The interplay between literature and cinema is as old as the medium of celluloid. Transferring novels, short stories, plays, and even poetry, to the screen has always played a crucial role in popularizing literature. Books usually provide films with the raw material, with a narrative line and characters which are already described. Anyway, books leave more to our imagination and films may not be completely faithful to their plots.
Having just watched Emily Brönte´s Wuthering Heights may make me reread this masterpiece of elemental and universal passions. Sweeping love, hate, revenge... Set against the Yorkshire moors, a landscape as wild as the relationship of the main characters, the novel is considered the heart and soul of the romantic spirit. The film is full of really powerful scenes, one of them when Heathcliff tears Catherine´s grave open, removing one side of her coffin. Gothic elements also appear in Charlotte Brönte´s Jane Eyre and the new adaptation released a few months ago. There are persecutions, a threatening atmosphere, a gloomy manor house, madness and cruelty. But this 19th century novel also heralds a new kind of heroine, one whose independence, persistence and virtuous integrity let her triumph over class barriers to win equal status with the man she loves.
Obviously, watching a film is not the same as reading a novel. They are different aesthetic genres with different conventions. Each of them has its own language and art of seduction, but both can explain the meaning of the world, who we are and what we are like. Both have the ability of entertaining, appealing to our emotions and moving us. They are simply good allies and, however good or bad an adaptation may be, it is always good news if it sends viewers back to the literary source.
Obviously, watching a film is not the same as reading a novel. They are different aesthetic genres with different conventions. Each of them has its own language and art of seduction, but both can explain the meaning of the world, who we are and what we are like. Both have the ability of entertaining, appealing to our emotions and moving us. They are simply good allies and, however good or bad an adaptation may be, it is always good news if it sends viewers back to the literary source.
