Screening the Stage

Steven Neale

Description

Introduced by a comprehensive account of the factors governing the adaptation of stage plays and musicals in Hollywood from the early 1910s to the mid-to-late 1950s, Screening the Stage consists of a series of chapter-length studies of feature-length films, the plays and musicals on which they were based, and their remakes where pertinent. Founded on an awareness of evolving technologies and industrial practices rather than the tenets of adaptation theory, particular attention is paid to the evolving practices of Hollywood as well as to the purport and structure of the plays and stage musicals on which the film versions were based. Each play or musical is contextualized and summarized in detail, and each film is analyzed so as to pinpoint the ways in which they articulate, modify, or rework the former. Examples range from dramas, comedies, melodramas, musicals, operettas, thrillers, westerns and war film, and include The Squaw Man, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Merry Widow, 7th Heaven, The Cocoanuts, Waterloo Bridge, Stage Door, I Remember Mama, The Pirate, Dial M for Murder and Attack.

Introduction
1. The Squaw Man
2. The Poor Little Rich Girl
3. The Merry Widow
4. 7th Heaven and Seventh Heaven
5. The Cocoanuts
6. Street Scene
7. Waterloo Bridge
8. Stage Door
9. The Pirate
10. I Remember Mama
11. Dial M for Murder
12. Attack
Bibliography; Index

