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Film Adaptation as Translation: On Fidelity

Article · May 2015

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Siddhant Kalra
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Siddhant Kalra
25 September 2015
FLAME College of Liberal Arts, Pune
Siddhant Kalra 1

Since the inception of cinema as a narrative art-form, novels have often provided substance
for filmic expression. In fact, D.W. Griffith‟s The Birth of a Nation (1915), which is credited
to be one of the first pioneers of the narrative feature film, was an adaptation of a novel. The
first film made in India, D.B Phalke‟s Raja Harishchandra (1913) was an adaptation of a
story domiciled by the Indian tradition of folklore. Almost a century later, this trend has
continued unhindered. “Film-makers' reasons for this continuing phenomenon appear to
move between the poles of crass commercialism and high-minded respect for literary works”
(McFarlane, 6). Most cultures have their own literature and their own film industries. As one
would expect, literature has served as nourishment for film in film industries worldwide,
from the Mexican cinema of the 1930s to the revived Argentinean films of the late fifties, and
fuelled most of the French New Wave. “To list examples is a redundancy; inevitably, film
adaptations are to be found among the most famous exponents in any period” (Martin).

The reason for this is perhaps a certain sense of semiotic congruency between the two art-
forms. Both are narrative media after all. The Sassurean cine-semiotics posit a unity of
language across different media of storytelling. Perhaps, this view explains the congruency
mentioned previously. However, this is not to imply any similarity between the two media
beyond the fact that they are narrative forms. The phenomenological difference between the
two makes it fallacious to even place them within the same schematic categorical. An
adaptation attempts to bridge this phenomenological divorce, to „translate‟ (used here in its
literal, etymological sense) text into images and retain some sense of identity. The adaptation
theorist‟s job is thus, to manifest a framework to gauge the efficacy of translation.

Is film a new text?

“The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate:
written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it
became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The
film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the
misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this
danger of misinterpretation.” – Anthony Burgess on Kubrick’s film adaptation.

He saw A Clockwork Orange as a translation of his vision, which inevitably lacks perfection.
Incidentally, Stanley Kubrick found himself the recipient of the same dichotomous response a
second time. Stephen King was so dissatisfied with his rendition of The Shining that he made
another adaptation with Mike Garris.
Siddhant Kalra 2

“…because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others.” – Stephen
King on Kubrick’s The Shining.

King and Burgess‟s dissatisfaction hints not so much at Kubrick‟s incompetence, but at the
inimitability of expression from one medium to another. Their concern is that the adaptation
fails to reflect their vision and in that failure, loses merit. This is not to say however, that
every author shares the same contempt for adaptation of his writing. David Mitchell, the
author of Cloud Atlas, acknowledges the phenomenological divide that facilitates translation
from text to film and appreciates the Watchowski Brothers‟ adaptation of his book within that
framework. He appreciated the phenomenon of his supposedly un-filmable creation
interacting with the minds that synthesised the Matrix in addition to interacting with an
entirely different, visual form of expression.

“Adaptation is a form of translation and all acts of translation have to deal with
untranslatable spots. Sometimes late at night I’ll get an email from a translator asking for
permission to change a pun in one of my novels or to substitute an idiomatic phrase with
something plainer. My response is usually the same: You are the one with knowledge of the
“into” language, so do what works. When asked whether I mind the changes made during the
adaptation of Cloud Atlas, my response is similar: The filmmakers speak fluent film
language, and they’ve done what works” – David Mitchell on Cloud Atlas, the film.

From text to film, the change in media changes the form entirely and in this transformation of
form, there resides a long tradition of discourse on the efficacy of translation in literary
adaptations; a discourse almost as old as „film‟ itself. As Dudley Andrew puts it, “The
making of a film out of an earlier text is virtually as old as the machinery of cinema itself”
(Andrew, 10). Many have criticised this tradition of adaptation theory for being redundant
and inconclusive. Inevitably, more often than not, the criterion under contention is the degree
of fidelity, either of vision or content (Rumble, 83). After all, adaptation is a process of
translation and thus, its typology must be based on the criterion of the degree of translation.
However, the incoherence and inconsistency in gauging the „success‟ of an adaptation alludes
to the inherent subjectivity of framework in criticism.

