaptations of a book we refer most of the time to the actors that shape the adaptations in the most visible way, we often go to the cinema or buy a DVD because of some ingenious interpretation of particular role. The actors are what we most deeply remember a film and what we most love or hate about it. When we do not get to love the actor who is playing the role of our favourite character, this will spoil the whole film even if all other aspects of it are brilliant. When we love the actors and their performance, we begin to gain new access to the well-known characters because of the great impact of the actors’ corporality on our emotions. Feelings shaped previously into verbal language now continue to mediate between visually present people and the viewers. The characters, previously imagined vaguely within the world of the text, now expand to the world of really existing people. Our attitude towards the characters is marked by the performers’ acting skills, it can be even fully changed in comparison with our first contact with the adapted text, for the actors have the most direct power to suggest subtexts to the story and play a crucial role in establishing a relationship to the book. The brilliant performance of a supporting actor can even reorganize the hierarchy of the characters we have in mind by letting a character who appears in the book on the margin of the main story emerge from his shadowy existence.
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Laura Mulvey stresses another aspect of the fascination with the actors. She argues that the magic of the greatest films emerges from their ability to manipulate visual pleasure by encoding eroticism into the film language. A character’s erotic charm is developed on two levels—for the characters within the film story and for the viewers within the auditorium—and the pleasure in looking takes the film for a short but intensive moment “into a no-man’s-land outside its own time and space” in which it becomes an energetic field of projections of the viewer’s dreams and desires. Films often cast actors who do not look like the correspondig characters in the book in order to make the protagonists a better matrix for projections from the audience. It does not mean that the actresses and actors have to be particularly beautiful or handsome, on the contrary, the more hidden and indirect their attractiveness is, the more likely they are to have an erotic impact on the audience, for a film can be a catalyst of projections only if it plays with this potential in an indirect and subtle way.
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In the process of adaptation, apart from being translated into a sequence of visible images, the written words of a book are transformed to an oral/aural text, spoken by the actors or an off-screen narrator and received by the audience through hearing. There is no doubt that the human voice has the power to move people’s feelings and that this ability can be used by the filmmakers to manipulate the audience’s response to a film. It is, however, very difficult to explain why a person can get so much pleasure out of listening to a particular voice. The functions of the qualities that form the nature of a voice and are responsible for its individual colour are one of the most enigmatic aspects of interpersonal communication. We can only assume that the magic of a voice derives from those of its attributes that can be instinctively associated with some positive experiences in our lives and with people we are attracted to. Our fascination with the voice through which a literary text communicates with us can prolong this pleasurable experience and add some new force to the text itself. The undeniable pleasure in analysing the film language concerns all aspects of the filmic adaptation and can be regarded as a response to the human wish to evaluate. We simply adore judging works of art. We cannot help giving opinions about the artistic value of the means of expression employed in a film and about the selections undertaken by the filmmakers and the impact they have on the reception of the story. Judging a film and its authors gives us pleasure even if we give a negative opinion about some aspects of the film because it produces a feeling of satisfaction with our own reading skills due to the sensation of being better than the filmmakers at decoding the multifaceted literary text.
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Learning from adaptation In 2006 some students of the University of Szczecin participated in a three-day film workshop on adapting Heinrich Heine’s famous poem dedicated to the legendary Rhine maiden Loreley. They worked together with some film professionals in order to put their theoretical ideas about adaptation into practice by creating two film versions of the poem. The main objective of the workshop that payed homage to the great German poet was to experience the richness of creative tensions that arose out of the fact that all what was expressed verbally in the poem and pictured by the force of imagination in the students’ heads had now to be transposed to a different kind of perception. The students had to learn how to take risks and read a literary text in its openness to new decoding possibilities. The workshop revealed the intensity of the tensions that sprang from the desire to break down the original structures of the poem in order to stress some of its latent subtleties and from the strong wish not to betray the literary source. The students had the opportunity to understand that creating a special mood was far more important than following exactly all the details of the story. It was very rewarding to look at the ways in which the poem changed without stopping to be the same, how it gained new meanings by preserving its integrity, how it spoke to us through its embeddedness in the new context of production and reception.
