Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation

What is Understood by Adaptation

The 'distinctive feature' of adaptation, asserts Dudley Andrew, is 'the matching of the cinematic sign system to a prior achievement in some other system'. He claims that 'Every representational film adapts a prior conception . . . [but that] Adaptation delimits representation by insisting on the cultural status of the model . . . in a strong sense adaptation is the appropriation of a meaning from a prior text'.54 The 'matching' and the 'appropriation' referred to are in the interests of replacing one illusion of reality by another. Whatever claims of fidelity and authenticity are made by film-makers, what these essentially amount to are the effacement of the memory derived from reading the novel by another experience--an audio-visual-verbal one-which will seem, as little as possible, to jar with that collective memory. It seeks, with one concretized response to a written work, to coincide with a great multiplicity of responses to the original. Its aim is to offer a perceptual experience that corresponds with one arrived at conceptually. The kinds of complaints directed at film adaptations of classic or popular novels, across a wide range of critical levels, indicate how rarely the 'appropriation of meaning from a prior text' is fully achieved--even when it is sought. Underlying the processes suggested here, in the manufacture of the more or less faithful film version at least, are those of transferring the novel's narrative basis and of adapting those aspects of its enunciation which are held to be important to retain, but which resist transfer, so as to achieve, through quite different means of signification and reception, affective responses that evoke the viewer's memory of the original text without doing violence to it.

The preceding paragraph of course suggests (wrongly) that the film adaptation will reach only viewers who are familiar with the novel. The very fact that this is not the case ought to be a deterrent to the fidelity-seeking critics, indicating that there is a varying, but large, segment of the audience to whom an adaptation is of no more consequence or interest as such than any other film. The stress on fidelity to the original undervalues other aspects of the film's intertextuality. By this, I mean those non-literary, non-novelistic influences at work on any film, whether or not it is based on a novel. To say that a film is based on a novel is to draw attention to one--and, for many people, a crucial--element of its intertextuality, but it can never be the only one. Conditions within the film industry and the prevailing cultural and social climate at the time of the film's making (especially when the film version does not follow hot upon the novel's publication) are two major determinants in shaping any film, adaptation or not. Among the former (i.e. conditions within the industry) one might include the effect of certain star personae, or, in the days of the studios' dominance, a particular studio's 'house style', or a director's predilections or genre conventions, or the pre-

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54 Andrew, "'Well-Worn Muse'", 9.
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vailing parameters of cinematic practice. As to the latter (i.e. the climate of the times) it is difficult to set up a regular methodology for investigating how far cultural conditions (e.g. the exigencies of wartime or changing sexual mores) might lead to a shift in emphasis in a film as compared with the novel on which it is based. However, it is necessary to make allowance in individual cases of adaptation for the nature of such influences, and this matter will be looked at more closely in the Special Focus section of the chapter on Cape Fear.
Perhaps, indeed, it is just because questions of narrativity can be formalized that so much attention is paid to the original text's contribution to the film. And certainly, in raising the issue of intertextuality, I am not denying how powerfully formative the source work is in shaping the response of many people to the film version. Consequently two lines of investigation seem worthwhile: ( a ) in the transposition process, just what is it possible to transfer or adapt from novel to film; and ( b ) what key factors other than the source novel have exercised an influence on the film version of the novel? For those who know and/or value the novel, the process of narrativity in regard to the film version will necessarily differ from that of the spectator unfamiliar with it: in either case, a true reading of the film will depend on a response to how the cinematic codes and aspects of the mise-en-scčne work to create this particular version of the text.

What Kind of Adaptation?