In the post-modern mindscape where „good‟ and „bad‟ lose the currency of their binary,
paradigms that circumnavigate the need for a hierarchy emerge. Thus, assessing an adaptation
involves cross-paradigmatic analysis rather than suspending it within only one paradigm.
Millicent Marcus, a film theorist who theorised on adaptation in conjunction with Italian
Neo-Realist Cinema, expresses her overt intent to subvert the "hierarchical" thinking of
fidelity analysis (qtd. in Rumble, 83). Karen Kline discerned the presence of the underlying
epistemological dynamic that facilitates the trans-paradigmatic response to a film adaptation.
She conceptualised a typology of „paradigms‟ of adaptation criticism that attempt to explain
different modes of film adaptation: „Translation‟, „Pluralist‟, „Transformative‟ and
„Materialist‟ (Agatucci, 2). The distinguishing criterion resides in the process of translation
from the original medium to the adapted. The nomenclature depends upon the relationship the
adapted medium chooses to establish with its original source. From first to third, the degree
of difference between text and film increases and so does the expression of cinematic
Siddhant Kalra 3

elements. Within the „Translation‟ category, the text is the benchmark that the film must be
subverted to, and at the same time, match up to. This trend abates and the „Transformative‟
category absolutely acknowledges the distinction between film and text as two art-forms,
different even in language, thus disregarding fidelity to the text and prescribing transgression.

Conceptual coherence dictates the nominal nature of the categoricals instead of the ordinal
nature implied by the „good‟ and „bad‟ binary. Arranging them into hierarchies of value
judgements would negate the complexities that are characteristic of different paradigms, and
are otherwise homogenous in their merit. By unveiling paradigmatic assumptions underlying
the critic‟s verdict and consequently, the tradition of film adaptations, Kline suspends all
adaptations into a level battlefield (Agatucci, 3). This in turn makes it redundant to speak of
film adaptations as being „good‟ or „bad‟ based simply on how closely they pledge allegiance
to the text. Other theoretical frameworks of adaptation analysis often bear a significant
congruency to the paradigmatic approach. For instance, Louis Giannetti‟s framework adopts
the same criteria for categorisation and outlines the „literal‟, „faithful‟, and „loose‟ adaptation
associated in order of the fidelity to the original text (Giannetti, 390-394). This tradition of
fidelity based epistemes of analysis rids adaptations of the hegemony of fidelity purists like
George Bluestone, but at the same time ascribes a different type of uni-dimensionality to
adaptation analysis by suspending its epistemic direction within a paradigm of paradigms.

Millicent Marcus expresses the need to break away from fidelity –based paradigms of
analysis. She found inspiration in the Italian Neo-Realist dismissal of the literary and stressed
an approach sensitive to the cinematic nature of the „text‟, if you will, in the filmic medium
(Rumble, 85). One might argue that her disposition is in fact in guise of Kline‟s
„Transformative‟ mode due to its insistence on a separate aesthetic for both film and text.
However, her framework aims to break away from the dynamic between text and film
entirely. Its intense desire to manifest something free from fidelity analysis resonates with the
ideas of the Italian Neo-Realists like Verga and Zavattini, who sought freedom for the filmic
medium from the hegemony of literature. Her claim is that narrative cinema emerged in
conjunction with the crisis of the contemporary novel. As the novel lost currency, it comes as
no surprise that “film should step into the void, becoming the unproblematic storytelling
medium that the grand nineteenth-century novel once was” (qtd. in Rumble, 84).

The emphasis on fidelity has led to the neglect the creation of a novelty, emerging from the
inevitable confluence of the arts. It diminishes the relevance of filmic elements that are
emphatic cinematically, but pale in relevance to the text. Thus, it becomes imperative to find
an alternative. One solution comes in the form of the intertextual analysis. As Christopher Orr
remarks: “Within this critical context [i.e. of intertextuality], the issue is not whether the
adapted film is faithful to its source, but rather how the choice of a specific source and how
the approach to that source serve the film's ideology” (qtd. in Flanagan, 17). Mikhail
Bakhtin‟s discourse on intertextuality lauds the novel on its format‟s ability to express
heteroglossia1. While the novel‟s ability to encourage multiple readings facilitates

1
a term that refers to the situation by which an ever-changing multiplicity of social languages and speech
types are artistically organized in the text.
Siddhant Kalra 4

heteroglossia, other forms fail in their monologic attempts to do the same (Ibid. 19). Thus,
one way of gauging an adaptation‟s efficacy is in its intertextuality. Additionally, it is in the
film‟s ability to express meaning through „the utterance‟2. It lies in the filmmaker‟s ability to
discern the utterance of both the text and the film and make them coherent. This framework
allows for individual assessment and frees adaptation from the phantom of fidelity.

The tradition of film adaptation theory lacks consensus, not volume of thought. However, it is
possible to discern a few truisms as distillates of the tradition. Firstly, it is pointless to speak
of adaptation as being simply „good‟ or „bad‟. The post-modern era has ensured that this sort
of reductionism will never inflict its uni-dimensionality upon any art-form. However, at the
same time, it has suspended adaptations in an air of undecided plethora of perspectives and
theories that do very little to accommodate each other. It can be inferred thus, that the degree
of subjectivity that is inherent in such a discourse is debilitating of conviction, but extremely
conducive to innovation. Secondly, the frameworks within the tradition all acknowledge one
simple principle: film and text are semiotically, phenomenologically and technologically two
distinct media. It is impossible to bridge the gap between the modes of expression that this
distinction breeds. Thus, in the sense that a film adaptation stands individually, on its own
semiotic merit, the film is indeed a new text. However, in the sense that they are two distinct
categoricals in every respect but one or two, the film is absolutely distinct from the text.

2
The utterance is, according to Bakhtin, the essence of dialogue. It can be as short as a word or as long as an
entire work, but it is in proper use or, conversely, in misuse of the utterance that an adapted work either
succeeds or fails. The utterance, unlike a word or sentence, functions within a speech genre and, therefore,
has meaning beyond that which is merely of a linguistic nature (Burke, 3).
 Siddhant Kalra 5

Bibliography

1. Agatucci, Cora ed. "Film Adaptation: Four Paradigms." Rev. of “The Accidental Tourist on
Page and on Screen: Interrogating Normative Theories about Film Adaptation" [Literature
Film Quarterly 24.1 (1996): 70-84]. Central Oregon Community College. 2 Nov. 2006
2. Burke, Brendan. Film Adaptation Theory: Secondary Speech Genres in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Lunds Universitet. 2010-12-20. Web.
3. Dudley , Andrew. The Well Worn Muse: Adaptation in Film History and Theory. Narrative
Strategies: Original Essays in Film and Prose Fiction. Ed. Syndy M. Conger and Janice R.
Welsch. Western Illinois Univ., 1980. 9-17.
4. Flanagan, Martin. Bakhtin and the Movies: New Ways of Understanding Hollywood Film.
Palgrave Macmillan. June 23, 2009. Web.
5. Giannetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. Pearson - 13 edition. July 6, 2013. Print.
6. Martin, Holly. Film or Literature?: The History of Film Adaptation. Latino Weekly Review.
Web. 24/09/2014.
7. McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Clarendon
Press, 1996, Oxford.
8. Rumble, Patrick. Film Adaptation: Text or Prototext? Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema
and Literary Adaptation by Millicent Marcus. Review in Italica, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Spring, 1995),
pp. 83-Published by: American Association of Teachers of Italian. Web.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/479970

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