![]() The book acts then as a remediation that transforms one media form – film – into another, older form – the novel. (1) But more importantly, his book not only narrates two children’s discovery of film history, but also uses stills from early movies and drawings of cameras of all kinds as crucial components of the stories he tells in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Selznick, the famous film producer and his grandfather’s cousin. Selznick’s very name evokes past cinema glory through his relationship with David O. Such a construction seems appropriate for a movie that adapts a novel that is itself a kind of adaptation of one element of movie history to the form of a semi-graphic novel. The ending of the movie thus enables the beginning of a written text that does not replace but rather collaborates with film for an imagined audience that Hugo construes as both viewers and readers. Although it would be going too far to say that Hugo pays as much homage to books as it does to early cinema, all the same such an exaggeration would not be too far off the mark for a movie that repeatedly mentions books, lingers over books piled in a bookshop and shelved in a library, shows books being used and given as gifts, and ends with one of the main characters sitting down to write the story of the film, which is Hugo’s story. What interests us here is the extent to which Scorsese’s adaptation registers its status as an adaptation through its preoccupation with books. ![]() Instead, the movie makes its interest in adaptation clear through more indirect means. ![]() In fact, the only opening title is simply “Hugo”, and it appears after the opening sequence, nearly fifteen minutes into the film. Hugo does not explicitly signal its adaptation status in conventional fashion by, for example, opening with a shot of a copy of the book being opened or even with titles that indicate “Adapted from the book by…” or trumpet, for example, “Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Adaptation”. Transferring such a novel to screen seems an obvious move, the fulfillment perhaps of the novel’s own desire to transcend its medium, and a kind of acknowledgement of the novel’s integration of film into the novel’s own form and story. The relationship between film and novel poses an especially interesting case for students of adaptation the book is itself fascinated by early cinema and the unusual number of its illustrations – and the extent to which illustrations help tell the story, in collaboration with the text – help make the novel seem almost cinematic, an impression reinforced by the number of stills used in the book to help bring the reader into the characters’ experiences of movie watching. Hugo adapts Brian Selznick’s bestselling children’s novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for best children’s illustrations. Less obvious, perhaps, is the film’s love of books. It’s obvious that Martin Scorsese’s movie Hugo (2011) showcases its director’s great love of cinema and cinema history.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |