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Re: RARA-AVIS: Hardboiled and Noir again
William Denton wrote:
>
> On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Ann P. Melvin wrote:
>
> : What is an accepted hardboiled novel becomes in its cinematic
> : transmogrification a noir film. It is as if the transformation of a
> : narrative description of a character into a visual portayal of an
> : performer's interpretation of that description subtly changes its
> : emphasis from the physical to the psychological.
>
> Interesting. In some ways, you'd think it would be the other way
> around, since you can conjure up images of the characters in a novel
> but when you see them in a movie there's no getting around the
> actors. What happens in radio adaptations?
Bill is right. Reading and listening, (radio), require the imagination
in order to internally visualize the appearance of the characters, but
with the stage, cinema, and TV the appearance of the character is
externally imposed on the viewer, and the audience is forced to accept
the casting director's and performer's opinion of how the character
should look. Equally, whereas with print and radio the reader/listener
can produce in his or her own mind the nuances of personality he or she
feels fit the character, in "live", i.e., visual, performances the
body-language and stage-business created to round out a character are
thrust upon one. There is, as Bill says, no getting around the actors.
Hence there is in a visual presentation much more emphasis on non-textual
interpretation -- the old picture worth a 1000 words cliche -- an actor
portrays a character with a nervous tic or studied mannerism that serves
to create an image, one which an author would have to spend considerable
length to convey. What it comes down to is that print and visual are two
discrete art forms and one can only adapt from one to the other, not
copy. The best film from book, (or vice-versa with "novelizations"), is
nothing more than a simulacrum of the original, not a clone. So in the
director's and actor's decisions to give a character certain mannerisms,
habits, etc., over and above the dialogue and incident of the plot serve
to increase the psychological interpretation, an interpretation that is
unique in that it is that specific interpretation and no other -- the
actor gets in the way -- whereas with print and radio there are a myriad
of interpretations because every reader/listener fashions his or her own
interpretation in his or her own mind.
David Skene-Melvin
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