Wednesday, September 29, 2010

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The adaptation. The film needs stories
Paidós Frédéric Sabouraud, 2010

This book of just 90 pages, is a recopilacón articles editor of "Cahiers du cinéma 'Frédéric Sabouraud (on the cover, no less, is misspelled as 'Subouraud'), all on the issue of adapting books to film, published in 2006 in France. The first and longest of these, covering the first 60 pages, mentions the most important elements to consider when analyzing adpater film: the narrator, time, space, sound, characters and limits production. In the remaining pages are ten short texts on specific scenes from movies or isolated thoughts.

The book is not at any time a "how to adapt books to film." Rather a series of essays that review ideas quickly, citing a few specific examples to illustrate each. To talk about the narrator, quoted 'Jules and Jim' by François Truffaut and his peculiar use of voiceover. Speaking of the ellipse, it is mentioned "Sansho the Bailiff 'by Kenji Mizoguchi, who jumps ten years of a Japanese folktale. Speaking of the expansion and spoken narrative traps of Alfred Hitchcock, especially 'Psycho' and how to display and hide both the case of the mother of Norman Bates. In trying to more or less faithful adaptations or personal, it brings up 'the process' of Franz Kafka filmed by Orson Welles, who once said it was his most autobiographical movie and "the only one that I feel close." To discuss matters of production and economy, presents' The Lord of the Rings and its many obstacles and technical findings. All of them, and many more, are based on books, some better known than others, each with their own difficulties in adaptation.

Most of the films mentioned are more popular than books, so it's a shame not to talk a bit more of the problems of adapting books archiconocidos where public reaction can be quite hostile for the simple reason to deviate too much from the original work is already known (the cover of the edition I read, for example, brings a frame ' Bram Stoker's Dracula 'movie that is not mentioned in the text at all).

During the book is repeated more than once that the movies inherited conceptions of literature, painting and theater. This reflection has become so commonplace that perpetuates unquestioned. For the simple fact that the film is the youngest art form of all these, it seems that is logically to be taken elements of the above bound. In the early days of cinema, when the first were really professional theater actors, painters, photographers and writers, maybe I had a series of clear influences, but is it still true today that? What is theater or painting people, compared with the amount of film you see? Do younger directors, rather, "base their movies in pictorial, theatrical or literary? Many years since any child is much more exposed in childhood to well over film and animation to drama, painting or reading, which would these other arts film that could be considered narrated, photographed film or films made live on stage. One thing is to get an idea for a photograph of 'Alatriste' or 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' inspired by Velazquez or Vermeer, or respect more or less the text of a Hamlet, a Cyrano or Tenorio, and a further consideration to the movies a mere successor to those other arts with which it shares certain themes.

Moreover, speaking of French critics, especially of 'Cahiers' of the text is written in fairly intellectualized. A sample is the conclusion of the first article, which reads: "What distinguishes a successful adaptation now appears due less to their" loyalty "in the narrow meaning of the word that the way, resisting the pressure of producing images logic uniform, standardized, empty of meaning, achieved with different modes of belief, to preserve a unique writing based on a close reading of a work provided and an acute awareness the present time which places this work: to put the work in the present-a present multifaceted, contradictory and paradoxical, to address the plurality of being-viewer conscious of being contradictory and in their desire protean film, "that Today the objective could be persistent and complex adaptation. "

All is not well written, thankfully, and there are several notes and valuable analysis on specific scenes and ways of adapting that are very revealing, especially when there is an explicit plea by the director. For those interested, the films mentioned are to some extent, apart from those mentioned, "Rosemary's Baby" by Roman Polanski, "Journal d'un curé de campagne 'by Robert Bresson," Wild at Heart' by David Lynch, "Contempt" by Jean-Luc Godard, 'Crash' and 'Madame Butterfly' by David Cronenberg, 'La Moustache' by Emmanuel Carrère, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and 'Sleepy Hollow' by Tim Burton 'The Shining' by Stanley Kubrick, "The Rules of the Game ',' The Lower Depths" and "A Day in field 'of Jean Renoir,' Wow 'by Chantal Akerman,' O brother 'of the Coen brothers and' The Big Heat "by Fritz Lang.

As one would expect, is mentioned the book "Hitchcock / Truffaut," in which the second interview, the first in 1983. I think ever since I read a French text on film that does not mention this book. : D

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