The Literature Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation

393 Pages·2007·10.87 MB·English

by  James M. Welsh

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FILM / LITERATURE e
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From examinations of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, The h
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Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation covers a wide range of fi lms adapted from other sources. &
The fi rst section presents essays on the hows and whys of adaptation studies, and subse-
quent sections highlight fi lms adapted from such literature genres as classic and popular
literature, drama, biography, and memoir. The last section offers a new departure for adapta-
tion studies, suggesting that fi lms about history—often a separate category of fi lm study—can
be viewed as adaptations of records of the past. The anthology concludes with speculations
about the future of adaptation studies.
Several essays provide detailed analyses of fi lms, in some cases discussing more than one
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adaptation of a literary or dramatic source, such as The Manchurian Candidate, The Quiet American, H
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and Romeo and Juliet. Other works examined include Moby Dick, The House of Mirth, Dracula, and

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Starship Troopers, which demonstrates the breadth of material considered for this anthology.
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Although many of these essays have appeared in Literature/Film Quarterly, more than half are
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original contributions. Chosen for their readability, they avoid theoretical jargon as much as IR
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possible. For this reason alone, this collection will be of interest to not only cinema scholars SA
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but also anyone interested in fi lms and their source material. Ultimately, The Literature/Film
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Reader provides an excellent overview of this critical aspect of fi lm studies. S
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James M. Welsh R
is professor emeritus of English at Salisbury University, Salisbury, F
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Maryland. He cofounded Literature/Film Quarterly in 1973 and served as its editor for more than
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thirty years. He also founded the Literature/Film Association. He is the author, editor, or series AF
editor of numerous books, including The Cinema of Tony Richardson (1999) and The Encyclopedia of P
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Great Filmmakers (2002). AL
T
M
I
Peter Lev O
is professor of electronic media and fi lm at Towson University. His books in-
N
clude The Euro-American Cinema (1993), American Films of the 1970s: Confl icting Visions (2000), and R
volume 7 of the History of the American Cinema series, Transforming the Screen: The Fifties (2003). E THE
A
L I T E R AT U R E / F I L M
D
For orders and information please contact the publisher E
SCARECROW PRESS, INC. R R E A D E R
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefi eld Publishing Group, Inc. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5949-4
ISBN-10: 0-8108-5949-1
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200
90000
Lanham, Maryland 20706
1-800-462-6420 / fax [phone]
9 780810 859494 ISSUES OF ADAPTATION
www.scarecrowpress.com
Cover image from Bram Stroker’s Dracula © Columbia Pictures/Photofest
Cover design by Janine L. Osif
Edited by James M. Welsh and Peter Lev
LLiitteerraattuurree..iinndddd 11 77//2200//0077 99::4455::0033 AAMM
07_274_1Front.qxd 7/24/07 6:08 PM Page i
The Literature/Film Reader
Issues of Adaptation
Edited by
James M. Welsh
Peter Lev
THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2007
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SCARECROW PRESS, INC.
Published in the United States of America
by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.scarecrowpress.com
Estover Road
Plymouth PL6 7PY
United Kingdom
Copyright© 2007 by James M. Welsh and Peter Lev
All rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The literature/film reader : issues of adaptation / edited by James M. Welsh, Peter Lev.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5949-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8108-5949-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Film adaptations—History and criticism. 2. Literature and motion pictures.
I. Welsh, James Michael. II. Lev, Peter, 1948–
PN1997.85.L516 2007
791.43'6—dc22
2007009828
(cid:2)™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
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To our friends and colleagues, early and late, whose efforts we do appreciate.
Special thanks to Tom Erskine, who first suggested we form an association
with annual meetings, and to the late William Horne,
