CHAPTER ONE
ADAPTING, INTERPRETING AND TRANSCREATING RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S WORKS ON SCREEN
SOMDATTA MANDAL
A minor work has no claim to act as more than a springboard when adapted for another medium, but a major work deserves, that any approach is made with respect to its essence. The scenario must express the quintessence of the book. It must emerge as clearly as possible, an honour to the original, to our process of transportation, and to cinematic art.
One of the most interesting things about the early twentieth century is that the arts of literature, painting and cinema went through the modernist crisis at approximately the same time, despite the fact that the cinema was a fledgling art and the others were well into their maturity.
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Nitin Basu reminiscences how in 1917 Prashanta Mahalanobis and Rabindranath Tagore took him to Bolpur requesting him to film a dance performance accompanied by Tagore’s songs in Uttarayan one evening. He took pictures, processed them in Mahalanobis’s laboratory at Presidency College, developed the print at home, again processed it in the laboratory and projected it for Gurudev. He liked this 17 minute film so much that he saw it again and again. Unfortunately the film is now lost and if available it would have been the first film in which Rabindranath had also performed a role. After this, in 1920 there was an attempt by Madan Company, which got permission to film Tagore’s play Biswarjan, but the project was aborted due to lack of female …show more content…
Incidentally, in Calcutta during that time people had already started cinematic ventures based on his stories. In 1923, the first ever silent film Manbhanjan based on Tagore’s story of the same name was made by Naresh Chandra Mitra. From Madhu Basu’s autobiography, it is also known that he had interacted with Tagore in making a film on the same short story, and after Madan Company signed the bond with Visva-Bharati, Tagore had even revised Basu’s film script, added some dialogues to it and advised a name to it, Giribala. All these events make it clear that Tagore was already aware of the immense possibilities of the new medium of the cinema and by 1929 his relationship with it became quite strong. The same year, in a letter to Murari Bhaduri (brother of theatre legend Sisir Kumar Bhaduri) written on 26 November 1929, he stated that the flow of images constitutes cinema. This flow, he wrote, should be used so that it can communicate without the help of words. “The cinema (chhayachitra, in his words) is still enslaved to literature,” and he attributed this ‘dependence’ to the general ignorance of the masses to which cinema caters. He added that a time will come, when cinema will cease to depend on literature for inspiration and
Since the beginning of the 19th century, America has had to deal with the on going
Cinema has been represented in numerous ways, however classical Hollywood cinema truly had an independent grasp since its debut in the 1910’s. The style created by the large producers of the time including Warner Brothers, MGM, RKO, Fox and Paramount shaped the genre not only during its birth but also through its Golden Age and into the present. As a style it has many characteristics that make it unique and poplar among viewers. The most salient of these aspects is the classical films plot structure and construction; unlike other styles including the art film the classical film creates a consistent and coherent plot for its viewers as David Bordwell states in his article, The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice “The view...
In the article “The Modest Proposal” the credible author known as, Johnathan Swift informs us readers on the starving families in Ireland. Swift’s total purpose of the article is to educate the article readers on how these families struggle for survival from the problem of starvation. Swift adopts an emotional and relatable feeling in his readers. Swift further conveys his explanation later on in the article.
People have been trying to come up with solutions to threatening epidemics from many years. There was a famine in Ireland that killed many people. The poor people of Ireland could not support their families, which made them go to extreme measures. In order to survive, women and children were forced to beg for food to prevent them from starving to death. Jonathan Swift proposes a solution to this epidemic in A Modest Proposal. Swift states that the poor Irish should sell their children as if they were cattle, or better yet, eat the children themselves. Swift uses a mocking tone in order to effectively convey that he does not actually support cannibalism, but rather uses it as metaphor to describe the harsh times of Ireland.
The Artist relates to film makers today because they need to adapt to the various audiences to stay in business. It is clear that Michel Hazanavicius utilizes lighting, sound and body language to demonstrate the classic way to tell a narrative is still relative in modern
Audience involvement in a film is fundamental to successful filmmaking. A well-made film leads the audience to find themselves being "in the story" and get emotionally as well as mentally involved by identifying with the main characters. As such, filmmakers get the audience to connect with the story by using narrative techniques. In this paper, I will be discussing how Orson Welles uses narrative techniques together with stylistic techniques which can bring about narrative details in the film, Citizen Kane.