Sujets

• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Histoire du cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Media
• Film
• ART
• Digital
• History of film
• Video
• Screenplay
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: John Libbey Publishing
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780861969296
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Screening the Stage
Screening the Stage:
Case Studies of Film Adaptations of Stage Plays and Musicals in the Classical Hollywood Era, 1914-1956
Steve Neale
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Screening the Stage:
Case Studies of Film Adaptations of Stage Plays and Musicals in the Classical
Hollywood Era, 1914-1956
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 0 86196 726 1 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0 86196 929 6 (Electronic edition)
Published by
John Libbey Publishing Ltd, 205 Crescent Road, East Barnet, Herts EN4 8SB, United Kingdom e-mail: [e-mail] ; web site: www.johnlibbey.com
Distributed Worldwide by
Indiana University Press , Herman B Wells Library-350, 1320 E. 10th St., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. www.iupress.indiana.edu
2017 Copyright John Libbey Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.
Unauthorised duplication contravenes applicable laws.
Printed and bound in the United States of America..
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 .
The Squaw Man
Chapter 2 .
The Poor Little Rich Girl
Chapter 3 .
The Merry Widow
Chapter 4 .
7 th Heaven and Seventh Heaven
Chapter 5 .
The Cocoanuts
Chapter 6 .
Street Scene
Chapter 7 .
Waterloo Bridge
Chapter 8 .
Stage Door
Chapter 9 .
The Pirate
Chapter 10 .
I Remember Mama
Chapter 11 .
Dial M for Murder
Chapter 12 .
Attack
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank John Libbey for agreeing to publish this book and for taking such care over its presentation. And I would also like to thank all those whose work on the film adaptation of plays has taught me so much during the course of the last few years.
Introduction
Introduction
T he proliferation of books and articles on film adaptations has been a feature of the last two decades. Preceded by the publication of Novels into Films by George Bluestone in 1957, 1 the study of film and other media adaptations has grown slowly, then at an ever-gathering pace as it has become institutionalised in colleges, schools and universities, and as the number of books, journals, conferences and websites devoted to the subject has expanded. In her blog, Imelda Whelehan states that adaptation studies is the analysis of a text and its adaptation, whether that text is a novel, film, dance, play, comic strip, musical score, sculpture, video, game, etc. . 2 But while rightly seeking to be open, expansive and non-judgemental, a purely text-based approach such as this can all too easily ignore the institutions and practices that produce or mark or site them - hence the ever-expanding number of theoretical concepts that tend to dominate Adaptation Studies. This book does not eschew Adaptation Studies as such. But instead of inventing more terms and concepts, it focuses in detail on twelve Hollywood films produced between 1914 and 1956, their remakes where applicable, the twentieth-century plays or musical shows on which they were based, and the generic, stylistic, technological and institutional factors that either marked or governed them. Each chapter is preceded by a detailed summary of the play or show on which it was based and followed by an equally detailed account of the film or films. 3 The similarities and differences that mark them are noted, the key personnel are cited, and the stages in the process of adaptation are outlined where possible. 4
Among the factors that governed the production of feature films in this period was the constant need for story material, and here the major and minor studios alike frequently drew on published and unpublished novels, short stories, and musicals and plays, including those, like Sorry, Wrong Number , that were written for radio. 5 Some of the novels were bestsellers, some of the short stories were well-known, and some of the plays and musicals were Broadway hits, and the rights to these properties usually cost more than the less well-known ones. But in all cases these rights would be purchased on the understanding that they would be adapted for the screen in ways that the studios saw fit: fidelity was a goal only insofar as particular characters, actions, songs, and lines of dialogue were regarded as essential to the commercial appeal of specific adaptations, and only insofar as they adhered to the prevailing norms and constraints of cinema censorship. As is detailed in chapter 7 on Waterloo Bridge and its film adaptations, these norms and constraints varied over time and were often out of synch with those that governed the theatre, and here the changes that mark the film versions exemplify the differences between the two institutions and their modes of representation as the classical Hollywood period wore on. 6
Another factor here is that of a fundamental difference between films on the one hand, and stage plays and musical shows on the other. As was initially noticed and exploited by filmmakers during the first decade of the twentieth century, the viewpoint provided by film cameras differed fundamentally from the viewpoint of audience members in live performance venues. In the latter, each audience member viewed the stage and its performers from a unique and specific point, a fact that theatre directors catered for in their blockings and stagings. But in film-screening venues, audience members, wherever they sat, shared a viewpoint or series of viewpoints provided by the camera, as Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs have pointed out. 7 This difference was grasped and consciously used from this point on, and in the 1910s it gave rise to specific pictorial styles in Europe. But it marked the framing and staging of more highly-edited films in the USA as well, and remained a well-understood principle in the filming and editing of feature-length films, shorts and serials, and, in ersatz form, in animated shorts and features too. In this way shots became units in scenes and sequences, scenes being the structural bedrock of plays and stage musicals as well as of films, and sequences the sole province of the cinema prior to the advent of filmed television comedies and dramas. However, it should be noted that scenes in plays and stage musicals were usually longer than those in feature-length films, and that scenes in the theatre were often part of even longer acts, of which there is no marked equivalent in films. 8 Novels and short stories were used as the basis of feature-length films too. But while the story material in novels could provide the basis for feature-length narratives, and while chapters in novels could provide the basis of scenes, short stories always necessitated the provision of additional narrative material.
Early Adaptations
Like the production of original scripts, the production of adaptations was subject to the supervision of screenwriting protocols in all the principal Hollywood studios in or by the late 1910s. But before that there were two discernible periods followed by a third, which witnessed the emergence of feature-length films in parallel with the second. 9 The first period lasted from 1896 to 1904 and was marked by the heterogeneous production and exhibition of short films of all kinds and by occasional and much longer films such as Passion Plays and prize fights; 10 and the second period was marked by the emergence of nickelodeon theatres in or around 1905, and the production and exhibition of programmes of short films designed to ensure a rapid turnover of films and audiences in what were mostly small venues. 11 Both periods were marked by adaptations of all kinds. In addition to the early Passion Plays and prize-fight films, the former included The May Irwin Kiss (1896), a single-shot version of the kiss that marked the end of an 1895 musical play entitled The Widow Jones ; two versions of Uncle Tom s Cabin (one produced by Edison, the other by Lubin), both of which were released in 1903 and both of which consisted of highlights from one or more Tom shows ; and The Great Train Robbery (Edison 1903 and Lubin 1904) which were based on the 1896 play by Scott Marble. 13 The latter comprised split-reel, one-reel and occasionally two-reel films, and many of these were adapted, again in highlight form, from well-known novels, plays, and stage-play versions of famous works, and these included Francesca di Rimini (1907); The Count of Monte Cristo, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and East Lynne (all 1908); The Bride of Lammermoor, A Drunkard s Reformation and The Violin Maker of Cremona (all 1909); The Prince and the Pauper and Ramona (both 1910); and A Doll s House and Vanity Fair (all 1911). 14
By 1912 the distribution of films such as these was dominated by four cartels: The Motion Picture Distributing Sales Company, the Mutual Film Corporation, the General Film Company (the distribution wing of the Motion Picture Patents Company and the industry s dominant organisation), 15 and Universal. And by then some of the production companies began experimenting with longer films, and Vitagraph, which had already issued a four-reel version of Les Mis rables and a five-reel version of Life of Moses over a number of weeks in 1909, 16 began to issue two-reel or three-reel films on a single day. However, even though most nickelodeons now possessed more than one projector and could therefore screen two or more reels on a continuous basis, by no means all did so , and in general they treated the multiple-reel films as they treated the programme of single-reel ones . 17 There were occasions on which multireel Passion Plays and other Biblical films would be presented on Sundays and Christian holidays. 18 But for the most part the production and exhibition of films was still largely b