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.
A teacher told one day: "In ten years You will forget your professor’s name, maybe your friends names, the title of this book, but you can never forget Heathcliff your whole life.’’ He was right.
ReplyDeleteI have revised a lot of cinema vocabulary with quiz, I have learned new expressions and it has been funny too. Thanks, Ana.
ReplyDeleteIt has happened with the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Twilight saga and now The Hunger Games. Thanks to Hollywood and a lot of marketing more and more young people read this kind of bestsellers eagerly. By the way, Wuthering Heights is the favourite book of Bella, the vampire in Twilight.
ReplyDeleteIt is commonplace, and it sounds very snob, to say that the book is always better than the film, but I don´t agree with that. I am thinking of novels which have been eclipsed by a film adaptation. Let´s take Hitchcock´s, for example. Psycho was adapted from a mediocre novel (I don´t even know the author´s name). Others were wellknown writers: Patricia Highsmith´s Strangers on a Train, John Buchan´s The 39 Steps, Daphne du Maurier´s Rebecca or Sabotage, based on Joseph Conrad´s The Secret Agent.
ReplyDeleteIt is usually said that Daphne du Maurier was the 20th c. Charlotte Brontë and Rebecca the 20th c. Jane Eyre. The parallels between both are obvious: the innocent heroine falling in love with an older and rich man who keeps dreadful secrets, the mysterious mad woman locked in the attic, the Gothic country mansion burnt to the ground...
DeletePerhaps it is only a coincidence, but Joan Fontaine starred Rebecca, with Laurence Olivier, and Jane Eyre in another classic film featuring Orson Welles too. The pleasure of reading the book and watching the adaptation is that, though you already know the story and characters, you can make comparisons and see what is missing.
DeleteBlog interesante y motivador para el fomento de la lectura
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