Enric Sullà, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Description
The course will study the process of adaptation that narrative texts undergo in order to become films. Shooting a film out of a narrative text usually implies that changes have to be made in it either for technical or industrial reasons. The film poses not only the classic problem of fidelity to the so-called original but stylistic and thematic transformations brought about by film genre, visual language and director intervention.

The course would combine short lectures on theoretical problems and seminars where the class will engage in practical criticism of a narrative texts and its film adaptation. Even more, the course will open with a practical case –the study of a film’s sequence in order to introduce both theoretical problems and analytic tools. It should be clear that the aim of the course is to enable the students to produce a comparative exam of a narrative and its adaptation into a film. Topics dealt with will be the some basic notions of narrative theory as applied both to narratives and films (action, history and plot, narrator and point of view, style and tone, theme), the comparative approach itself, and general problems and processes of adaptation, bearing always in mind that between narrative and its film adaptation there is a script.

The students would be required to discuss either individually or by groups at least one narrative text and the film adaptation during the course.

The course does require some knowledge of the basic concepts of narrative theory and film language.

Each chosen film would be showed -partly or entirely- and discussed in the classroom in parallel to the story or novel from which it has been adapted. The films will mainly be adaptations from short stories or novellas, but some novels will be included too. Among the cinema adaptations –chosen from a variety of genres- to be to shown there will be: E. Hemingway’s “The killers” and Robert Siodmak’s film; R. Chandler’s The Big Sleep and H. Hawks film; the stories by G. de Maupassant (“Boule de suif”) and E. Haycox filmed by J. Ford as Stagecoach; W. Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Tim Burton’s film; Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” and A. Hitchcock’s film; and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Luchino Visconti’s film.

Evaluation
The evaluation would take into account: class participation (10%), a short paper delivered to the class (25%) and a paper delivered at the end of term (65%). The short paper would analyse an aspect of either a short story or a novel and its film adaptation; the final one is expected to be an extended comparison between both narratives. The students would always be required to previously submit the outline of both papers to the professor.

Reading list

a) Required reading
David Bordwell (1985), Narration in the fiction film, London, Routledge, 1993
Jakob Lothe (2000), Narrative in fiction and film, Oxford, Oxford UP
Brian McFarlane (1996), Novel into film: An introduction to the theory of adaptation, Oxford, Clarendon Press
Linda Seger (1992), The art of adapting: Turning fact and fiction into film, New York, Henry Holt

b) Further reading
David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson (1993), Film art: An introduction, New York, McGraw-Hill (4th edition)
Deborah Cartmell & Imelda Whelehan (eds.) (1999), Adaptations: From text to screen, screen to text, London, Routledge
Deborah Cartmell et alii (eds.) (2000), Classics in film and fiction, London, Pluto
Seymour Chatman (1978), Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film, Ithaca, Cornell UP
Nick Lacey (2000), Narrative and genre, London, Macmillan.
David Lodge (1996), The practice of writing, Harmondsworth, Penguin.
James Monaco ((1981), How to read a film, New York, Oxford UP.
Robert Stam, Ernest Burgoyne & Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (1992), New vocabularies in film semiotics, London, Routledge.
John C. Tibbetts & James M. Welsh (eds.) (1999), Novels into film: The encyclopedia of movies adapted from books, New York, Checkmark