A few weeks ago I asked some of my facebook friends to oblige me with a list of their favourite films. Sadly, only one Giovanni and his brilliant wife, Freedom, obliged me. I was directing some of my thoughts towards the creation of a new blog focussing on film and the literature that goes with it. By literature we, of course mean, the texts from which the film scripts have been adapted and the subsequent screenplays.
Here is just a peek of what my sister (in law) offered by way of her favourites;
It is an eclectic list, to say the least, and coincides with some of my favourites: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, THE DEPARTED and GRAN TORINO. At some stage in the future I will be talking about Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese’s films. I have devoted a considerable amount of time to the gangster genre in the last few weeks. While it is a challenging task, it is an enriching experience, particularly if you enjoy films as much as I do.
My university faculty introduced us to a new department of Classics and World Languages which includes the above subject. My first paper for this semester was a bit of a challenge, considering that I had never looked at the study of film before. Rather, films had always been a form of aesthetic pleasure to me.
Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with the modest mark of 68% (a C plus) that my lecturer gave me. My primary focus is geared towards a study of the Holocaust and Bernhard Schlink‘s confessional novel, THE READER, which was adapted to the silver screen by Stephen Daldry. 75%, or higher, will give me an automatic distinction, so I am on course for that.
The rubric of this paper asked some challenging questions, unfamiliar to me previously. Here, I will highlight them with headings. I hope my text will stimulate you while you are reading it.
I discuss implications of these statements. In the discussion I make reference to films viewed recently in order to display and substantiate my response to these statements. These films include those produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Stephen Daldry, Alan J Pakula and, Gabriele Salvatore.
1. DEFINITE IDEAS CONCERNING THE INTEGRAL MEANING AND VALUE OF THE LITERARY TEXT AS INTERPRETED BY FILMMAKERS
In the film version of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola deconstructs the so-called gangster mythology by convincing nervous studio executives that he would instead be creating a family drama to which most studio audiences would endear to and relate. In American film history since the nineteen-thirties and the era of Al Capone the American gangster was frowned upon and perceived to stand against the American ideals of progress, and always portrayed as a villain.
Mario Puzo originally wrote The Godfather as an epic on gangsterism in the context of the poor Italian immigrants’ epic migration to the United States of America in pursuit of a better life, the American dream and the pursuit of happiness as enshrined in the US constitution.
Coppola’s intention as director is to deconstruct the negative connotations and myths of the Italian-American gangster and transpose an epic drama into an ambitious story about one family, in this case the Corleones. Francis Ford’s Coppola’s films, THE GODFATHER, THE GODFATHER II, THE GODFATHER III and APOCALYPSE NOW, were adapted from the literary works of Mario Puzo and Joseph Conrad respectively. Conrad’s work was originally written as Heart of Darkness. Consequentially, Coppola’s version of The Godfather romanticises the gangster icon as an American hero.
According to a number of film critics, Stephen Daldry’s interpretation of Bernhard Schlink’s novel, The Reader, was controversial and inaccurate. Stephen Daldry was heavily criticised for his prolonged sex scenes between the story’s protagonist and his Nazi lover, stating that the use of a teenage boy, or a young actor who replicates closely the original teenage protagonist, was offensive. Critics mainly felt that the visual and graphic elongation of the love scenes was unnecessary and not relevant, or true to the original story. Stephen Daldry’s film, THE READER, was adapted from Bernhard Schlink’s novel, originally written in German.
The Mail and Guardian critic, Shawn de Waal, remarked in 2009 that interpreting a literary event on confession, truth and lies, was always going to be a challenge for both the scriptwriter, David Hare, and the director. I agree that it is a challenge to adapt a literary text and transform it into a credible mis-en-scene which closely resembles the original story, however, I disagree with the negative criticism regarding the vivid photography depicting both nudity and sex between a teenager and an older, experienced woman. The visual imagery does not stray from Bernhard Schlink’s novel which de Waal describes as “short and meditative”.
