Introduction: On the Text–Film Relationship – The Question of Apt and Inapt Adaptations

Summary

THE DRAMA OF AUTHORSHIP

For many years adaptation theory largely revolved around the question of fidelity to the original source. It relied on the notion of the author’s intention as a benchmark for the success of the literary text and its adaptation. In the last thirty years, scholars such as Sarah Cardwell, Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan have criticised the dominant view about the primacy of the literary source for the evaluation of film adaptations. In her survey of the more recurrent theoretical approaches to film adaptations, Cardwell mentions medium-specific theories which see each separate medium as unique. She refers to George Bluestone’s book Novels into Film ‘as an archetypal example of a strong medium-specific approach’. Bluestone thinks that each medium is autonomous and has its unique properties. He suggests that ‘differences in form and theme are inseparable from differences in media’. According to Bluestone, while time serves as the formative principle in the novel, ‘the formative principle in the film is space’. He goes on to say that: ‘While the novel takes its space for granted and forms its narrative in a complex of time values, the film takes its time for granted and forms its narrative in arrangements of space.’

Cardwell recognises the limitations of such an approach, highlighting advantages of the comparative approach which originated in the 1970s and was based on the narrative deconstruction of both film and book. As Cardwell notes, the comparative approach ‘can explain instances of fidelity’ and ‘allows for the possibility of “faithful adaptation”’, while recognising fundamental differences between the two media. In contrast to specialists interested in the medium-specific approach, many film critics use the comparative approach together with semiotics in order to establish how ‘the same narrative is told using different conventions’. Michael Klein and Gillian Parker, prominent representatives of the comparative approach, justify their use of semiotics as follows:

In addition to its distinct formal and expressive aspects, film also conveys a range of cultural signs – the facial expressions, gestures, dialects, dress, and style of its characters; the architecture, advertising, landscape, and common artifacts of its setting; the semiotic expression of a culture in a particular historical period.