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Let us now look at some advantages of engaging philology students in the process of literature-to-film adaptation. Hardly believed to do so, images do grant insight into the inner strength of a literary work, to what lies behind the literal surface. In an effort to visualize the poem, to construct a new order of it, the students come paradoxically closer to the text. Actively involved with the filmic creation they develop, surprisingly, a text-centred approach, they experience a greater communicative intimacy with the text focusing on each word in order to reconstruct its several possible meanings and connotations. The process of looking for appropriate images and music that could convey the meanings of the poem helps to detect the subtle nuances of the words and to develop a broader understanding of the text. Students who establish a visually reinforced relationship with the words have a finely tuned sense for their hidden messages. Making a film reveals to the students some details that they missed as they first read the poem, it helps them to decipher some of the symbols that they did not understand at the time. This gives them an opportunity to arrive at a different reading of the textual clues and to develop a greater self-awareness as readers. This cinematic approach cannot exhaust all the interpretative possibilities of a literary work, but it can enrich some of the verbally constructed concepts with fruitful visual associations and stimulate the hidden meanings of the words to emerge. Students involved in the process of filmmaking learn an important lesson about cinematic creation. The film is a product of a team’s work, of a balance between a number of personalities that have to flow into one, of a combination of thoughts and ideas that nourish each other. The readings of a text that exist in the minds of several persons form only a starting point for the mutually elaborated final product. The students break through the intimacy of a personal contact with a literary text into an interpersonal process of sharing the decoded meanings in an interaction and integrating their own response to the text into somebody else’s reading. Many ideas have to remain unrealized, many ways of visualizing something have to
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There is no doubt that the human voice has the power to move people’s feelings and that this ability can be used by the filmmakers to manipulate the audience’s response to a film.
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be given up the awareness of all these losses teaches the students how to be humble. They learn to understand that a film emerges from an energetic encounter between its creators and the whole context of institutional and economic selections. This is also due to the simple fact that making a film out of a natural closeness to nature admits one “filmmaker” more: the weather conditions and their impact on the decisions made during the adapting process. Participating in an adaptation workshop influences the students’ attitude to the fidelity issue and makes them understand better the problems related to intertextuality. Both short films made during the Loreley-workshop move the traditional setting of the legend to the coast of Poland. In spite of the fact that the Loreleymyth is closely related to the Rhine, locating the story against the background of a seashore cannot be regarded as destroying the spirit of the legend. The stress is on the mysterious power of Loreley and on the motif of water as a natural element, not on a particular rock or a concrete river in a given geographic region. The films explore the internal logic of the world constructed by both the legend and the poem and pay homage to the Romantic notion of the multifaceted relationship between the real world and the supernatural forces that guide people’s lives. In consequence of this open structure of reading literature, the students develop a higher consciousness of the intertextual openness of culture. All these advantages of engaging philology students in a film workshop give new evidence of the necessity to promote a symbiotic relationship between scientific and artistic activities. The move from a traditional academic form of reading literature into a bodily and creatively engaging process of filmmaking heightens the students’ receptivity, stimulates their imagination and strengthens their power to analyse a broader range of meaningful structures which are offered by works of art. The students learn that all arts are interrelated because all seek to express the eternally valid truths of man’s existence. They learn that each great work of art exists on many levels and suggests a great deal of interpretative possibilities which make it timelessly open to different approaches.
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0
books vs. films
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[1=100,000]
film rating book rating The Hunger Games Les Miserables Harry Potter The Lincoln Lawyer Breaking Dawn Pride and Prejudice The Great Gatsby
David Yates J.K. Rowling Brad Furman Michael Connelly Bill Condon Stephenie Meyer Joe Wright Jane Austen Baz Luhrmann F. Scott Fitzgerald Tim Burton Lewis Carroll
The Lord of the Rings
Peter Jackson JRR Tolkien
Confessions of a Shopaholic
David Fincher Stieg Larsson P.J. Hogan Sophie Kinsella
The Reader
Stephen Daldry Bernhard Schlink
The Other Boleyn Girl
Justin Chadwick Philippa Gregory
Revolutionary Road The Kite Runner Atonement The Devil Wears Prada Charlotte’s Web
Sam Mendes Richard Yates Marc Forster Khaled Hosseini Joe Wright Ian McEwan David Frankel Lauren Weisberger Gary Winick E.B. White
The Last King of Scotland
Kevin Macdonald Giles Foden
The Chronicles of Narnia
Andrew Adamson C.S. Lewis
Million Dollar Baby Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Memoirs of a Geisha The Notebook
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Tom Hooper Victor Hugo
Alice in Wonderland
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
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Gary Ross Suzanne Collins
Clint Eastwood F.X. Toote Tim Burton Roald Dahl Rob Marshall Arthur Golden Nick Cassavettes Nicholas Sparks
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50
60
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90
100
This is a visualised comparison of the average reviews for a selection of Hollywood movies and the books they were based on. It will go some way to answering the age old question: Should you watch the film or read the book?
