Hollywood Convention and Film Adaptation

This essay speculates about some of the ways in which originals are changed by three kinds of conventions in classic Hollywood film: the style in which dialogue was edited, the status of filmed objects, and the star system. The originals I have in mind are Shakespearean dramas and the classic fourth-wall plays that Hollywood most often attempted to film. The films I have in mind, however, are not necessarily based on plays. The nature of adaptation from theatre to film is best examined if we do not limit our examples to film based on stage originals. Hollywood movies with no explicit allegiance to stage vehicles can be some of the most useful models for thinking through the differences between and filmic representation. I will begin with some observations about the ways in which the most common practice for presenting dialogue in Hollywood film stylizes and alters its meaning. These observations will lead to a discussion of the burdens this device puts on the actors who speak the dialogue and how they may use this cinematic pattern toward the theatrical end of upstaging another actor. This focus on the performer will lead to speculations about how the flattening effect of photography makes the relation between the film star and filmed objects different from the relation between the stage actor and properties. I will conclude with a discussion of one example of how the intervention of the studio and star systems necessarily colors the expectations the viewer brings to any screen adaptation

Adaptation (eye · Art · Art history · Convention · Hollywood · Political science · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Neuroscience · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

• Re‐birthing the monstrous

  Caroline Joan S Picart•Critical Studies in Mass…•1998

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• The politics of adaptation

  Wayne J McMullen, Martha Solomon•Text and Performance Quarterly•1994

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• It had no voice to it”

  Brenda Cooper, David Descutner•Quarterly Journal of Speech•1996

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