Literature and Film : A bibliography

Links & Letters 6, 1999 121-132 Introduction The following bibliography focuses on the links between Literature and Film rather than on the wider issue of Word and Screen. This is so because the former is a firmly established, booming field of research, whereas the latter is a new concept still to find its way in the academic world. Despite the widespread interest in the relationship between printed fiction and films, the bibliography on the topic of Literature and Film is actually more scarce than could be expected. There are few established classics —some of them, such as George Bluestone's Novels into Film , dating back to the 1950s. There is also a worrying tendency to either focus on excessively theoretical aspects of the adaptation or on minute, often uninspired, comparisons of particular literary texts and particular films. This is possibly due to the fact that Literature and Film is an eclectic field in which film, literary, and cultural theory are used but that sorely needs a theory of its own based on a pragmatic approach to the business and textual practices involved in adapting printed fiction for the screen. Other problems that beset the study of Literature and Film are the undue prominence of the literary novel in the study of the screen adaptation and the often partisan tone of the comparisons, which tend to enthusiastically praise either the original text or the film adaptation without really understanding the process that links both. In general, short stories and plays —not to mention autobiographies, biographies, press articles and even essays— are much neglected in the study of screen adaptations and so was, until recently, the popular or commercial novel. Of course, most screen adaptations are based upon novels, but there is also a considerable number of adaptations based on short stories and plays. These are often overlooked by researchers because the sources are popular texts that lack a literary status. It is amazing to realise that popular plays and short stories on which major Hollywood films are based have all but disappeared for ever. It seems, therefore, necessary to speak of the relationships between printed and audio-visual texts from a wider perspective, since when we speak of Literature we neglect many kinds of printed Literature and Film: A bibliography Sara Martín Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia 122 Links & Letters 6, 1999 Sara Martín fiction and when we speak of Film, we underestimate other major audio-visual narrative media such as television. The format I have chosen for this bibliography is that of annotated sections. Rather than focus on a few key texts, I'd much rather give the reader a comprehensive reading list from which s/he can choose. The choice is quite open, too, for those who do research on Literature and Film. Many of the titles are self-explanatory and require hardly any additional annotation. It is safe to say, though, that most texts are accessible to the non-specialist, for the simple reason that they often discuss ideas commonly held by all those perceptive readers and film-goers who have seen a screen adaptation of a favourite printed narrative. I have avoided texts dealing with specific screen adaptations (this could have only led to a vast, chaotic reading list), preferring instead to select more theoretical texts discussing the general patterns of the transfer of printed fiction to the screen. This bibliography is divided into four main sections: first, a section on academic journals, focusing especially on the Literature/Film Quarterly; second, a section on short essays divided into articles in journals, essays in essay collections and chapters in monographs; third, a section on books subdivided into monographs, guides and bibliographies, collections of essays and book series. I have added to these a fourth section on screenwriting, inviting readers to consider the peculiarities of the publications devoted to writing for the screen and also to choose from a good selection for further reading on this neglected link between (literary) writing and the screen. Journals Literature/Film Quarterly Launched in 1973, Literature/Film Quarterly celebrated its 25 th anniversary in 1998. This high quality journal, indispensable in its field, is published by the Salisbury State University, USA, and is currently edited by James M. Welsh. Even though contributors do use film theory, the journal publishes relative short essays (around 3,500 words) and reviews which are accessible to the non-specialist. The range of adaptations it deals with is very wide. The journal publishes essays on adapted drama and fiction of all kinds. Literature/ Film Quarterly has practically no competitor within the United States and none in Europe. The monographic issues deserve special attention. The choice