Download - Lesson 03

Transcript

3 , 15/4/2010

(Revisiting The Great Gatsby, 1974)

Geoffrey Wagner proposes 3 broad categories of literary translation1) Transposition=minimum of apparent interference

2) Commentary=the film-maker has a different intention from the novelist

3) Analogy=the adaptation departs radically from the source text and can therefore be considered as a different work of art.

*One indication of whether a film adaptation has succeeded might therefore be if the film contains something of the spirit of the novel and whether it has entertained, engaged or provoked rather than how closely it resembles its source material.

*films are often judged in terms of the degree to which they adhere or diverge from their literary source material what we may call, the fallacy of fidelity and the film is seen either as a remarkably faithful adaptation or as one which fails entirely to capture the spirit of the original.

Post-Saussurian issue

If form cannot separate from content (whether because of their insoluble bond or because content is simply an illusion) then what remains to pass between a novel and its film adaptation? =>paradoxical situation? Either adaptation is treated as theoretical impossibility or

There must be found way of treatment without committing semiotic heresy

Outline of the model to be used in class:1) Comparison between the two discourses on a strictly narrative level. Questions to be asked: What has been kept of the novels narrative? What has been reduce and why? What has been changed from novel to film narrative? What has been added and why?

2) Study of the apparent results of the transformation from verbal to visual representation from telling to showing. What happens when words become flesh, so to speak? Do we get a different impression of the characters of the plot and the relationship between them when we can watch the situations for ourselves, than, for example, when we are forced to rely on the novels first person narrator?

3) Has the film adaptation tried to develop film equivalents to elements in the novel that are not directly transferable? What has for example happened to the interior monologues, to the shifting point of view of the novel, to the poetic language of the book? Has the film used some of its specific elements like music, light, color, camera movements, film editing to compensate or perhaps even to create new aspects? Techniques (close-up, voice-over, etc)

4) An overview of the films main theme or themes compared with the novels. How has the film in question interpreted the novel? What may be the reasons for this choice? Has it perhaps to do with a modern reading of an old story? Has gender anything to do with it female author, male director, for example? How was racial and sexual identity represented?

The ending of Great Gatsby connects the novel with the American history. Importance of colors Green hope! Yellow it spreads somehow death. Gray Cynicism, moral corruption Careless people, indifferent. (Semiotic analysis of the colors.) Blue the sea The moonlight

(Fred Marcus, 1971)

A novel is a remembrance of things past; a film is a remembrance of films present While the novel is a narrative that deploys past events moving towards a present, a film directly displays the present the essence of film is its immediacy, and the immediacy is grounded in its tenselessness. Introductory scene accuracy in Nicks words, but also a few additions! Upper camera angle is Toms viewpoint (a hint for Toms character).Nick knows everything but discloses nothing because he wants us to judge them ourselves. Nevertheless, he says that Gatsby proves himself to be great. Gatsby turns out great. He is the only person for whom he makes a remark (but he also sets the challenge of proving him great for us too).

Narrative Viewpoint the novel

The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a limited and in a sense reliable narrator not because he is dishonest, but rather because he is an innocent like King Lear, he hath ever but slenderly known himself Nick introduces us to Long Island society, in particular to Gatsby and Daisy, without making any moral judgments, leaving the reader to make his or her own discoveries. Since the book is narrated in retrospect, Nick is fully aware of the eventual tragedy, but to tell the story he recaptures naivety and gradual understanding, so that we can share the discovery. The novel opens in a leisurely, discursive style; Nick introduces himself as a listener, a confidant, slow to judge others, but ready to make up his mind about the world. It is extremely subtle self-portrait which will resonate through the book, and as events unfold, many readers will turn back to these opening pages, to see what light they throw on the narrator who is part of the story, and yet at the same time somehow detached from it

The Film

After a credit sequence montage of Gatsbys palatial, but vacant house (including the fatal swimming pool), Jack Claytons 1974 adaptation, with a screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola gives us some edited snippets of Nicks introduction to take us briskly into the film. Despite the transfer of 1st person narration to 1st person voice-over (a common enough feature of narrative films, especially those adapted from first-person novels), our view of Nick is visually in the third person we are observing him at the same time as listening to him. What is interesting here, though, is the choices that have been made to introduce us visually to Nick. We first see Nick losing his hat, losing control of his boat and almost colliding with a much larger craft; then as he pulls into shore and alights from the boat; we look down on him briefly from Toms (superior) point of view. (Visual depiction of Nicks disorientation. He is a fish out of the water.)

These effects may seem a little crude taken in isolation, but it is the kind of visual information that works almost unconsciously on an audience, who, unless they rewind a videotape, are generally unable to turn back the pages to check on their initial impressions of a character.

CharactersGATSBY: While Redford wan an obvious box-office choice to play Gatsby, having just come off huge successes in The Sting and The Way We Were, he doesnt get Gatsby, choosing to play Gatsbys mysteriousness as woodenness and aloofness. He looks fantastic in his Oscar-winning suits, but its hard to care much about what comes out of his lock-jawed mouth.

DAISY: Mia Farrow is equally disappointing. In the book, Daisy has a natural flirtatiousness that has been driving men wild for a decade.

In the film, Farrow comes across as nothing more than fragile and jittery. She simply doesnt seem worth all the trouble men go to in pursuit of her affections.

TOM: Bruce Dem is wiry and whiny. He has none of the looming physical presence that supposedly makes Tom such a menacing figure.

CARRAWAY: Sam Waterston fares better. Nick is the narrator of both the book and the movie, so he gets all the good speeches. Waterstons sad eyes get sadder and sadder as Gatsbys tragic flaws propel him toward his ugly fate.

New York Times on The Great GatsbyAn illustrated encyclopedia of the manners and morals of the 20s moves spaniel-like through Fs text

Its faults:

1) Its all-too-reverential attitude. It completely mistakes the essence of Fs novel, which is not in its story but in its elliptical literary style that dazzles us by the manner in which it evokes character and event, rather than with the characters and events themselves.

2) A stunning lack of cinematic imagination

Sadly, the movie treats Fs flawless novel as little more than a Jazz-age costume drama and it goes heavy on the costumes, light on the drama

Gatsby is a story about identity, the American Dream, second chances and most famously, the impossibility of repeating the past. None of these is developed in film.

[27 29 guest lecturer on the issue of passing Human Stain and other cultural examples]

A Summary of Events1. Nick introduces himself as narrator as well as the Buchanans2. Myrtle is introduced

3. Nick invited to GGs party

4. Drive to NY, some of GGs past. Jordan provides Daisys version of the past.

5. The meeting at Nicks house. Reunion.

6. More about GGs past. GGs 2nd party.

7. The Plaza scene. Myrtles death.

8. More about GGs past. His romantic readiness and his death.

9. The funeral, the father the moment of vision

Chronology of Events

1917-18 GG + Daisy have an affair

1919 Daisy marries Tom