There are many issues involved with adapting a classic novel for the small screen, but probably the most important of these is the degree of loyalty the adaptation should make with the original novel.
For a director it is almost impossible to remain perfectly loyal to the novel. For instance,around the time of the first director, David Lean, filmmaking had not advanced to such a stage for it to be possible to, as shown in the book, animate the roots of a tree to look like dead people’s hands.
Another problem in directly adapting the novel is that there is simply not enough time to include all the details of a book into a small length of time. Many directors today find this difficult and have to resort to leave out large, but usually unneeded, parts of the novel.
The first adaptation of Great Expectations was directed by David Lean. Shot in 1946 this adaptation was in glorious black and white. It would have been possible to shoot the adaptation in colour, but possibly budget issues might of occurred as colour filming was a new innovation and still quite expensive.
The adaptation starts with the view of a large, leather-bound book entitled, “Great Expectations”. The book opens and a voice over reads the first few lines describing the character Pip. The voiceover is obviously a grown-up Pip reading. Wind sound effects are heard and the book’s pages are blown over and over until the scene fades to Pip running into the graveyard.
The rest of the scene remains true to the book almost exactly. The lighting is dark, to portray the time of dusk and this gives the scene a mystifying feel because you cant quite see all of the set.
Close-up shots and over-the-shoulder shots are used to portray Pip’s and Magwitch’s feelings. Panning shots are also sometimes used, not only to show the surroundings, but to also convey how the graveyard is getting darker.
In conclusion, David Lean took the “faithful to the book” route when he directed the adaptation of Great Expectations.
The next adaptation was drected by Julian Amyes in 1981. Between Lean’s adaptation and Amyes’ adaptation, there had been countless stage performances of Great Expectations. This mean that most of the population knew of the story of Great Expectations. To ensure that Ames’ adaptation went down in history and wasn’t forgotten, Amyes had to make a few changes to the story.
The film may have edited out one of the drastic details that made the novel’s success, explaining the film’s failure.
Of the many changes made between the book and the movie, most were made to keep the audience interested in the story. Most people who watch TV don’t have a long attention span. Executives at NBC didn’t want to spend millions to produce a movie and then have nobody watch it. The screenwriters had to throw in some clever plot twists to keep people interested. Another reason the movie was different from the book was the material in the book was a little too racy for network TV. Take the ending, for example, nobody wants to see a grown man hang himself. This was a reason the producers had to change some material in the movie.
The film that was produced after the novel has a lot of differences and not as
Great Expectations is one of Dickens’ greatest accomplishments, properly concentrated and related in its parts at every level of reading. Dickens skillfully catches the reader's attention and sympathy in the first few pages, introduces several major themes, creates a mood of mystery in a lonely setting, and gets the plot moving immediately.
As the case with most “Novel to Movie” adaptations, screenwriters for films will make minor, and sometimes drastic, adjustments to the original text in order to increase drama and to reach modern audiences. Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film interpretation of The Great Gatsby followed the 1925 classic great plot quite accurately, with minor deviations. However, Luhrmann made some notable differences to the characters and settings of The Great Gatsby in order for the story to relate to the current generation and to intensity the plot
Van Brunt, Alexa. "Subversion of Gender Identity in Great Expectations." The Victorian Web: An Overview. 16 Feb. 2004. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. .
Capuano, Peter J. "Handling The Perceptual Politics of Identity in Great Expectations." DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Sept. 2010. Web. 27 Jan. 2014.
Comparing the Opening Scenes of the David Lean and the B.B.C. Versions of Great Expectations By Charles Dickens
Great Expectations’ main character, Phillip Pirrip- generally known as Pip- had a rough upbringing as a child. His sister, Mrs. Joe had “brought him up by hand”, after their parents and five brothers had all been laid to rest many years ago. Another character, Herbert Pocket experienced a bizarre childhood, though in a different manner. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations develops through the novel following Pip, a young “common boy” who grew up in the countryside. As he matured so did his love for a girl of higher class, Estella. However, being a common boy, Pip was not good enough for his Estella, thus once he was given an opportunity to become a gentleman in London he seized it without much hesitation. Charles Dickens’ had his own style in the ways he portrayed his child characters’ upbringings, history, and the children’s emotions. Also in Great Expectations, Dickens creates his child characters in unique methods; Pip, Estella, and Herbert Pocket all have miserable backgrounds, however none of them is too similar.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a coming-of-age story written from December 1860 to 1861. Great Expectations follows the life of Phillip Pirrip, self-named Pip; as his “infant tongue could make of both name nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” (I, Page 3) The story begins with Pip as a young child, destined to be the apprentice of his blacksmith brother-in-law, Joe Gargery. After spending time with an upper-class elderly woman, Miss Havesham and her adopted daughter, Estella, Estella, with whom he has fallen in love, he realizes that she could never love a person as common as himself, and his view on the social classes change. Pip’s view of society grows and changes with him, from anticipating the apprenticeship of Joe, to the idealization of the gentle class, and eventually turning to the disrespect of the lower class of which he once belonged. Although Pip may grow and physically mature, he did not necessarily grow to be a better person. He loses his childhood innocence and compassion, in exchange for the ways of the gentlemen.
“About the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: The Similarities Between Dickens and Pip.” A Date with Dickens. Oprah’s Book Club. 6 December 2010. Web. 21 March 2014.
These elements are crucial to the structure and development of Great Expectations: Pip's maturation and development from child to man are important characteristics of the genre to which Great Expectations belongs. In structure, Pip's story, Great Expectations, is a Bildungsroman, a novel of development. The Bildungsroman traces the development of a protagonist from his early beginnings--from his education to his first venture into the big city--following his experiences there, and his ultimate self-knowledge and maturation. Upon the further examination of the characteristics of the Bildungsroman as presented here it is clear that Great Expectations, in part, conforms to the general characteristics of the English Bildungsroman. However, there are aspects of this genre from which Dickens departs in Great Expectations. It is these departures that speak to what is most important in Pip's development, what ultimately ma...
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens is a fascinating tale of love and fortune. The main character, Pip, is a dynamic character who undergoes many changes through the course of the book. Throughout this analysis the character, Pip will be identified and his gradual change through the story will be surveyed.
Adaptation of any kind has been a debate for many years. The debate on cinematic adaptations of literary works was for many years dominated by the questions of fidelity to the source and by the tendencies to prioritize the literary originals over their film versions (Whelehan, 2006). In the transference of a story from one form to another, there is the basic question of adherence to the source, of what can be lost (Stibetiu, 2001). There is also the question of what the filmmakers are being faithful to or is it the novel’s plot in every detail or the spirit of the original (Smith, 2016). These are only few query on the issue of fidelity in the film adaptation.
“Themes and construction: Great Expectations” Exploring Novels (2005): 8. Online. Discovering Collection. 07 Feb. 2006. Available http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/DC.