A poignant, but critically important part of Daldry’s film is the intimacy he creates between the two actors, German David Kross and Englishwoman Kate Winslet, particularly when the younger actor reads English literary works to the older, illiterate German civil servant. Winslet’s performance mirrors the hidden shame that her character feels and hides from the story’s protagonist, Michael Berg. Schlink’s original story is narrated in the first person from the point of view of the protagonist. Kroll replicates this, particularly when expressing shame and guilt for not helping Winslet’s character to overcome her illiteracy and inability to defend herself properly during her trial in which she is accused of murdering Jews during the Holocaust.
2. THE COLLABORATION OF FILMMAKING SKILLS
The writing, production, direction and distribution of the film version of THE GODFATHER can be shown as a good example of successful collaboration. In contrast, Alan J Pakula was renowned for his humanistic skill to compromise and extract a successful product from a variety of ideas. This emanates from the director’s life-long interest in Freudian psychology.
Prior to his collaboration with Mario Puzo and the production of THE GODFATHER, Francis Ford Coppola confined himself to an intensive process of detailed note-taking, working directly from Puzo’s text and highlighting key expositions which he felt would become pinnacles in the film.
Once such example is the scene in an Italian restaurant where the film’s central character, Michael Corleone, played by actor Al Pacino, avenges the attempted assassination of his father, Don Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando). When Coppola wrote this scene, the actors had not yet been cast. Coppola used great persuasion to convince the nervous Paramount executives to cast both Pacino and Brando. The executives did not, under any circumstances, want the destructive Brando in their film, nor were they enthusiastic about the casting of the little-known Al Pacino. Technically, the studio executives were not wrong in originally wanting to cast the well-known Robert Redford in the role of Michael Corleone. In the original narrative by Mario Puzo, the protagonist is characterised by his blond and Aryan looks, uncharacteristic of the Italian. Coppola had wanted to alter this characterisation in his family saga and was set on casting the much shorter Italian-American, Pacino, who was not anywhere close in looks to the original story’s characterisation.
Alan J Pakula took a similar approach to Coppola in wanting to cast unknown actors in his films in order to deflect attention from the film as a whole and not allow a central ‘star attraction’ dominate his story creation. Robert Redford was the producer of ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN and was very enthusiastic about taking one of the two leading roles as the journalist Bob Woodward in spite of the fact that the well-known actor did not resemble the Washington Post reporter in looks or personality. While Redford co-produced the film and Pakula directed, they both collaborated as screen writers to come up with a definitive and apt script after many disagreements and revisions.
Similarly, Pakula wanted to cast an originally unknown Polish actress to play the part of the story’s Polish war victim, Sophie Zawistowska.
Redford famously commended Pakula for the amenable manner in which he negotiated with his staff or co-producers, however, Pakula’s screenplay and direction heavily condensed the original texts of both William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and All The President’s Men.
Through no fault of his own, Coppola was under more severe pressure from his film executives, mainly due to them not being comfortable with his innovative ideas in genre selection, scene setting and choice of actors. They were not comfortable with the idolization of the gangster, nor were they happy with the expensive choice of a New York suburb. Coppola gave licence to his production designer to find an authentic location for the filming of THE GODFATHER.
Ultimately, the mis-en-scene of the film is profoundly effective. The camera placing in this suburb follows a young Michael Corleone, stalking his street-walking nemesis atop buildings, and the Andy Garcia character who chases his enemy on horseback through the same streets over sixty years later.
3. THE AUDACITY TO CREATE A WORK THAT STANDS AS A WORLD APART
In APOCALYPSE NOW, Francis Ford Coppola does not discard the original themes of colonialism and its consequential sub-themes in Heart of Darkness, but does radically change the original settings and time-frames of Conrad’s story by transporting it from the late nineteenth century centre of Africa to the deep depths of the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam war which was presided over by the USA. Coppola also departs from conventional and familiar Vietnamese war films which rely on history and media coverage of lived events by delving into the dark hearts and minds of the story’s characters, and pushing the boundaries of exploring the origins of madness and its consequences, particularly that of Colonel Kurtz, as Joseph Conrad did in his original novel.
