The cinema : 1952 (1952)

204 THE CINEMA The relative success and failure of these adaptations show how limited are the kinds of novel which lend themselves to film treatment. The essentials of film narrative are that it be visual and dramatic. A novel's 'drama' may be legitimately internal or, in terms of action, diffuse. No adaptor could resolve the conflicts of The Bostonians in action or give a concise dramatic shape to War and Peace without losing the basic qualities of the originals. Indeed, the more fully the novelist avails himself of the freedoms of his medium, the less likely is his novel to be adaptable into a film. But to decide whether a novel lends itself to film adaptation is only the first and comparatively unimportant issue. A more pertinent question is whether a film treatment can strengthen a novel's impact and make the adaptation more than just commercially worth while. At the simplest end of the scale it undoubtedly can. The Maltese Falcon and The Asphalt Jungle add suspense and surface conviction to their originals in a genre which depends on these qualities. Where the novel is more ambitious in scope and style, the gain from a straight translation is less likely. For all its striving for accuracy, Intruder in the Dust captures only small elements of Faulkner's novel without giving it anything in compensation. (The fact that the film reaches a wider public makes the adaptation worth while in a different sense, but that is another point.) Perhaps it is naive to assume that any work of art of a certain complexity can be translated into another medium without loss. The original conception must inevitably determine the work's scope and the nature of its impact. Ideally, of course, the choice of incidents and the manner of the characterization should be determined at their inception by