Hi, My name is Mohammad Zachariah, you can call me Zachariah and I intend to study computer science. I have learned from scavenger Hunt Activity that the University Catalogue shall be your companion till graduation. Also, you have to manage your time effectively using the academic calendar to avoid any delay in my study process. The Higher education institutes main role is to build enlightened personnel who are able to add value to the country's economy.
It is not the daily news, newspapers, books or magazines, but the Indian cinema that has undoubtedly remained the ...
Adaptation, or the conversion of historical or fictional narratives into film, has been a common practice for many years. It is this very practice that has bound the two medias of film and narrative together. It has brought readers and viewers together in understanding a similar storyline with a similar structure. Sometimes, filmmakers have adapted films from novels successfully because of their ability to accurately portray the structure, characters and plotline from the novel throughout every aspect of the film. In Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest by Andre Bazin, he discusses the novel and film Man’s Hope by Malraux. He stated “ the style of Malraux’s film is politely identical to that of his book, even though we are dealing with two different artistic forms, cinema on the one hand and literature on the other.” This suggests the two creative vehicles are stylistically alike in that they both reflect an organized storyline with characters, themes and motives. In this paper I am going to spotlight the dialectic between the two artistic forms by identification through a close viewing experience of the subject, style, syntax and sound.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
Her screenplay is really a cornerstone of the film’s success. Dialogues are full of salt; all events unfold in close connection to the individuality of characters, who take decisions; and, on top of that, all of the characters themselves are quite lively and creatively different. A film always reflects the inner world of its screenpwriter. On the other hand, although an audience might watch the same movie, every viewer perceives and interprets differently the symbolic meaning of presentational media used by a filmmaker, implications of a plot and actions of characters from one's own subjective point of view. It must be noted that a film is able to address the unconscious of a viewer directly via sound and visual effects and can affect a person in a much greater variety of ways than other forms of art like literature, music or painting can do.
Depending on the social settings and the intentions of the directors, movies have been produced to depict varying occurrences in a society. Sometimes, the movies are used to pass particular message to the audience through motion pictures or a series of still image projected on a screen. Over the years, the production of movies has become a multibillion industry since they provide stimulating experience and communication of perceptions, feeling ideas or stories. Bollywood movies are among the works of an art being used to illustrate the various social happenings in the society (Kabir 25).
Bollywood is one of the largest film producers in India and one of the largest centers of film production in the world. The early 1920s saw the rise of several new production companies, and most films made during this era were either mythological or historical in nature. Raja Harishchandra (1913), by Dadasaheb Phalke, is known as the first silent feature film made in India. Imports from Hollywood, primarily action films, were well received by Indian audiences, and producers quickly began following suit. By the 1930s, the industry was producing over 200 films per annum. 1931 saw the release of first Indian sound film, Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara, and the film that paved the way for the future of Indian cinema. The number of
When comparing Indian cinema with other cinema from around the world it is evident that narrative attributes are one of the key components that contribute to Indian film’s reputation as a ‘unique world cinema.’ Indian cinema separates itself from other world cinema styles through a number of aspects including its approach to aesthetic elements, such as camera angles and acting methods as well as its integration of song and dance. In order to further explore the proposed explanations for its unique narrative characteristics, I will examine the history behind aspects of Indian cinema and how they have developed. In addition to this, I will compare and contrast cinematic components of Western and Indian cinema including plot development, character/actor attributes, and song and dance origins. I will also look at the role historical and mythical tradition play within the context of cinematic theme and examine several theories that explore the underpinnings of narrative attributes that make Indian cinema unlike any other.
Tagore’s massage for us in India in another illustration of a recurring phenomenon that India weighed down by history, prostrated by invasions, endlessly vacillating from greatness to declines recovers her spirit century after century by her own power of self-renewal. When times are out of joint, wise men arise and warm about our lapses. The seers of the Upnishads, the Buddha and Mahavira, Assoka and Akbar and Kabir in their own periods recalled us to the fundamental Spiritual truth and castigated us for our deviations from them we are fortunate in having had a few men women in our lifetime who stood out for their wisdom and courage, who refined man’s spirit and altered his out look.