While the fidelity criterion may seem misguided in any circumstances, it is also true that many film-makers are on record as being reverently disposed towards reproducing the original novel on film. It is equally clear, however, that many adaptations have chosen paths other than that of the literalminded visualization of the original or even of 'spiritual fidelity', making quite obvious departures from the original. Such departures may be seen in the light of offering a commentary on or, in more extreme cases, a deconstruction ('bring[ing] to light the internal contradictions in seemingly perfectly coherent systems of thought'55) of the original. While I do not wish to propose a hierarchy of valuableness among such approaches, it does seem important in evaluating the film version of a novel to try to assess the kind of adaptation the film aims to be. Such an assessment would at least preclude the critical reflex that takes a film to task for not being something it does not aim to be. Given the precariousness of the concept of fidelity in relation to novels made from films, it seems wiser to drop terms like 'violation', 'distortion', 'travesty', and those others which, like them, imply the primacy of the printed text.

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55 John Sturrock, "'Introduction'" to Sturrock (ed.), Structuralism and Since ( Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1979), 14.

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AGENDA FOR FURTHER STUDY

Nothing is likely to stop the interest of the general film-viewer in comparing films with their source novels, usually to the film's disadvantage. The aim of the present study is to use such concepts and methods as permit the most objective and systematic appraisal of what has happened in the process of transposition from one text to another. Given the prevalence of the process, and given that interpretations and memories of the source novel are powerful determining elements in the film's intertextuality, there is little value in merely saying that the film should stand autonomously. So it should, but it is also valuable to consider the kinds of transmutation that have taken place, to distinguish what the film-maker has sought to retain from the original and the kinds of use to which he has put it.

Transfer and Adaptation Proper

This distinction, elaborated earlier in this chapter, is central to the procedures of the following case-studies and, I believe, to any systematic study of what happens in the transposing of novel into film.

Transfer

In considering what can be transferred from novel to film, one begins to lay the theoretical basis for a study of the phenomenon of turning novels into films as well as a basis for what has been transferred in any particular case (i.e. how far the film-maker has chosen to transfer what is possible to do so). In broad terms, this involves a distinction between narrative (which can be transferred) and enunciation (which cannot, involving as it does quite separate systems of signification). Some potentially valuable strategies for considering the idea of transfer are outlined below.

The story/plot distinction

Terence Hawkes, drawing on Viktor Shklovsky's work on the nature of narrative, makes the following distinction: '"Story" is simply the basic succession of events, the raw material which confronts the artist. Plot represents the distinctive way in which the "story" is made strange, creatively deformed and defamiliarized.'56 Novel and film can share the same story, the same 'raw materials', but are distinguished by means of different plot strategies which alter sequence, highlight different emphases, which--in a word-defamiliarize the story. In this respect, of course, the use of two separate systems of signification will also play a crucial distinguishing role.

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56 Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics ( Methuen: London, 1977), 65--6.

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The distinction between 'distributional' and 'integrational' functions

As discussed earlier, Barthes's 'distributional functions', those which he designates as 'functions proper', are those most directly susceptible to transfer to film. This classification is further subdivided into cardinal functions, those narrative actions which open up alternatives with direct consequences for the subsequent development of the story ('the risky moments of a narrative' in Barthes's term), supported, given a richer texture, by elements characterized by a different order of functionality. This 'different order' may be either 'lesser' (in the case of catalysers) or 'vertically functioning' (in the case of distributional functions) as opposed to the essential horizontality of the cardinal functions. The first level of 'fidelity' in relation to the film version of a novel could be determined by the extent to which the film-maker has chosen to transfer the cardinal functions of the precursor narrative.

Identification of character functions and fields of action

If we take V. Propp's notion 'that the all-important and unifying element is found . . . in the characters' functions, the part they play in the plot',57 that these functions58 are distributed among a limited number of 'spheres of action',59 and that the 'discernible and repeated structures which, if they are characteristic of so deeply rooted a form of narrative expression, may . . . have implications for all narrative60 (i.e. not just for folk-tales), then we may see a further way of systematizing what happens in the transposition of novel into film. No doubt the character functions are more clearly displayed in a Russian folk-tale than in a complex nineteenth-century English novel or a feature-length film; nevertheless, some of Propp's formulations point to underlying, transferable components of narrative. (Barthes's concept of cardinal functions is partly based on Propp's work, as Barthes acknowledges.61) To Propp, 'Function is understood as an act of character, defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action.'62 It is not that he fails to allow for other narrative elements as having their roles to play; he, in fact, pays special attention to the question of motivations, which 'often add to a tale a completely distinctive, vivid colouring';63 but he finds those elements other than character functions and their connectives 'less precise and definite'.64

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57 Terence Hawkes, 68.