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It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is so wonderful.
Matilda Roald Dahl
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2
Movies You Didn’t Know Were Adapted From Books
1. Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry
2. Forrest Gump by Winston Groom
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(Left to right, top to bottom): 3. Shrek! by William Steig, 4. Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, 5. First Blood by David Morrell, 6. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Wang Dulu.
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(Left to right, top to bottom): 7. Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, 8. The Graduate by Charles Webb, 9. Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, 10. Drive by James Sallis, 11. The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith, 12. Alias Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine, 13. Election by Tom Perrotta, 14. Father of the Bride by Edward Streeter, 15. Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story by Cameron Crowe.
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16. “The Birds,” part of The Apple Tree collection by Daphne du Maurier
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17. Jaws by Peter Benchley
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(Left to right): 18. The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, 19. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.
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So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
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3
FILM COMMENTARY: DIRECTOR JOE WRIGHT PRIDE & PREJUDICE FILM AND NOVEL
[opening title SEQUENCE] time frame: 00:00:30 IT starts with the blackbird. the blackbird we chose as Elizabeth Bennet t’s bird. So often throughout the film, as something happens to Lizzy you’ll hear a blackbird.
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[SETTING: bENNET’S HOME] time frame: 01:45 The original idea was not to have an opening shot and to start direc tly on a close-up of Elizabe th. I like the idea of it se t ting the story, that this is about a girl who falls in love. In a way she’s doing here is reading the story that is about to happen to her. um, got ta be quick huh? There’s so much to talk about! [inhales]
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chapter i PAGE 12 Line 4
What is his name?” Bingley.” Is he married or single?” Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”
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[setting: Groombridge House, Kent] time frame: 00:04:22 Daddy in control. I cast Donald Sutherland, uh, because I saw him in Cold Mountain and he reminded me of...well, I’ ve been a fan of his from way before then but he reminded me of my own father And sometimes you just have to go with your own sentimental reasons for making a decision.
“How so? How can it affect them?” “My dear Mr. Bennet,” replied his wife, “how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.” “Is that his design in settling here?” “Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.” “I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.” “My dear, you f latter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.” “In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.” “But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.” “It is more than I engage for, I assure you.”
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chapter iii PAGE 19 Line 29
An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day, and, consequently, unable to accept the honour of their invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that he might be always f lying about from one place to another, and never settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London [SETTING: meryton assembly halls] time frame: 00:05:03
only to get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed then this here is the only set we actually built for the film.
that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen Um, they really didn’t exist, the assembly halls, anymore And
with him to the assembly. The girls grieved over such a number this, I think, was probably my favourite four days of shoot-
of ladies, but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing, ing. We had a lot of people and we designed the set
that instead of twelve he brought only six with him from Lonso it felt crammed. So we find out how many extras we
don—his five sisters and a cousin. And when the party entered could afford then we built the set around the extras.
the assembly room it consisted of only five altogether—Mr. [STAMMERS] a proper English knees-up, and to create that
Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another sweaty, hot atmosphere. So we kept the cameras back and
young man.
we shot the shit out of it. We got everyone going as much
as possible And tried to get the extras to feel like they
were actors and feel like they’re really part of it. So all
the cast weren’t kept separate. Often on sets cast are kept
separate from extras and there’s a kind of elitism going on,
but we tried to integrate everyone. A lot of gay Australians
amongst the dancers there, um... [stammers]
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I wanted to hold back looking at Darcy, um seeing Darcy, for a while. So you don’t really see him clearly until Elizabeth sees him. The whole idea of the film is to make it as subjective as possible. So you’re constantly seeing the world through her eyes.
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The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs. Bennet had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield party. Mr. Bingley had danced with her twice, They’re very cute together in this. I like that move of Simon’s
and she had been distinguished by his sisters. Jane was as much
there. He almost goes the wrong way. I like the fact the
gratified by this as her mother could be, though in a quieter way. dancing isn’t too perfect.
Elizabeth felt Jane’s pleasure. Mary had heard herself mentioned to Miss Bingley as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Catherine and Lydia had been fortunate enough never to be without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball.