In the film, Coppola and his co-screenwriter, John Milius, make a radical departure from Conrad’s original narrative, creating their own original narratives and character dialogues. One of the most memorable scenes in APOCALYPSE NOW comes from the lines of actor Robert Duvall’s character, Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, where, whilst meeting the film’s protagonist, Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) on a battle field, in a pivotal scene, he remarks that;
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning “
as opposed to the smell of a garden, or the smell of coffee, in the morning.
Captain Willard closely resembles Conrad’s original character who narrates a “story within a story”. The above scene also foregrounds the cruelty of man’s profane nature. In the scene, Lt. Col Kilgore and his men “swoop down on a yard full of children”. Duvall’s character, a surfing fanatic, motivates his attack on a beach, not as an attempt at liberating oppressed villagers, but rather because he believes that the beach “offers great waves”.
Robert Stam makes an important point that source-novel texts are transformed by a complex series of operations which include “selection, amplification, concretization, actualization, critique, extrapolation, popularization, reaccentuation and transculturation”. On most of these counts, Francis Ford Coppola’s reinterpretation of man’s “heart of darkness” is successful. Coppola’s screen adaptation of Heart of Darkness, like that of Puzo’s The Godfather, is mainly successful for its uniqueness in elevating the Vietnam sub-genre into a cult following. Audiences from different walks of life have either rejected Coppola’s work for its banality, or lauded it for the way in which he transfers a literary work of art into a work of art in film which reflects radically a universal conversation on the human condition. Because of its commercial success, Coppola’s films, unlike one of his later films YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (which replicates an unconventional theme explored by F Scott Fitzgerald in his short story The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), is unfairly not recognised as an art film.
4. AGAINST SELF-GOVERNANCE, INDEPENDENCE AND ANTITHESIS
Ammaniti’s original novel is vividly and textually colourful and the narrative’s short paragraphs make it ideal for adaptation as a screenplay. Ammaniti’s novel “retains a cinematic feel about it”. Narrating time is in the immediate present and events unfold rapidly towards an eventful climax. I add that the story also conveys a happy ending familiar to the majority of family-orientated films produced by Disney studios which also produced the Italian language film, NON HO PAURA.
Linda Hutcheon asks what motivates adapters when the fruits of their artistic labours will be compared by discerning audiences who may be disappointed at a departure from a more complex literary form. At the same time, Peter Verstraten reminds us that the film is often compared unfavourably with the original literary work and that it is invariably at risk of betraying the originality and context of the literary work.
Unlike Alan J Pakula, these valid questions and the pressure of meeting audiences expectations does not apply to Niccolo Ammaniti’s work.
Unlike Pakula, who had to condense a lengthy and very complex story into a film of approximately 120 minutes, Salvatore’s and Ammaniti’s close collaboration as director and screen writer respectively, ensures that the film remains close to the original story.
Alan Pulverness of the British Film Council makes the claim that film-makers regularly source libraries for novels that have not yet been adapted. Niccolo Ammaniti’s work is an exception to this. Ammaniti’s novel was originally conceived as a screenplay which he wanted to direct.
Pakula compensates for the lack of filmic space available to replicate as close as possible William Styron’s novel which uses strong characterisations to tell the story of Sophie Zawistowska through the narrative voice of Stingo. The choice of Kevin Kline as the psychologically damaged Nathan Landau was inspired and encouraged by the film’s lead actress, Meryl Streep, who portrays Sophie. Pakula directs Kline’s skills as actor to tell the story of Sophie’s mad lover in a handful of scenes which show the trio of friends in conversation with one another in the Pink guesthouse of their Jewish landlady.
There is one masterful scene in which Kline is shown vigorously and passionately conducting a symphony while facing the alcove windows of Sophie’s room. It is a short scene and does not draw the audience away from the film’s main focus, the telling of Sophie’s story and the choice that she is forced to make at the hands of her cruel Nazi oppressors.
This is possibly the most important part of the story, and Pakula replicates it as closely as possible, from the interior seating of the coach in which Sophie and her two children are travelling to the moment when the Nazi officer carries her daughter away to be murdered. Both film and novel narrate Sophie’s story in medias res.
* Look out for a future review of William Styron and Alan J Pakula’s SOPHIE’S CHOICE.
MOVIE MARKS 