of topic gives a rather accurate indication of the main areas of research in the field of Film and Literature. Notice the importance of the adaptations of Shakespearean plays; the volumes devoted to drama into film connote, in contrast, the neglect of other plays which appear as the focus of «special» volumes. American Cinema (1989 XVII.4) Australian Cinema (1993 XXI.2) Literature and Film: A bibliography Links & Letters 6, 1999 123 Blade Runner (1990 XVIII.1) British directors (1980 VIII.1) Comedy (1991 XIX.2) Cult Cinema (1990 XVIII.3) Drama into Film (1991 XIX.1; 1994 XXII.2) Film Noir (1993 XXI.3) Foreign Cinema (1989 XVII.3) French Cinema (1984 XII.2) Genre (1982 X.3; 1985 XIII.3) Genre and Theory (1980 VIII.3) Greene, Graham (1974 II.4) Hardy, Thomas (1981 IX.2) Hundred 100 Years of Cinema (1995 XXIII.2) Science-fiction (1978 VI.4) Shakespeare (1973 I.4; 1983 XI.3; 1986 XIV.4; 1992 XX.4; 1997 XXV.2) Silent Cinema (1990 XVIII.2) Twin Peaks (1993 XXI.4) Vietnam (1988 XVI.4; 1992 XX.3) Monographic Issues of Journals The topic of film and literature is attractive for a wide reading public. It is not unusual to find monographic issues of film or literature journals devoted to it. The few examples chosen show that this interest is not restricted to English language academic publications. The anecdote is that even journals that may have little to do in principle with film, such as Literature & Theology , have published monographic issues on film and literature. Cahiers du Cinema , no. 185, December 1966. CinémAction , no. 523, October 1989 (monographic issue, Le remake et l'adaptation ). Literature & Theology , Vol. 12, no. 1, March 1998. BELLS (Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies), No. 9 . Autumn 1998. Short Essays Articles in Journals This section lists articles that deal with the general topic of the film adaptation, rather than with particular adaptations. As can be seen from the dates of publication, the theoretical foundations on which the study of the screen adaptation is based were established in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As I have noted, some of the articles paraphrase in academic terms ideas common to most film-goers who have the experience of seeing screen adaptations. This is why the non-specialist will find them accessible. Notice that these articles have appeared indistinctly in journals on aesthetics, film or literature (film and literature only in the exceptional case of the Literature/ Film Quarterly ). 124 Links & Letters 6, 1999 Sara Martín A MBLER , Eric (Summer 1956). «Screenwriting: the novelist and films». Journal of the British Academy 8, 9-14, 20. D ICK , Bernard (1978). «Authors, auteurs and adaptations: literature as film/film as literature». Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 27, 72-6. E IDVISK , Charles (1975). «Toward a “Politique des Adaptations”». Literature/Film Quarterly III.3, 255-63. E LLIS , John (May/June 1982). «The literary adaptation: an introduction». Screen 23.1, 3-5. E LSAESSER , Thomas (September 1973). «Film and the novel: reality and realism in the cinema». Twentieth Century Studies 9, 58-62. F ADIMAN , William (February 1985). «But compared to the original». Films and Filming 11.5, 21-23. G ILL , Brendan (March/April 1977). «Novels into movies». Film Comment 13.2, 4445. G OODWIN , James (Spring 1979). «Literature and film: a review of criticism». Quarterly Review of Film Studies 4.2, 227-46. G UZZETTI , Alfred (1972). «The role of theory in films and novels». New Literary History 3, 547-58. — (1975). «Narrative and the film image». New Literary History 6, 379-92. H ULSEBERG , R.A. (1978) «Novels and films: a limited enquiry». Literature/Film Quarterly VI.1, 57-65. J OHNSON , William C. (1979). «Literature, film, and evolution of consciousness». Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 38, 29-38. K AWIN , Bruce (1982). «Authorial and Systemic self-consciousness in literature and film». Literature/Film Quarterly X.1, 3-12. L INDELL , Richard L. (1980). «Literature/film bibliography». Literature/Film Quarterly VIII.4, 169276. M AYER , Peter C. (1980). «Film ontology and the structure of the novel». Literature/ Film Quarterly VIII.3, 204-12. M ORRISSETTE , Bruce (1973). «Aesthetic response to novel and film: parallels and differences». Symposium 27, 137-51. M ORRISSETTE , Bruce (1975). «Post-modern generative fiction: novel and film». Critical Inquiry 2, 253-62. M ORSE , Margaret (Spring 1981). «Paradoxes of realism: the rise of film in the train of the novel». Ciné-Tracts 13, 27-37. O RR , Christopher (1984). «The discourse on adaptation». Wide Angle , 6.2, 72-76. P OAGUE , Leland A. (1976). «Literature vs. cinema: the politics of aesthetic definition». Journal of Aesthetic Education 10.1, 75-91. S CHNEIDER , Harold W. (1975). «Literature and film: marking out some