Literature vs Film
Art vs. Art
1. Introduction
Literature can, at times, have a fascinating connection with film. Whether it is a film or
a piece of literature, both are written by someone that wants to leave an impact on an
audience. However, movies and books have different roles. They each have different
strong points: books give better characterization, stronger revelations and inner conflict,
but movies create better mood with music and visuals/effects. You should always read
the book first because it is good to “practice” your imagination more than being told
what to think. Altogether, literature and films can be a powerful teaching resource
throughout an individual's development. 2. The Dilemma
The book was better. What does it even mean? If I ask about the movie I simply want
to know if the movie was good or bad. The book was better” tells us nothing about the
movie, and besides that, it's a meaningless and irrelevant comment. The biggest
problem here is that we are comparing two completely different things. A book isn’t a
film, and vice versa. They are two different formats of telling the same story. So the
criticism of a movie based on some passages, characters, information, etc. from the
book is like saying: “The apple was okay, but it wasn’t as good as the orange.” That’s
because they are two different things. You can compare a book to a book and a film to a
film. Just try not to compare a book to a film. In fact, the book will always be better. We
only go and watch the movie because we prefer to find out about the plot in a really
short time or we enjoy screen captures or the music.
English Literature & Film Adaptations
The concept of adaptation
An adaptation is created to suit a particular medium, for example film and is based on
another text, originally conceived for a different medium, most frequently a novel
(Goodwyn (2004:24) .
Novels are adapted for the screen in three ways:
1.The first is similar to literal translation, where the film-maker tries to render the novel
as faithfully as possible in a different 'language'
•(e.g. Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies or Kenneth Branagh's tellingly titled Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein).
2. The second category bears a resemblance to the kind of translation which seeks to
reinterpret, or at least to comment on the original work
•(e.g. Mike Nichols's Catch-22 or Werner Herzog's Nosferatu).
3. The third kind of adaptation is more like an imitation than a translation, where the
novel provides a springboard for a film that may be only very loosely based on it
•(e.g. Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, inspired by Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
or Amy Heckerling's transposition of Jane Austen's Emma to an American high school
setting in the movie Clueless).
Studying a Film Adaptation of a Novel