58 V. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (1927), trans. Laurence Scott (University of Texas: Austin, 1968), 22-63.

59 Ibid. 79.

60 Ibid. 21.

61 Barthes, "'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives'", 92.

62 Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 21.

63 Ibid. 75.

64 Ibid. 43.
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I am suggesting here that, in considering what kind of adaptation has been made, one might isolate the chief character functions of the original and observe how far these are retained in the film version. (Peter Wollen's Proppian analysis of Hitchcock North by Northwest65 suggests that a sophisticated narrative is susceptible to procedures and categorizations derived from the study of much simpler modes.) By observing these functions, distributed among seven 'spheres of action' (named for their performers-'villain', 'helper', etc.), one could determine whether the film-maker has aimed to preserve the underlying structure of the original or radically to rework it. Such a study would give a firmer basis for comparison by sorting out what functions are crucial to the narrative: i.e. to the plot which organizes the raw materials of the story.

Identification of mythic and/or psychological patterns

In relation to those myths which encapsulate in narrative form certain universal aspects of human experience, Lévi-Strauss has claimed that 'the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation . . . [Unlike poetry, its] substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story it tells'.66 By extension, then, it is not too much to expect that the mythic elements at work in a novel seem likely to be transferable to the screen since their life is independent of whatever manifestation they are found in, resistant as they are to even 'the worst translation'. Intimately connected with the idea of myth, such Freudian concepts as the Oedipus complex so profoundly underlie human experience, and, therefore, the narrative renderings of that experience, that their nature remains unchanged through varying representations. The denotative material which provides the vehicle for these patterns may change from novel to film without affecting the connotations of the mythic and psychological motifs themselves. It is clear that these patterns exercise a powerfully organizing effect on narratives: one could propose, for example, that the Freudian notion that: 'An action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super-ego and of reality'67 provides a way of classifying the narrative elements and their motivations in a story--whether on page or screen. What the approaches outlined above have in common are:

a. they all refer to elements which exist at 'deep levels' of the text;

b. they address narrative elements which are not tied to a particular mode of expression (i.e. those which may be found at work in verbal or other sign systems); and

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65 Peter Wollen, "'North by North-West: A Morphological Analysis'", Film Form, 1 ( 1976), 20-34.

66 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology ( Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1972), 210.

67 David Stafford-Clark, What Freud 'Really' Said ( Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, 1967), 112.

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c. all are susceptible to that more or less objective treatment that eludes less stable elements (e.g. character motivation or atmosphere).

They relate to the level of narrative, to areas in which transfer from one medium to another is possible, and to isolate them is to clear the way for examination of those elements that resist transfer and call for adaptation proper.

Adaptation Proper

Those elements of the novel which require adaptation proper may be loosely grouped as (in Barthes's term) indices, as the signifiers of narrativity, and as the writing, or, more comprehensively, as enunciation, to use the term now commonly employed in film theory. The film version of a novel may retain all the major cardinal functions of a novel, all its chief character functions, its most important psychological patterns, and yet, at both micro- and macrolevels or articulation, set up in the viewer acquainted with the novel quite different responses. The extent to which this is so can be determined by how far the film-maker has sought to create his own work in those areas where transfer is not possible. He can, of course, put his own stamp on the work by omitting or reordering those narrative elements which are transferable or by inventing new ones of his own: my point is that, even if he has chosen to adhere to the novel in these respects, he can still make a film that offers a markedly different affective and/or intellectual experience. Some key differences which need to be considered in relation to areas of adaptation proper are summarized below. Essentially they refer to distinctions between enunciatory modes.

