Andre Bazin on Adaptation

Adaptation was central to André Bazin’s lifelong query: What is cinema? Placing films alongside literature allowed him to identify the aesthetic and sociological distinctiveness of each medium. More importantly, it helped him wage his campaign for a modern conception of cinema, one that owed a great deal to developments in the novel. The critical genius of one of the greatest film and cultural critics of the twentieth century is on full display in this collection, in which readers are introduced to Bazin's foundational concepts of the relationship between film and literary adaptation. Expertly curated and with an introduction by celebrated film scholar Dudley Andrew, the book begins with a selection of essays that show Bazin’s film theory in action, followed by reviews of films adapted from renowned novels of the day (Conrad, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Colette, Sagan, Duras, and others) as well as classic novels of the nineteenth century (Bronte, Melville, Tolstoy, Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Stendhal, and more). As a bonus, two hundred and fifty years of French fiction are put into play as Bazin assesses adaptation after adaptation to determine what is at stake for culture, for literature, and especially for cinema. This volume will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in literary adaptation, authorship, classical film theory, French film history, and André Bazin’s criticism.

Adaptation was central to André Bazin’s lifelong query: What is cinema? Placing films alongside literature allowed him to identify the aesthetic and sociological distinctiveness of each medium. More importantly, it helped him wage his campaign for a modern conception of cinema, one that owed a great deal to developments in the novel. The critical genius of one of the greatest film and cultural critics of the twentieth century is on full display in this collection, in which readers are introduced to Bazin's foundational concepts of the relationship between film and literary adaptation. Expertly curated and with an introduction by celebrated film scholar Dudley Andrew, the book begins with a selection of essays that show Bazin’s film theory in action, followed by reviews of films adapted from renowned novels of the day (Conrad, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Colette, Sagan, Duras, and others) as well as classic novels of the nineteenth century (Bronte, Melville, Tolstoy, Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Stendhal, and more). As a bonus, two hundred and fifty years of French fiction are put into play as Bazin assesses adaptation after adaptation to determine what is at stake for culture, for literature, and especially for cinema. This volume will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in literary adaptation, authorship, classical film theory, French film history, and André Bazin’s criticism.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: André Bazin’s Position in Cinema’s Literary Imagination

PART ONE. ADAPTATION IN THEORY

1. Preview: A Postwar Renewal of Novel and Cinema
2. André Malraux, Espoir, or Style in Cinema
3. Cinema as Digest
4. Critical Stance: Defense of Adaptation
5. Cinema and Novel
6. Literature, is it a Trap for Cinema?
7. A Question on the Baccalaureate Exam: The Film-Novel Problem 
8. Lamartine, Jocelyn: Should you Scrupulously Adapt such a Poem?
9. Roger Leenhardt has Filmed a Novel he never Wrote 106
10. Alexandre Astruc’s Les Mauvaises Rencontres (Bad Liaisons): Better than a Novel
11. Colette, Le Blé en herbe: Uncertain Fidelity
12. Rereading Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) 
through a Camera Lens
13. Of Novels and Films: M. Ripois with or without Nemesis
14. Stendhal’s Mina de Vanghel, Captured beyond Fidelity
15. Mina de Vanghel: More Stendhalian than Stendhal

PART TWO. ADAPTING CONTEMPORARY FICTION

A. Best Sellers from Abroad

16. On William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy
17. Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend
18. Hollywood Can Translate Faulkner, Hemingway, and Caldwell
19. John Ford, How Green Was My Valley
20. John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath, from Steinbeck
21. John Ford, Tobacco Road, from Erskine Caldwell
22. Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy becomes A Place in the Sun
23. D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
24. Has Hemingway influenced Cinema? 
25. Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro
26. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
27. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory becomes John Ford’s The Fugitive
28. Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
29. Graham Greene and Carol Reed, The Fallen Idol
30. Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
31. Joseph Conrad, Outcast of the Islands, filmed by Carol Reed
32. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Nikos Kazantzakis’ He Who Must Die
      are now Two Great French Films
33. Franz Kafka on Screen: Clouzot’s Les Espions (The Spies)

B. Fiction from France

34. Avec André Gide, by Marc Allégret
35. The Universe of Marcel Aymé on Screen: La Belle Image 
36. Colette, Le Blé en herbe: The Ripening Seed . . . has Matured
37. Marguerite Duras, Barrage contre la Pacifique, adapted by René Clément
38. Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse, adapted by Otto Preminger

PART THREE: ADAPTING TO THE CLASSICS

A. The Nineteenth-Century Novel from Abroad

39. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
40. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
41. Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat
42. Herman Melville, Moby Dick
43. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
44. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
45. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
46. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, alongside Tolstoy, War and Peace

B. French Classics on the French Screen

47. Abbé Prévost, Manon Lescaut, adapted by Clouzot
48. Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet
49. Stendhal, Le Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma)
50. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black): Tastes and Colors
51. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
52. Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, alongside Jules Verne, Michel Strogoff
53. Zola and Cinema: Pour une nuit d’amour (For a Night of Love)
54. Émile Zola, Thérèse Raquin, adapted by Marcel Carné
55. Émile Zola’s La Bête humaine becomes Fritz Lang’s Human Desire
56. Émile Zola’s L’Assommoir becomes René Clément’s Gervaise
57. Guy de Maupassant, Une vie (A Life), adapted by Alexandre Astruc
58. Maupassant Stories adapted by Max Ophüls: Le Plaisir
59. Maupassant Stories adapted by André Michel: Trois femmes
60. French Cinema faces Literature addendum. two long essays on adaptation
       translated by hugh gray
61. Journal d’un curé de campagne and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson
62. In Defense of Mixed Cinema 

Appendix: Chronological List of Articles
Index of Films
Index of Proper Names
Index of Topics and Concepts