Filmmaking by the Book

Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation
Erscheinungsjahr 1992
ISBN: 978-0-8018-4455-3
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 534 g

What is the impulse to transform literary narrative into cinematic discourse, and what are the factors that determine that transformation? In Filmmaking by the Book, Millicent Marcus considers the adaptive process as the sum total of a series of encounters: the institutional encounter between literary and film cultures, the semiotic encounter between two very different signifying systems, and the personal encounter between author and filmmaker—sometimes involving an overt Oedipal struggle for selfhood.

Marcus explores that process by looking at key works by such major postwar Italian filmmakers as Visconti, De Sica, Pasolini, Fellini, and the Taviani brothers. Drawing on the methodologies of semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, and ideological criticism, she finds that cinematic imaginations typically employ literary texts self-consciously to resolve specific artistic problems. Each of the filmmakers studied here define their own authorial task in relation to that of the literary precursor, and insert "umbilical" scenes or "allegories of adaptation" to teach viewers how to read their cinematic rewriting of literary sources.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marcus, Millicent

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Literature and Filme: Negotiating the Terms
Chapter 1. Visonti's La terra trema: The Typology of Adaptation
Chapter 2. Visonti's Leopard: The Politics of Adaptation
Chapter 3. De Sica's Two Women: Realigning the Gaze
Chapter 4. De Sica's Garden of the Finzi-Continis: An Escapist Paradise Lost
Chapter 5. Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew: The Gaze of Faith
Chapter 6. Pasolini's Decameron: Writing With Bodies
Chapter 7. The Tavianis' Padre padrone: The Critical Acquisition of Codes
Chapter 8. The Tavianis' Kaos: The Poetics of Adaptation
Chapter 9. Fellini's Casanova: Adaptation by Self-Projection
Chapter 10. Fellini's La voce della luna: Resisting Postmodernism
Appendix: Film Synopsis and Credits
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Marcus, Millicent
Millicent Marcus is Mariano DiVito Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Director of the Center of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Millicent Marcus is Mariano DiVito Professor of Italian Studies in the Department of Romance Languages and Director of the Center of Italian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.