Category: Film and Literature: Artistic Correspondence
From the Stage to the Screen: The Dancing Body in the 1938 Film Adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion
In his 1913 play, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw underlines the transformation of the heroine through changes in her English speech. To highlight the metamorphosis of the flower girl, however, most of the later adaptations of the play also pay attention to changes in her manners and movements, particularly by adding the ballroom scene. Moreover, when …
Resilience in the Face of an Epidemic: W. S. Maugham’s the Painted Veil and Its Film Adaptations
William Somerset Maugham’s classical novel The Painted Veil (1924) and its three Hollywood adaptations (1934, 1957, 2006) explore a marital crisis set against a cholera epidemic in China in the 1920s. The source text and the film adaptations approach the epidemic from different perspectives, exploring its dramatic potential, metaphorical aspects and an overall impact on …
Transforming Families in Chinese Melodrama Under the Influence of May Fourth
One of the most important dates in twentieth- century Chinese history is May 4, 1919. May Fourth Movement is a lasting significant movement that is not just for political demands. It has long-lasting effects on Chinese cultural and intellectual activities up to the present day. Intellectuals in that time were not only asking for political …
The Reception of the Weird Sisters in Welles’s ‘Macbeth’ and Kurosawa’s ‘Throne of Blood’
This presentation will focus on the reception of the Weird Sisters of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) as supernatural beings with power over destiny and nature in Orson Welles’s Macbeth (1948) and Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957). Welles’s and Kurosawa’s receptions of the witches are acts of power in themselves, for the directors decide how …
Visions of Postwar Fascism
For Japan, 1960s were a troubled decade, kept between modernization and national identity. Intellectuals as well as Japanese “Nouvelle Vague”’s filmmakers led many protest movements related to a shattered Japanese identity. Some like Wakamatsu Kôji were motivated by revolt while others like Ôe Kenzaburô advocated for remembering in a way to peace. In 1960’s (censored) …