Cours du 23/11/10 - 1/6

par **Anaïs** Jeu 13 Jan - 8:46

[edit : je rajoute le plan du cours et la bibliographie, comme ça je crois que tout est complet maintenant ^^]

I.Introduction

Ambiguity of cinema
a film is not just a text (often forgotten by theorists), visual language as well.

In adaptation = something in between : expectation of something coming from the original text.
Between text aesthetics and image.
Originally = written style, plot, characters. The story was first written.

Origin of the idea that the adaptation = visual dimension of the text =
J.Conrad, preface of The Nigger of the « Narcissus » (1897) « my task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written words, to make you hear, to make you feel – it is before all to make you see. »
(Conrad & James = pre-modernists writers)

after the Victorians novels, writers tried to add a visual aspect to the books.
1913,D.W. Griffith said in an interview about the task of a film director : « the task I am trying to achieve is above all to make you see »

Idea of visualizing.
A film is here for you to visualize what you wrote.

1900/1910' beg. of film history. Producers turned to literature, the great classic novels, to have great storylines & good films. (Because the cinema, as a new form of expression was very criticized at the beg.)

Aim of the producers = give cinema some legitimacy.

1/ Point of View
2/ Fidelity / Faithfulness
3/ Film Language
4/ Andrew Higson (cinema theorist)

1/ Point of view
as in fiction / literature. Difference between who sees (focalizer) & who narrates the scene : subjective shot or more neutral ?

Genette, Figures III (1972)
difference between the 'mode ' & the 'voice' = question to answer in every works of art.
Main basic point = you always tell more or less a story (question of quantity) + you always tell something from a subjective pov.
Main challenge when adapting a novel = STYLE, how to keep the pov of the novel ?
(question of focalization, the distance, the irony etc.)

How the passage is told in the film & by whom ?

Paul Valéry, distinction between poietics (creation of the work of art) & aesthetics (perception / reception of the work) (1937 Discours sur l'esthétique)

How the film image is built ? (deconstruction)

movement = poietical specificity of cinema
aesthetics = everything that happens after the completion of the work of art.

2/ Fidelity
eternal question. Limits. How faithful is a film to the book ?
Quality/quantity.
Fidelity / specificity

A good adaptation is supposed to have kept as much elements as possible.
Quality = question of style, type of narration.