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Literary Adaptations in Film History

This document discusses literary adaptations in film over time. It notes how early films were inspired by literature and theatre. Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie have all inspired many film adaptations over the years. In the 1950s-60s, British New Wave filmmakers adapted works by "angry young men" writers. Hammer studios also adapted Gothic literature like Frankenstein and Dracula. Jane Austen's novels saw numerous film and TV adaptations in the 1980s-90s. Today, classic adaptations remain popular and contemporary authors like Nick Hornby are also being adapted to film.

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Maria Garcia Guarda
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14 views1 page

Literary Adaptations in Film History

This document discusses literary adaptations in film over time. It notes how early films were inspired by literature and theatre. Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, and Agatha Christie have all inspired many film adaptations over the years. In the 1950s-60s, British New Wave filmmakers adapted works by "angry young men" writers. Hammer studios also adapted Gothic literature like Frankenstein and Dracula. Jane Austen's novels saw numerous film and TV adaptations in the 1980s-90s. Today, classic adaptations remain popular and contemporary authors like Nick Hornby are also being adapted to film.

Uploaded by

Maria Garcia Guarda
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

ADAPTATIONS

-Importance of adaptation translation (Some aspects could be lost in translation)


The first short one-shot films were made by the Lumire brothers in 1895 there were essentially
moving photographs of everyday actions. It was a great method of story-telling together with
literature and theatre.
Filmmakers are readers too, and a literary heritage that produced Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane
Austen and so many others provides a great deal of inspiration.
Shakespeare has inspired hundreds of films over the years. Laurence Olivier's remarkable Henry V
(1945) highlighted the play's propaganda value; he followed with adaptations of Hamlet (1948) and
Richard III (1955). But also Shakespeare was a source of inspiration to films and stories based but
not adapted from his plays (The lion king)
Oscar Wilde's plays have all been adapted- silent Lady Windermere's Fan (1916) and The
Importance of Being Earnest (1952), An Ideal Husband (1999) and The Importance of Being
Earnest (2002).
Foremost among numerous screen versions of Charles Dickens are David Lean's Great
Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948); other noteworthy attempts include Nicholas Nickleby
(1947), A Tale of Two Cities (1958), A Christmas Carol (as Scrooge, 1951), Oliver! (1960).
Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle -countless Sherlock Holmes adaptations.
George Orwell, has seen only three significant films of his work -an animated Animal Farm (1954)
and two versions of Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1956 and, appropriately, 1984.
In the late 1950s and early '60s, the filmmakers of the British New Wave turned to the 'angry
young men' (and women) of literature and the theatre -novelists like John Braine and Alan
Sillitoe and playwrights like John Osborne and Shelagh Delaney- in their efforts to bring a fresher
perspective to the screen, the working-class realities. The first two films to emerge from the
partnership between Osborne and director Tony Richardson were adaptations of Osborne's Look
Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960).
During the same period, Hammer studios revived interest in Britain's gothic tradition, with lively
versions of Mary Shelley (The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957) and Bram Stoker (Dracula, 1958),
each of which inspired sequels.
The same period (20th) saw a wave of interest in Jane Austen, with every one of her novels adapted
for either film or television -sometimes both- between 1983 and 1998. 1995 alone saw Persuasion
and Sense and Sensibility (US), as well as Clueless (US), an inventive Hollywood update of
Emma, relocating the story in a modern California high school. A rather more faithful British
adaptation (Emma) appeared the following year.
Classic adaptations remain popular today, although contemporary writers are also getting a look in.
Among the most successful are Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch (1996), High Fidelity (US/UK, 2000)
and About a Boy (US/UK, 2002) - Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones' Diary, 2001), and J.K. Rowling,
whose Harry Potter books have become the predominant screen franchise of recent years.

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