the congenial cohost of several such meetings.
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Frankenstein
No one sits beside the prof here in the dark,
but behind me they whisper and giggle and bark
their disdain for what? The poetry, the black
and white, the naïveté of the monster, its lack
of common sense, which they possess in spades?
Aren’t we, too, pieced together from open graves?
To the monster the child was like a flower,
therefore she was a flower, and since a flower
can float, so should the child. But she can’t, she dies.
To the students, some thirty years younger than I,
the monster is merely dumb, the girl a splash,
like a punchline, a machine to produce laughs.
The prof packs his notes, useless, dismisses the kids,
a few linger with questions I can’t rid
them of, ever—children drawn to the abyss.
A bus passes; I wave it on. What is
the night to do when its terrors shed their beauty?
I stumble home, past villagers hungry for duty.
—Tom Whalen
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Issues of Screen Adaptation:
What Is Truth? xiii
James M. Welsh
Part I: Polemics
Chapter 1 It Wasn’t Like That in the Book . . . 3
Brian McFarlane
Chapter 2 Literature vs. Literacy: Two Futures for
Adaptation Studies 15
Thomas M. Leitch
Chapter 3 Adaptation Studies and the History of Ideas:
The Case of Apocalypse Now 35
Donald M. Whaley
Chapter 4 Adaptation Studies Revisited: Purposes,
Perspectives, and Inspiration 51
Sarah Cardwell
v
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vi (cid:2) Contents
Chapter 5 The Cold War’s “Undigested Apple-Dumpling”:
Imaging Moby-Dickin 1956 and 2001 65
Walter C. Metz
Chapter 6 Trying Harder: Probability, Objectivity, and
Rationality in Adaptation Studies 77
David L. Kranz
Part II: Classic and Popular Literature
Chapter 7 What Isa “Shakespeare Film,” Anyway? 105
James M. Welsh
Chapter 8 Returning to Naples: Seeing the End in Shakespeare
Film Adaptation 115
Yong Li Lan
Chapter 9 Pop Goes the Shakespeare: Baz Luhrmann’s
William Shakespeare’s Romeo (cid:3)Juliet 125
Elsie Walker
Chapter 10 Reframing Adaptation: Representing the Invisible
(On The House of Mirth, Directed by
Terence Davies, 2000) 149
Wendy Everett
Chapter 11 Sucking Dracula: Mythic Biography into Fiction
into Film, or Why Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula
Is Not Really Bram Stoker’s Draculaor
Wallachia’s Dracula 165
James M. Welsh
Chapter 12 Vertigo, Novel and Film 175
Peter Lev
Chapter 13 Heinlein, Verhoeven, and the Problem of the Real:
Starship Troopers 187
J. P. Telotte
Part III: Politics and Adaptation
Chapter 14 Literary Hardball: The Novel-to-Screen
Complexities of The Manchurian Candidate 201
Linda Costanzo Cahir
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Contents (cid:2) vii
Chapter 15 The Oak: A Balancing Act from Page to Screen 217
Odette Caufman-Blumenfeld
Chapter 16 Adaptation and the Cold War: Mankiewicz’s
The Quiet American 235
Brian Neve
Chapter 17 All the Quiet Americans 245
C. Kenneth Pellow
Part IV: History, Biography, and Memoir
Chapter 18 Camille Claudel: Biography Constructed
as Melodrama 259
Joan Driscoll Lynch
Chapter 19 W. C. Handy Goes Uptown: Hollywood Constructs
the American Blues Musician 271
John C. Tibbetts
Chapter 20 Memoir and the Limits of Adaptation 285
William Mooney
Chapter 21 Getting It Right: The Alamo on Film 297
Frank Thompson
Chapter 22 “Plains” Speaking: Sound, Sense, and Sensibility in
Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil 307
John C. Tibbetts
Part V: Epilogue: The Future of Adaptation Studies
Chapter 23 Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been? 327
Thomas M. Leitch
Chapter 24 The Future of Adaptation Studies 335
Peter Lev
Index 339
About the Editors 355
About the Contributors 357
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Acknowledgments
The Literature/Film Association (LFA) grew from the friends and contribu-
tors of Literature/Film Quarterly (LFQ), and to attempt to name them all
might result in hideous and embarrassing errors of omission. But without peo-
ple like Rebecca M. Pauly of West Chester University, an astute counselor to
both LFA and LFQ, or Victoria Stiles, first treasurer of LFA (now retired
from SUNY Courtland), and so many others, neither the journal nor the as-
sociation could have endured. We thank all of our LFA and LFQcolleagues
for creating and sustaining a remarkable scholarly community.
In the beginning, Tom Erskine, academic dean at Salisbury State Col-
lege, could not have funded LFQ in 1972–1973 without the splendid ad-
ministrative support of Dr. Norman C. Crawford, then president of Salisbury
State. Thereafter, LFQ could not have survived over three decades without
the continued support of later presidents Thomas A. Bellavance, K. Nelson
Butler, William C. Merwin, and Janet Dudley-Eshbach, who currently heads
the institution.
We owe a debt of gratitude as well to the current editors of LFQ, Elsie M.
Walker and David T. Johnson, and their capable business manager, Brenda
Grodzicki. Many English Department colleagues at Salisbury were also sup-
portive in many ways, especially the late Francis Fleming (former chair), Bill
ix