From Book to Film: Stevenson’s 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' (1886) and Rouben Mamoulian’s Film Adaptation (1932) – a Comparison E-Book

Michael Brendel

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Regensburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Hauptseminar Victorian Gothic, language: English, abstract: On the following pages we will have a closer look at the process of film adaptation by analyzing Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) – probably the most accomplished film version of Stevenson’s novella – and by comparing it with its literary model. At first, we will recapitulate the complexity of the source text, especially with regard to the question of genre. We will also examine T.R. Sullivan’s theatrical adaptation, which can in some respects be seen as a blueprint for Mamoulian’s film. Then, we will have a look at the literary macrostructure of the film at hand, discuss Mamoulian’s interpretation of Stevenson’s Strange Case and compare the source text with its screen adaptation from a narratological point of view. To finish our analysis, we will shed light on some techniques used by the director in order to communicate his ideas.

Leseprobe

Table of Content

1 Introduction

2 Main Part

2.1 From Stevenson’s Novella to Sullivan’s Stage Adaptation

2.1.1 Jekyll and Hyde as a Complex Mixture of Genres.

2.1.2 T.R. Sullivan’s Adaptation of the Source Text

2.2 Mamoulian’s Film Adaptation of The Strange Case

2.2.1 Changes in Literary Macrostructure: Plot and Character Constellation

2.2.2 Mamoulian’s Sexual Reading of Jekyll and Hyde

2.2.3 Mamoulian’s Darwinian Reading of Jekyll and Hyde

2.2.4 Mamoulian’s Adaptation from a Freudian Perspective

2.3 Comparative Narratology

2.3.1 Narrative Structure

2.4 Cinematic Devices

2.4.1 Subjective Point-of-View-Shots

2.4.2 Dissolves

2.4.3 Split-screens

2.4.4 Symbols

3 Synopsis

4 Appendix

5 Bibliography

Page 1

Page 2

1 Introduction

There are some English literary works whose titles have meanings even for those who have never read the story. This phenomenon is due to the fact that those texts are what Brian A. Rose calls “tracer texts”. According to Rose, a tracer text is “a story containing motifs, themes and/or images of archetypic import, which, because of those motifs and because of narratological, generic and stylistic elements, is adopted by a culture for repeated use over a significant time as a seed for a series of adaptations in performative and nonperformative

modes [...]”.1Two famous examples of this category of texts are Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein(1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson’sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde(1886). Both texts have been adapted lots and lots of times in various genres. The latter one alone has inspired more than 30 theatre versions, more than 100 film adaptations, several rewritings (for example Valerie Martin’sMary Reillyor Emma Tennant’sTwo Women of London),musicals and comic figures (for exampleThe Hulk).The reason why this process of constantly reworking Stevenson’s novella has gone on until today is probably the intriguing subjectmatter of the novella: the motif of the double. In spite of the conceptual and thematic complexity of Stevenson’s source text, however,Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydehas become “the victim of its own success” and is only preserved as a simple “colloquial metaphor for the