Two signifying systems

The full treatment of such a topic is of course beyond the scope of this study; at this point I want merely to draw attention to some matters centrally important here. The novel draws on a wholly verbal sign system, the film variously, and sometimes simultaneously, on visual, aural, and verbal signifiers. Even the apparently overlapping verbal signs (the words on the novel's page, the written or printed words used in the film, e.g. letters, street signs, newspaper headlines), while they may give the same information, function differently in each case. In the examples given, the letter, the street sign, and the newspaper headline will each resemble their real-life referents in ways that are customarily beyond the novel's capacity for iconic representation. And this semi-exception to the rule of difference between the two systems points to a major distinction between them: the verbal sign, with its

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low iconicity and high symbolic function, works conceptually, whereas the cinematic sign, with its high iconicity and uncertain symbolic function, works directly, sensuously, perceptually. Such a distinction is all but axiomatic but failure to concede its pervasive importance leads to a good deal of impressionistic, dissatisfied, and unsatisfying comparison of novel and film. Comparisons of this kind grow out of a sense of the film-maker's having failed to find satisfactory visual representations of key verbal signs (e.g. those relating to places or persons), and of a sense that, because of its high iconicity, the cinema has left no scope for that imaginative activity necessary to the reader's visualization of what he reads. In the study of adaptation, one may consider to what extent the film-maker has picked up visual suggestions from the novel in his representation of key verbal signs--and how the visual representation affects one's 'reading' of the film text.

The novel's linearity and the film's spatiality

We construct meaning from a novel by taking in words and groups of words sequentially as they appear on the page. In order, say, to grasp a scene, a physical setting, we have no choice but to follow linearly that arrangement of arbitrary symbols set out, for the most part, in horizontal rows which enjoin the linearity of the experience. The relentless linearity associated with the usual reading of a novel favours the gradual accretion of information about action, characters, atmosphere, ideas, and this mode of presentation, of itself, contributes to the impression received. At first/glance, it may seem that the relentless movement of film through the projector offers an analogy to this situation. (And, of course, classic narrative cinema is posited on a powerful, forward-thrusting linearity, the product of causality and motivation.) However, though viewing time (and, thus sequentiality) is controlled much more rigorously than reading time, frame-following-frame is not analogous to the word-following-word experience of the novel. There are at least two significant differences to be noted: (i) the frame instantly, and at any given moment, provides information of at least visual complexity (sometimes increased by the input of aural and verbal signifiers) beyond that of any given word because of the spatial impact of the frame; and (ii) the frame is never registered as a discrete entity in the way that a word is. We do not ordinarily view a film frame by frame as we read a novel word by word.

The fact that we are always being exposed to the multiplicity of signifiers contained within the space of a frame or series of frames has implication for the adaptation of verbal material; for example, as it relates to the representation of characters and settings. What we receive as information from the mise-en-scčne may be less susceptible to the film-maker's control (because of the strongly spatial orientation of film and because of the simultaneous
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bombardment by several kinds of claims on our attention) than what we receive from the linear presentation of words on the page. Dickens, for instance, may force us to 'see' Miss Havisham in the interior of Satis House in the order he has chosen in Great Expectations; as we watch her visual representation in David Lean's film we may be struck first, not by the yellow-whiteness of her apparel, but by the sense of her physical presence's being dwarfed by the decaying grandeur of the room. In the form which stresses spatiality rather than linearity, the eye may not always choose to see next what, in any particular frame, the film-maker wants it to fasten on. The challenge to the film-maker's control of the mise-en-scčne is obvious.
Cinematic enunciation has two other approaches, specific to its medium, relating to the disposition of space and, hence, to the generation of aspects of narrative in ways closed to the novel. They are: (i) Noel Burch's theory of a dialectic between on-screen and off-screen space (he identifies six 'segments' of off-screen space, four determined by the borders of the frame, the others 'an off-screen space behind the camera' and 'the space existing behind the set or some object in it'68); and (ii) Raymond Bellour's proposal of alternation69 (e.g. between long shot and close-up, between seeing and being seen) as a key cinematic practice, operating on levels of both code and diegesis. Both of these concepts advert to enunciatory techniques peculiar to the unfolding of cinematic narrative, and both will be considered in relation to particular case-studies in this book. Neither has any real equivalent in the verbal narrative, except in the much broader sense of alternation offered by a novel's moving between two major strands of narrative. The 'spacelessness' of the novel's linear procedures precludes the setting up of spatial tension achieved by (i) and the spatial mobility required by (ii).

