Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ

369 Pages·2009·1.45 MB·English

by  Thomas Leitch

Film Adaptation and Its Discontents
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Film Adaptation
and Its Discontents
From Gone with the Wind to
The Passion of the Christ
Thomas Leitch
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
©2007The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved.Published 2007
Printed in the United States ofAmerica on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715North Charles Street
Baltimore,Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Leitch,Thomas M.
Film adaptation and its discontents :from Gone with the Wind
to The Passion ofthe Christ / Thomas Leitch.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13:978-0-8018-8565-5(hardcover :alk.paper)
isbn-10:0-8018-8565-5(hardcover :alk.paper)
1.Film adaptations—History and criticism. I.Title.
pn1997.85.l352007
791.43′6—dc22 2006037744
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
To Barbara T.Gates and James M.Welsh
mentors • colleagues • friends
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Literature versus Literacy 1
2 One-Reel Epics 22
3 The Word Made Film 47
4 Entry-Level Dickens 67
5 Between Adaptation and Allusion 93
6 Exceptional Fidelity 127
7 Traditions ofQuality 151
8 Streaming Pictures 179
9 The Hero with a Hundred Faces 207
10 The Adapter as Auteur 236
11 Postliterary Adaptation 257
12 Based on a True Story 280
Notes 305
Bibliography 325
Index 339
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Acknowledgments
Like so many film teachers of my generation,I was trained in literary studies
and drifted into film studies through a mixture of infatuation and happen-
stance. Given my background and interests, film adaptation would have
seemed a logical focus for my work.But I was slow to come to the study ofadap-
tation.I was convinced that George Bluestone had said everything necessary
on the subject years before.I agreed with Dudley Andrew’s implication that
adaptation study as it was currently practiced wasn’t especially interesting.And
I didn’t realize that anyone since Bluestone had added anything significant to
the debate between medium-specific theorists who focused,as Seymour Chat-
man put it,on what novels could do that films couldn’t (and vice versa) and re-
viewers for whom the book was always better.
I owe my interest in adaptation to Barbara Gates and Jim Welsh.In thank-
ing Jim, the founding editor of Literature/Film Quarterly for over three de-
cades,I echo the thanks ofdozens ofscholars he has encouraged to take a closer
look at books and movies.Although the citations in this volume duly record
some ofmy debts to the leading theorists ofadaptation since Bluestone—Brian
McFarlane, Deborah Cartmell, Imelda Whelehan, Robert Ray, Robert Stam,
James Naremore, Sarah Cardwell, Kamilla Elliott—I remain convinced that
Jim has worked harder than anyone else for a longer period to keep interest in
adaptation studies alive,and I’m proud that,for nearly twenty years,my own
work has had the benefit ofhis midwifery.
Five years ago,Barbara Gates encouraged me to join her in team-teaching a
course in adaptations of Victorian novels,even though she knew that I had no
appetite for either team-teaching or adaptation.Midway through the term,she
urged me to apply with her to the Salzburg Seminar’s Session 403,From Page
to Screen,and then withdrew her own application so that it would not com-
pete with mine. Her extraordinary generosity paid me rich dividends at