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Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama

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by Christine Geraghty

Type

Studies

Subject

Technique > Adaptation

Keywords

adaptation, literature

Publishing date

2007

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield

Collection

Genre and Beyond: A Film Studies Series

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 232 pages
6 x 9 inches (15.5 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-7425-3821-4

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Book Presentation:
Going beyond the process of adaptation, Geraghty is more interested in the films themselves and how they draw on our sense of recall. While a film reflects its literary source, it also invites comparisons to our memories and associations with other versions of the original. For example, a viewer may watch the 2005 big-screen production of Pride and Prejudice and remember Austen's novel as well as the BBC's 1995 television movie. Adaptations also rely on the conventions of genre, editing, acting, and sound to engage our recall-elements that many movie critics tend to forget when focusing solely on faithfulness to the written word.

About the Author:
Christine Geraghty is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She is the author of Women and Soap Opera (1991) and British Cinema in the Fifties (2000).

Press Reviews:
"This wide-ranging, multifaceted, accessible discussion thoughtfully addresses many understudied aspects of screen adaptation." ―Kamilla Elliott, Bowland College, author, Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate

"Geraghty covers a wide variety of works...demonstrating the flexibility and broad applicability of her innovative approach to film adaptation....This study provides a fresh perspective on film adaptation....Highly recommended." ―Choice Reviews

"Christine Geraghty's book is...methodologically clear, lucid, and consistent on all levels....At all times Geraghty's discussions remain detailed and nuanced to boot." ―Image & Narrative

"Christine Geraghty's book on the adaptation of literature into film comes like a breath of fresh critical air. She knows that the antecedent text can't be ignored, but she places the film in what may well be much more revealing contexts. Geraghty has not only chosen an imposing and unexpected range of literary texts and the films derived from them (from The Last of the Mohicans to Ulysses), but she also views them from new perspectives. Her emphasis is rewardingly on the films themselves and on their contexts: art-house cinema, the half-way house cinema of 'heritage filmmaking,' European independent film, or British New Wave. Adapted films, as Geraghty makes plain, will be read in radically different ways if the viewer has more in mind than a slavish concern for what has been 'done' to the earlier text. This is an important book, scholarly and stimulating and entirely readable." ―Brian McFarlane, Monash University, Australia, and the University of Hull, United Kingdom

See the publisher website: Rowman & Littlefield