Codes

If film, unlike verbal language, has no vocabulary (its images, unlike words, are non-finite), it also lacks a structuring syntax, instead of which it has conventions in relation to the operation of its codes. In so far as these codes enable us to 'read' film narratives, in so far as we learn to ascribe meanings to them (e.g. to assume that 'fade out/fade in', as an editing procedure, denotes a major lapse of time), it is through frequent exposure to their deployment in a particular way, without there being any guarantee that they will always be used in this way. There is, for instance, nothing corresponding to the comparatively fixed usage of full-stop and comma as punctuational signs denoting the longest and shortest pauses respectively, or to those rules which signify tenses, in the written work.

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68 Noel Burch, The Theory of Film Practice ( Cinema Two/ Secker and Warburg: London, 1973), 20.

69 Janet Bergstrom. "'Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Raymond Bellour'", Camera Obscura, 3-4 ( 1979), 76-8.
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Further, in 'reading' a film, we must understand other, extra-cinematic codes as well. These include:

a. language codes (involving response to particular accents or tones of voice and what these might mean socially or temperamentally);

b. visual codes (response to these goes beyond mere 'seeing' to include the interpretative and the selective);

c. non-linguistic sound codes (comprising both musical and other aural codes);

d. cultural codes (involving all that information which has to do with how people live, or lived, at particular times and places).

In a sense, the cinematic codes may be seen as integrating the preceding four in ways that no other art-form does. When we witness a film, we share with the film's maker a basic assumption that we know the codes: i.e. a general cinematic code which, as Christian Metz has shown, can be broken down into subcodes, such as those to do with editing, or those to do with particular genres, and the extra-cinematic codes referred to above. Failure to recognize--or, at least, to pay adequate attention to--the differences between the operation of these codes in film and the novel's reliance on the written representation of language codes has been a key element in accounting for the fuzzy impressionism of so much writing about adaptation.

Stories told and stories presented

In moving from novel to film, we are moving from a purely representational mode to 'an order of the operable',70 to use Barthes's distinction (which has not, to my knowledge, been pursued in film studies but which offers a broad statement of intermedial disparity). This distinction relates partly to earlier points about:

i. differences between two 'language' systems, one of which works wholly symbolically, the other through an interaction of codes, including codes of execution;

ii. tense: film cannot present action in the past as novels chiefly do; and

iii. film's spatial (as well as temporal) orientation which gives it a physical presence denied to the novel's linearity.
Another aspect of the distinction between telling and presenting is located in the way in which the novel's metalanguage (the vehicle of its telling) is replaced, at least in part, by the film's mise-en-scčne. In a sense, the film's story does not have to be told because it is presented. Against the gains in immediacy, the loss of the narrational voice may, however, be felt as the chief casualty of the novel's enunciation.

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70 Barthes, "'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives'", 80.
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The enunciatory matters discussed above refer to crucially important novelistic elements which offer challenges to the film-maker, especially if he does not wish the experience of his film to shatter a pre-existing reality (i.e. of the novel) but, rather, to displace it.

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