Friday, January 21, 2011
From stage to screen: 10 great adaptations
The Denver Post: "Lindsay-Abaire has taken on the historically difficult problem of adapting plays for the screen ... and perhaps solved it.
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5 comments:
It is so interesting to read about an artist's way of delivering the same message through a different medium. It must be such a challenge, when a play is written with emphasis on the words, and then putting it on film, where there needs to be so much more than that. I find it very true when it is said that the film needs to do something different. I agree with this because otherwise, why bother taking it from the stage and bringing it to film? Lindsay-Abaire seems to have such a great process when he does this, there is much to learn from his methods.
I like that the article mentioned that most of the "great" adaptations are from (comparatively) early in the history of film. And I always question adaptations myself; the movie is never as good as the book (except LotR, in my opinion), and the original is nearly always better, because the creator made it in that medium for a reason. But I'm starting to see how the story can be told differently and mean different things in different mediums. I've read this play, and I'm excited to see the film now.
I always find it interesting when people are surprised that a movie came from a the stage. It is not as if this is a new idea or anything. It has been happening since motion pictures were invented. I will admit that I did not know some of those movies mentioned were plays first.
On a side note I would of put 12 Angry Men on that list. The movie is an emotional rollercoaster which comes straight from the play. For a movie that is only about 12 men talking in a room for two hours it does a great job.
It is interesting that this article attributes the shift from plot to spectacle to Star Wars; I suppose it makes sense, and movies have certainly come a long way since then. As a storyteller, I like that design elements can focus on ideas rather than reality, but I think that in addition to that having been lost from movies, audiences, now influenced by movies and other media, expect more true-to-life (or larger than) production values in the theatre.
Additionally, I have yet to see a musical turned into a movie that I thought captured the intent of the stage version.
This has always been an interesting subject to me. How can you translate something as personal and changeable as a staged production to something as impersonal as film. Not to say that film is a less artistic medium by any mean, simply less intimate. I feel like the problem extends farther than just the need for more than one location in a film, but the fact that the story becomes a different entity when you put it in a new medium. A stage performance is different from a film entirely, and simply adjusting the moments of the play to fit accordingly, in my opinion at least, don't do the play justice.
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