Literature in Transmutation

Literature in Transmutation

... can be... okay.

I should certainly start with a definition of "transmutation": the action of changing into another form.  This could be changing literature into a song, a play, a dance; but generally what I'm talking about is a film.

My first real experience of Cinema started with a college class I took called, "Film and Literature".  In it, we read a book, saw the movie, and discussed.  In order to have the vocabulary with which to discuss, we also learned something of Cinema:  Genre, mise en scène, stuff like that.  (Of course we studied Citizen Kane, it was a class on film, frchrissake!)  I don't know how much I learned about Literature, but I did learn something about Film.

One of my favorite passages from a favorite book is in Stave III of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge out into the town on Christmas Eve and Dickens describes the scene: (If I quoted everything I liked, this essay would be 100 pages long!)

There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girth Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars; and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. - Charles Dickens

How in the world would you film such a scene and convey all that, as Literature, it has to convey?  By cutting between a basket of onions and some lecherous monks?  No, probably not so heavy-handed. (Who are you?  William Ziegler?  Just show some onions and let's get back to filming the door knocker.)

But that passage is great descriptive writing, chock-full of simile and metaphor.  The experience of reading it cannot be recreated on the screen.  Even if you could record on celluloid exactly what you saw in your mind's eye, the total experience would still be a pale copy of the text.  "A picture is worth a thousand words," goes the old saw, but I say, "That depends on the words."

One book we did study in "Film and Literature" was Cornell Woolrich's Rear Window.  It's a fine short story, one you probably know even if you never read the source material of the film, but the 1954 film is fantastic.  One of the Greatest Movies Ever Made.  After watching it a few times, I re-read the book.  I was amazed to find that Lisa Carol Fremont (Grace Kelly) wasn't in the book.  The story-function of the insurance company masseuse, Stella (Thelma Ritter 😍), is present in the book in Jeff's manservant, just not very interesting.  There is no girlfriend.  But the relationship between Jeff and Lisa is what drives the whole story in the film.  It's not a tacked-on love scene to get Grace Kelly fans into the theater; it is the investigation of the murder that is the McGuffin here.  (That just occurred to me this moment, 30 years later!)  But it wouldn't be the same for John Michael Hayes (screenwriter) to write his own short story, as the visual language of the movie is such an integral part of it (e.g. Jeff's "No comment" line).  So there's a case where Transmutation is actually better.

Incidentally, inspired by Rear Window (and on a kick to read every book that was the basis of a Hitchcock film), I also read (in translation! Gasp!) The Living and the Dead by Boileau-Narcejac, the basis of Vertigo.  I had already seen Vertigo a couple of times, but could not make head or tail out of this book.  For most of it, I couldn't see how the two were even related.  I guess it's just more evidence of how great Hitchcock was.

Now transmutation can improve on a book.  I just think that shows the book isn't Literature.  For instance, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Mike Nichols' 1970 film.  I've read the book more than twice.  The first time was confusing, the second time less so.  After one chapter the third time, I said to myself, "Why bother?  The film is much better."  Buck Henry's (!) screenplay takes a meandering book, locks down the parts that need locking down, throws out extraneous backstory (Major Major's first and middle names) and emerges as a wonderful non-linear film.  When filmed, the snappy dialog becomes snappy.  Milo's cold line, "Then they'll understand," becomes chilling.  The reveal of Snowden's "secret" is horrifying.  I always describe the book as if Heller cut every sentence out of his manuscript, threw them into the air, and published it as they landed.  Well, maybe not that bad.  But, Lord, it wasn't good.

Okay, I guess the takeaway is that often it's impossible, sometimes it's okay, and rarely it's an improvement.  I have something to say along these lines with regard to comic books, but I would like to get this published.  That will have to wait.

Here's a gratuitous picture of a Spanish onion so I can get the thumbnail to work.