Twentieth-Century American Fiction on Screen

The essays in this collection analyse major adaptations of twentieth-century American fiction, with production stills and full filmographies.

R. Barton Palmer (Edited by)

9780521834445, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 February 2007

270 pages, 15 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.53 kg

'The first essay sets a high standard … This is a fine addition to the literature.' N. A. Baker, Earlham College

The essays in this collection analyse major film adaptations of twentieth-century American fiction, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon to Toni Morrison's Beloved. During the century, films based on American literature came to play a central role in the history of the American cinema. Combining cinematic and literary approaches, this volume explores the adaptation process from conception through production and reception. The contributors explore the ways political and historical contexts have shaped the transfer from book to screen, and the new perspectives that films bring to literary works. In particular, they examine how the twentieth-century literary modes of realism, modernism, and postmodernism have influenced the forms of modern cinema. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on nineteenth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen.

Introduction R. Barton Palmer
1. Filming an unfinished novel: The Last Tycoon Robert Sklar
2. The texts behind The Killers Thomas Leitch
3. Turning The Day of the Locust into a film Chris Ames
4. Ship of Fools: from novel to film Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr.
5. Intruder in the Dust and the Southern community Mark Royden Winchell
6. The dramatization of Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding McKay Jenkins
7. Film and narration: two versions of Lolita Robert Stam
8. World War II through the lens of Vietnam: adapting Slaughterhouse-Five to film Rodney Allen
9. John Huston's Wise Blood Matthew Bernstein
10. Genre and authorship in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch Steffen Hantke
11. Screening Raymond Carver: Robert Altman's Short Cuts Robert Kolker
12. The Color Purple: translating the African American novel for Hollywood Allen Woll
13. The specter of history: filming memory in Beloved Marc C. Conner
14. Filming the spiritual landscape of James Jones's The Thin Red Line R. Barton Palmer.

Subject Areas: Regional studies [GTB], Classic fiction [pre c 1945 FC], Literary studies: general [DSB], Films, cinema [APF]