Literature Into Film Film Into Literature. Case Studies in American Literature and Film - Ileana Jitareu Chiru

 

The present study Literature into Film/Film into Literature. Case Studies in American Literature and Film includes ample analysis of five dyads novel-film, film-novel, history-film. Framed in appropriate critical paradigms, the focus of research is the adaptation of three novels on screen: The Godfather (Mario Puzo, 1969; Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (Ken Kesey, 1962; Milos Forman, 1975), The Color Purple (Alice Walker, 1982; Steven Spielberg, 1985). The analytical approach involves identifying levels of transition from text to film from a narratological and semiotic perspective. The films are simultaneously placed under the critical lenses of genre and ideology (The Godfather), the cine-semiotic reshaping from an allegorical text to a realistic film (One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) or representation of Afro-American feminism (The Color Purple). The transformation of films into novel is a secondary category in the theory and practice of adaptations: thus, a distinct chapter of the present study analyzes the transition of the film The Piano (1993) directed by Jane Campion to a novel (Jane Campion and Kate Pullinger, 1994). Another subgenre of adaptation is the screening of historical events: in this respect, a Coda to this book is George Clooney's film Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). A reminder of the American Senator Joseph McCarthy's abuses in the United States in the 1950s and of the involvement of the famous journalist Edward Murrow in investigating these abuses, the film Good Night, and Good Luck film being a document (docudrama) about the period known as the'McCarthy era' in American history.