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chapter XI PAGE 76 Line 16
[setting: THE DRAWING ROOM] time frame: 00:19:56 This scene is part of the um…one of the scene that we use to do in auditions and castings for Darcy. And um, and so when we ac tually came to shoot it, it ’ ve been done so many times and there’s some kind of pressure on this scene…um, that we were all quite nervous of it but luckily allow us a lot of time to shoot it. That ’s the big differences for me bet ween working in television and film is that you did get a bit of extra time to shoot. Which it allows you to do lit tle
“Miss Eliza Bennet, let me persuade you to follow my example,
flourishes and you don’ t just have to cover it up.
and take a turn about the room. I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.” Elizabeth was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Bingley succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr. Darcy looked up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention in that quarter as Elizabeth herself could be, and unconsciously closed his book. He was directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing that he could imagine but two motives for their choosing to walk up and down the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would interfere. “What could he mean? She was dying to know what could be his meaning?”—and asked Elizabeth whether she could at all understand him? “Not at all,” was her answer; “but depend upon it, he means to be severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him will be to ask nothing about it.” Miss Bingley, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Darcy in anything, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his two motives.
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“I have not the smallest objection to explaining them,” said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. “You either choose this method of passing the evening because you are in each other’s confidence, and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you it sounds more like Jane Austen then Darcy to me…
are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking; if the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire.” “Oh! shocking!” cried Miss Bingley. “I never heard anything so abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?” “Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,” said Elizabeth. “We can all plague and punish one another. Tease him—laugh at him. Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.” “But upon my honour, I do not. I do assure you that my intimacy has not yet taught me that. Tease calmness of manner and presence of mind! No, no; I feel he may defy us there. And as to laughter, we will not expose ourselves, if you please, by attempting to laugh without a subject. Mr. Darcy may hug himself.”
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“Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!” cried Elizabeth. “That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to me to have many such acquaintances. I dearly love a laugh.” “Miss Bingley,” said he, “has given me more credit than can be. The wisest and the best of men—nay, the wisest and best of their actions—may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.” “Certainly,” replied Elizabeth—”there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without.” “Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.”
Such as vanity and pride.” Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride—where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”
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[SETTING: l ake near bENNET’S HOME] time frame: 00:50:28
o, That was a nice moment! it was pure fluke! Those geese. We turned over and just as I c all ac tion the geese lifted up and fle w acr oss the lake. It was heaven.
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[SETTING: Hunsford parsonage] time frame: 01:08:22
Jane Austen described Pride & Prejudice, the novel, as being too light, and um, lacking in shade. and so one of the things I did was try and bring in a lit tle bit of that shade…to the story. So the next sec tion is involved a bit of that. He’s le t all that opening speech out and he’s prepared all of that speech but wasn’ t prepared to say ‘I love you’. He’s writ ten it down and thought about it and rehearse it. Which is why he rushes through it so quickly and then surprised himself by saying ‘I love you’. It didn’ t occur to him but he couldn’ t help himself, but to tell her.
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In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.�
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[setting: Stanage Edge, Derbyshire] time frame: 01:19:39
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chapter XLIII PAGE 307 Line 01
Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter. The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent. Elizabeth’s mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!
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chapter LXXXVI PAGE 430 Line 34
On opening the door, she perceived her sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in earnest conversation; and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of both, as they hastily turned round and moved away from each other, would have told it all. Their situation was awkward enough; but hers she thought was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and Elizabeth was on the point of going away again, when Bingley, who as well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few words to her sister, ran out of the room.
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[SETTING: near Bennet’s home] time frame: 01:53:09
This was a magical morning. We all got up at 3.00am or something, and went out. and we prepared in the dark. And then waited for the first light. And then we had about 50 minutes to shoot this scene in. It felt really special doing it. I bat tle with myself over this scene because it ’s probably a bit over the top and over-romantic and slushy, but if we haven’ t earned it by now, then we never will have.
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You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.�
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chapter LVIII PAGE 455 Line 23
Elizabeth feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very f luently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable. They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects. She soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding to the efforts of his aunt, who did call on him in her return through London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the substance of her conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship’s apprehension, peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief that such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise from her nephew which she had refused to give. Unluckily for her ladyship, its effect had been exactly contrariwise.
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[ENDING CREDITS] time frame: 02:01:50
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Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.
Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
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4
interview: Author Yann Martel how Life of Pi became a Hollywood film
Life of Pi was a best-seller when it was published 11 years ago – and like just about every other best-seller, it caught the eye of film producers. But not every great book can become a great film, or maybe not even a film at all. KPCC’s Patt Morrison spoke with Yann Martel, the author of the novel, about how his book finally made the leap from the page to the screen. Since its publishing in 2001, Martel’s Life of Pi has become one of the most beloved novels in recent memory. It has been published in more than 40 languages, and won the Man Booker Prize in 2002. The book tells the story of Pi, a 16-yearold who is stranded on a lifeboat for 227 days with a Bengal Tiger after being shipwrecked in the Pacific Ocean. Part of the story is sheer survival, as Pi must figure out not only how to stay alive in the middle of the ocean, but also how to survive at such close quarters with the tiger. The other part of the story revolves around the spiritual explorations of the young Pi, who considers himself a student of many religions.
You read a couple of screenplays— how did it strike you?
00:01:54
In terms of the overall vision, I quite early on decided that I had to let go. I didn’t want to be one of these annoying writers who, you know, barks and cajoles with emails, and saying I want you to do it this way or that way, because, after all, I’m a writer, I’m not a filmmaker. And because I trusted Ang Lee, I let go and I said you make the movie you want, and I won’t bother you. I’ll help you to the extent that you want me to help, and when you don’t want my help that’s fine, I’ll just step back. Because after all, to him will go all the praise and all the condemnation for this movie. It is his, you know, it’s based on my book, but it really is his movie, so I didn’t want to get in the way of him making his movie, I respected his artistic integrity.
Can they convey the interiority of Life of Pi in a film? 00:02:44
I guess you have to take the novel and turn it inside out. I mean, in one very obvious way for example, in the novel I never describe what Pi looks like because it didn’t matter to me what he looked like, whether he was tall or short, plump or skinny, is completely irrelevant. I never describe him because it’s irrelevant, and in Life of Pi, in the book, we see events through his eyes. In a sense, the reader settles in behind Pi’s eyes, like you would a passenger in a car and, you know, he’s driving, and you see what he sees and he drives. So in that sense it was very interior and you look out. Well obviously in the movie, the gaze is otherwise, the gaze is outside and we are looking at Pi. So the direction of the gaze was very different. We are no longer seeing it from Pi’s perspective, and from this sort of omniscient perspective. So that changes things. So what you have to do in adapting a novel to the screen is, in a sense, translate the voice. You have to sort of retell the story by the means of cinema.
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the adapting of a novel to the screen entails cutting away great chunks of that novel, and sometimes that works well and sometimes it doesn’t.
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The problem is they should not compare, because it would be like comparing two languages...
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00:03:31
You can’t be too slavish to the adaptation. I mean, the problem with cinema is few people are not willing to sit for a 3-hour movie and to be honest, for a novel the best meduim would be 1. a 10 2-hour movies that would fully capture a lengthy novel. So the cuts are simply for the sake of time. Also, you want one that capture really the essence of the movie. It’s a short movie. I think it’s 2 hours and 5 minutes. It remains very faithful to the book. Now, if you read the book you will definitely recognize it in the movie. There’s um...it’s very faithful. If you haven’t read it, what I liked about it...what I admire Ang, he was very ambitious. He didn’t try to simplify it or any way to dumb it down. So despite being very visually appealing, and all of that, there’s sort of a density to it. So it some ways, yeah, he has suceeded in translating the novel to the screen.
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I’ve noticed that Hollywood is kind of like a vacuum cleaner, looking for stories constantly. I wouldn’t
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want to [make the film] just because of all of the challenges if I were a filmmaker.
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i didn’t want to be one of these annoying writers who barks [through] emails—because, after all, I’m a writer, not a filmmaker.
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There will be people—carrying Life of Pi making comparisons and who have never read the book will see the movie and think that is the story...?
00:04:31
In the novel, Part 2 starts with the ship sinking. [In the book] it’s relatively concise because words are not that good at describing physical events. Words are very good at describing emotions and some primary, simple visual things. But something complex as a ship sinking, you don’t want to start getting out too many complicated metaphors because it gets in the way. So the sinking of the ship in the book is fairly short. In the movie, it’s this extraordinary event. It’s stupendous. The way the ship is done, you are on that ship. It’s extraordinarily vivid. So there’s one scene where the language of cinema conveyed very powerfully, not only visually but emotionally, an event that’s key in the novel, but in the novel is done fairly quickly because words are weaker at conveying that. So I would suggest to people to try not to compare too much, and just see them as companion pieces.