boundaries». Literature/Film Quarterly III.1, 30-44. S HATTUCK , Roger (1977). «Fact in film and literature». Partisan Review 44, 539-50. S IKOV , Ed (January 1995). «Writer's block». Premiere, 74-77. S ILVERSTEIN , Norman (1971). «Film and language, film and literature». Journal of Modern Literature 2, 154-60. S MALL , Edward S. (1979). «Literary and film genres: towards a taxonomy of film». Literature/Film Quarterly , VII.4, 290-9. Literature and Film: A bibliography Links & Letters 6, 1999 125 W ENDELL , Daniel (April 1973). «A researcher's guide and selected checklist to film as literature and language». Journal of Modern Literature 3.2, 323-50. W ICKS , Ulrich (1978). «Literature/film: a bibliography». Literature/Film Quarterly VI.2, 135-43. W ILLIAMS , W.E. (Winter 1935-6). «Film and literature». Sight and Sound 4/156, 163-5. Essays in Essay Collections and Chapters in Monographs This sections gathers together diverse texts published in books that do not deal primarily with screen adaptations. Mulvey's and Warner's essays are of special interest since these writers are among the very few to address the topic of the fairy tale and the cinema. Although it deals with a particular adaptation, Gregg Rickman's essay on Blade Runner has been included here because it offers a very interesting insight into the situation of the frustrated writer who cannot control the work of the adapter. Finally, the volume edited by David Wheeler, a collection of short stories on which famous Hollywood films are based, deserves in itself a warm recommendation. Since many of the original texts are hardly known while only very few could be regarded as part of the short story canon, this volume indirectly questions the relationship between the canons of film and literature. Regrettably, the volume is now out of print. D UDLEY , Andrew J. (1980). «The well-worn muse: adaptation in film history and theory». Conger, S.M. and Welsh, J.R. (eds.) Narrative strategies, 9-17. West Illinois University Press: Macomb, Ill. E DEL , Leon (1974). «Novel and camera». Halperin, John (ed.) Theory of the novel: New essays , 177-188. New York: Oxford University Press. F RENCH , Warren (1987). «Fiction vs. film, 1960-1985». Bradbury, Malcolm and Ro, Sigmund. (eds.) Contemporary American fiction, 106-122 . London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. M CFARLANE , Brian (1986). «A literary cinema? British Films and British Novels». Barr, Charles (ed.) All our yesterdays: 90 years of British cinema . London: British Film Institute. M ULVEY , Laura (1994). «Cinema magic and the old monsters». Sage, Lorna (ed.) Flesh and the mirror: Essays on the art of Angela Carter, 230-242 . London: Virago Press. P IRIE , David (1980). «The novel and the cinema». Seymour-Smith, Martin (ed.) Novels and novelists, 253-266. New York: St. Martin's Press. R ICKMAN , Gregg (1991) «“Philip K. Dick on Blade Runner ”: “They did sight stimulation on my brain”». Kerman, Judith B. (ed.) Retrofitting Blade Runner, 103109. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. W ARNER , Marina (1993) «The uses of enchantment». Petrie, Duncan (ed.) Cinema and the realms of enchantment, 13-35. London: BFI W HEELER , David (1989). «Introduction». Wheeler, David (ed.) No, But I Saw the Movie, xiii-xvii. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 126 Links & Letters 6, 1999 Sara Martín Books Monographs The books comparing and contrasting film and literature usually enjoy a long-lasting life. George Bluestone's pioneering Novels into film (1957) can still compete with Brian McFarlane's Novel to film: An introduction to the theory of film adaptation (1996); see the review by Charles Forceville in this volume). This is because the approach used by many writers when discussing this topic, beginning with Bluestone, is essentially pragmatic. As can be seen from the subtitle of McFarlane's book, younger scholars are trying to apply film and literary theory to the screen adaptation, succeeding only moderately. McFarlane's book is symptomatic of this brave failure: the analysis of particular films based on literary texts rests on the apparently solid foundation of theory, but when the reader plunges into the proficient shot-by-shot analysis offered by McFarlane the theory cannot fill an important gap: why the different decisions to cut, compress, summarise, or alter the original text were made during the process of adaptation. It is obvious that the structural changes follow clearly marked patterns in most adaptations —hence the growing importance of theory in the field— but the role of practical business constraints in film-making and the actual intentions of the adapter(s) remain still largely unexplored. BALLÓ, Jordi; PÉREZ, Xavier (1995). La llavor inmortal: Els arguments universals al cinema. Barcelona: Empúries. (Spanish translation, La Semilla Inmortal. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1997). BEJA, Morris (1979). Film and literature. New York: Longmans. BLUESTONE, George (1957). Novels into film: The metamorphosis of fiction into cinema. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. BOYUM, Joy Gould (1985). Double exposure: Fiction into film. New American Library: New York. BRUNETTA, Giampiero (1976). Letteratura e cinema. Bologna: Zanichelli. CHATMAN, Seymour (1978). Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. CHATMAN, Chatman (1990) Coming to terms: The rhetoric of narrative in fiction and film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. COHEN, Keith (1979). Film and fiction: The dynamics of exchange. New Haven: Yale University Press. EIDSVIK, Charles (1978). Cineliteracy: Film among the arts. New York: Random House. EISENSTEIN, Sergei (1947). The film sense. Leyda, Jay (trns., ed.). New York: Praeger. ELLIS, John (1982, 1992) Visible fictions. London: Routledge. FELL, John L. (1974). Film and the narrative tradition. Norman, Ok.: Oklahoma University Press. GIMFERRER, Pere (1985). Cine y literatura. Barcelona: Planeta. GOLDSTEIN, Laurence (1994, 1997). The American poet at the movies: A critical history. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Literature and Film: A bibliography Links & Letters 6, 1999 127 HAMILTON, Ian (1991). Writers in Hollywood 1915-1951. London: Heinemann. HITT, Jim (1992). Words and shadows: Literature on the screen. New York: Citadel Press Books / Coral Publishing Group. HURST, Matthias (1996). Erzählsituationen in Literatur und Film: Ein Modell zur vergleichenden Analyse von literarischen Texten und filmischen Adaptionen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. JINKS, William (1971). The celluloid literature: Film in the humanities. Riverside, NJ: Glencoe. KAWIN, Bruce (1972). Telling it again and again: Repetition in literature and film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. KITTREDGE, William (1979). Stories into film. New York: Harper & Row. LINDSAY, Vachel (1952). The art of the moving picture. New York: MacMillan. MAGNY, Claude-Edmonde (1972). The age of the American novel: The film aesthetic of fiction between the two wars. Hochman, Eleanor (trns.) New York: Ungar. MARCUS, Fred H. (1971) Film and literature: Contrasts in media. Scranton, London and Toronto: Chandler Publishing Company. MCCAFFREDY, Donald (1992). Assault on society: Satirical literature to film. Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. MCCONNELL, Frank D. (1975) The spoken seen: Film and the romantic imagination. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. — (1979) Storytelling and mythmaking. New York: Oxford University Press. MCDOUGAL, Stuart Y. (1985) Made into movies: From literature to film. New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston. MCFARLANE, Brian (1983). Words and images: Australian novels into film. Melbourne: Heinemann Publishers Australia. — (1996). Novel to film: An introduction to the theory of adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. MILLER, Gabriel (1980). Screening the novel: Rediscovered American fiction in film. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing. MORRISSETTE, Bruce (1985). Novel and film: Essays in two genres. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. MOSES, Gavriel (1995). The nickel was for the movies: Film in the novel from Pirandello to Puig. Berkeley: University of California Press. MURRAY, Edward (1972). The cinematic imagination: Writers and the motion pictures. New York: Ungar. NICOLL, Allardyce (1936). Film and theatre. London: George Harrap. PEÑA-ARDID, Carmen (1992). Literatura y cine: Una aproximación comparativa. Madrid: Cátedra. RICHARDSON, Robert (1969). Literature and film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ROPARS-WUILLEUMIER, Marie-Claire (1970). De la Littérature au cinéma: genèse d'une écriture. Paris: Colin, 1970. SINYARD, Neil (1986). Filming literature: The art of screen adaptation. London and Sydney: Croom Helm. SPIEGEL, Alan (1975). Fiction and the camera eye: Visual consciousness in film and the modern novel. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press. 128 Links & Letters 6, 1999 Sara Martín UTRERA, Rafael (1987). Literatura cinematográfica, cinematografía literaria. Sevilla: Alfar. VERDAGUER, Antoni (1987). La narrativa: cinema i literatura. Barcelona: Fundació Caixa de Pensions. WAGNER, Geoffrey (1975). The novel and the cinema. Cranbury, NJ. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: The Tantivy Press. Guides and Bibliographies The obvious problem of guides and bibliographies is that they age quickly. The guides, especially, cannot cope with the constant flow of adaptation pouring down onto the screens of the world. Tom Costello's ambitious International guide to literature on film seems necessarily limited next to Internet websites such as the Internet Movie Data Base (<http://us.imdb.com> or <http://uk.imdb.com>). This informs net surfers of whether a particular film is an adaptation and of its original source and allows them to buy the original book, if it is available, via the link with the Internet book shop Amazon. Costello's guide sees the adaptation from the opposite shore, listing the books that have been adapted. The shortcoming of his book —of any book that aspires to listing all the adaptation of literary works— shows that literature lags far behind film when it comes to the availability of pure, simple information about adaptations. It is easy, for instance, to check in a book or a website the names of the screen writers awarded an Oscar for the year's Best Adapted Screenplay. It is certainly very difficult to find information on some of the writers who created the original text that led others to Hollywood glory. BROKER-BOWERS, Nancy (1985). The Hollywood novel and other words about film: an annotated bibliography. New York: Garland. COSTELLO, Tom (ed.) (1994) International guide to literature on film. London, Melbourne, Munich, New Jersey: Bowker-Saur. GIFFORD, Denis (1991). Books and plays in films, 1896-1915: literary, theatrical and artistic sources of the first twenty years of motion pictures. London and New York: McFarland and Mansell. ROSS, Harris (1987). Film as literature, literature as film: An introduction to a bibliography of film's relation to literature. New York: Greenwood Press. WELCH, Geoffrey Egan (1981). Literature and film: an annotated bibliography 19091977. London: Garland. Collections of Essays The format of the essay collection is very popular in the field of Literature and Film. But the books gathering together diverse essays on different adaptations suffer from an important disadvantage: their material is frequently too eclectic. Film and TV adaptations, popular novels and Shakespearean drama, are often mixed in collections that, while interesting to read, are much less effective as research tools. The book devoted to adaptation of Literature and Film: A bibliography Links & Letters 6, 1999 129 Shakespeare edited by Boose and Burt (see the review by Patrick Cook) may indicate a change of direction in this sense, with future monographic volumes also in the line of the Pluto Press series (see below). AYALA, Francisco (1996). El escritor y el cine. Madrid: Cátedra. BOOSE, Lynda E. and BURT, Richard (eds.) Shakespeare, the movie: Popularizing the plays on film, TV, and Video. London: Routledge, 1997. BRAVO, José Mª (coord.) (1993). La literatura en lengua inglesa y el cine. Valladolid: Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Valladolid. COHEN, Keith (ed.) (1991). Writing in a film age: Essays by contemporary novelists. Niwot, Co.: University of Colorado Press, 1991. CONGER, Syndy; WELSCH, Janice (eds.) (1980). Narrative strategies: Essays in film and prose fiction. Macomb, Ill.: Western Illinois Press. DELTCHAVA, Roumiana (ed.) (1996). Literature and film: Modes of adaptation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. GEDULD, Harry M. (ed.) (1972). Authors on film. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. HARRINGTON, John (ed.) (1977). Film and/as literature. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. HORTON, Andrew S.; MAGRETTA, John (eds.) (1981). Modern European filmmakers and the art of adaptation. New York; Ungar. HUGUES, Gerard; ROYOT, Daniel (eds.) (1993). La littérature anglo-américaine a l'écran, Cahiers et Documents 12. Paris: Didier Érudition and Université Jean Moulin - Lyon III. KELIN, Michael; PARKER, Gillian (eds.) (1981). The English novel and the movies. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing. LUPACK, Barbara Tepa (ed.) (1994). Take two: Adapting the contemporary American novel to film. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. MAGILL, Frank N. (ed.) (1980). The novel into film. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press. ORR, John; NICHOLSON, Colin. (eds.) (1992). Cinema and fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. PEARY, Gerald; SCHATZKIN, Roger (eds.) (1977). The classical American novel and the movies. New York: Ungar. — (eds.) (1978). The modern American novel and the movies. New York: Ungar, 1978. REYNOLDS, Peter (ed.) (1993). Novel images: Literature in performance. London: Routledge. ROPARS-WUILEUMIER, Marie-Claire (1970). L'écran de la mémoire: essais de lecture cinématographique. Paris: Seuil. Series 1. Pluto Press, London: Film/Fiction Series Pluto Press publishes since 1996 an annual collection of essays dealing with aspects of film and fiction. At the moment of writing (1998), the first three volumes are available. Volume four, Aliens across the Film/Fiction Divide, edited