Yann Martel joins those lead novelist who has works that turned into film. Yann Martel, what a pleasure to talk to you.
00:06:21
Thank you.
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You can’t live your life for other people. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, even if it hurts some people you love.
The Notebook Nicholas Sparks
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Bibliography & Picture Credits
“24 Frames: Classic Books on Film” 07 May, 2013. Rottentomatoes.com. “40 Best Film Adaptations”. Shortlist.com. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. CRW Publishing Limited, 2003. “Best 100 Opening Lines From Books”. Stylist.co.uk. Galindo, Brian. “25 Famous Movies That You Might Not Know Were Based On Books” 07 October, 2013. Buzzfeed.com. Jeane. “Transcript of Joe Wright’s P&P DVD” 06 March, 2008. Prideandprejudice05.blogspot.com. Marciniak, Malgorzata. The Appeal of Novel-to-Film Adaptations. Adam Mickiewicz University, 2011. Martel, Yann. “Author Yann Martel and how Life of Pi became a Hollywood film”. KPCC Take Two. 21 November, 2012. Radio. Peterson, Jeff. “Why Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings succeeded as an adaptation” 07 December, 2012. Deseretnews.com. Pride and Prejudice. Joe Wright. Focus Features, 2005. Film. “Top 10 movie adaptations” 15 November, 2013. Theguardian.com.
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index
Adaptation, 7-27, 31 Alice in Wonderland, 28 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 13 Appeal, 7, 22 Artistic devices, 17 Atonement, 28 Austen, Jane, 28, 39-67 Beowulf, 16 Breaking Dawn, 28 Bronte, Charlotte, 19 Bronte, Emily, 6 Burton, Tim, 28 Carroll, Lewis, 28 Chadwick, Justin, 28 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, 11, 28 Charlotte’s Web, 28 Cinematic adaptation, 7, 26 Collins, Suzanne, 28 Condon, Bill, 28 Confessions of a Shopaholic, 28 Connelly, Michael, 28 Dahl, Roald, 11, 30 Daldry, Stephen, 28
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Ending credit, 67 Eyre, Jane, 19 Filmmaking, 7-27 Fincher, David, 28 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 27, 28 Furman, Brad, 28 Golden, Arthur, 20 Goldman, William, 18 Harry Potter, 28 Heaney, Seamus, 16 Heine, Heinrich, 22 Hogan, P.J., 28 Hooper, Tom, 28 Hugo, Victor, 8 Hutcheon, Linda, 10 Jackson, Peter, 9, 28 Kinsella, Sophie, 28 Larsson, Stieg, 28 Les Miserables, 8, 28 Lolita, 15 Luhrmann, Baz, 28
Matilda, 30 Mendes, Sam, 28 Memoirs of a Geisha, 20, 28 Meyer, Stephenie, 28 Million Dollar Baby, 28 Mulvey, Laura, 19 Novel, 20 Pride and Prejudice, 28, 39-67 Revolutionary Road, 28 Ross, Gary, 28 Rowling, J.K., 28 Schlink, Bernhard, 28
The Lord of the Rings, 9, 28 The Notebook, 28 The Other Boleyn Girl, 28 The Princess Bride, 18 The Reader, 24, 28 Theory, 8 Theory of Adaptation, 10 Tolkien, J.R.R., 9, 28 University of Szczecin, 22 Wright, Joe, 28 Wuthering Heights, 6 Yates, David, 28 Yates, Richard, 28
The Chronicles of Narnia, 28 The Devil Wears Prada, 28 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 28 The Great Gatsby, 27, 28 The Hunger Games, 28 The Kite Runner, 28 The Last King of Scotland, 28 The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, 19 The Lincoln Lawyer, 28
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printing: Blurb.com typography: Myriad pro, Baskerville Design: Julia Huynh editor: Julia Huynh
Novels and films have been joined at the hip ever since the earliest days of cinema, and adaptations of novels have regularly provided audiences with the classier end of the film spectrum. Some remain faithful to the writer’s original book; some take the source material into previously unimagined areas. This complication book emphasizes the relationship between novels and films.
Film is visual brevity.... If the novel is a poem, the film is a telegram.
Screenwriter Michael Hastings