The “Literary” and Film Studies

Given the sheer amount of cinematic works that are based on literary sources, it may seem somewhat puzzling that literary adaptation isn’t a more prominent field within film studies.

Bewilderment lessens, though, when we start to consider what a film scholar might be looking for in a film. Cinematography, editing techniques, and acting styles are not endemic to literature or literary adaptation, even if they can be utilized to approximate literary perspectives (or influence writerly praxis), so there is little reason for scholars focusing on those elements to look at adaptations as anything other than successful or unsuccessful films. Film critics who love David Lean’s work, for example, spend more time talking about the epic scope of his productions than they do his specific negotiations with minutiae in Dickens’, Forster’s or even Lawrence’s writing. What matters to these scholars is the directorial vision that unites Great Expectations (1946), A Passage to India (1984), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), not the particularity of each source text. This formal focus also helps to explain why so many adaptations are (rightly) forgotten. The adapted works that film scholars revere are successful works of cinema that offer something in their own right.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Robert Stevenson’s version of Jane Eyre. Like the 1934 version starring Colin Clive, this adaptation takes some serious liberties with the text, but it is also a beautifully shot film that exploits the full effects of deep focus. Even though the movie’s reliance on dissolves may be more a marker of time than a successful aesthetic signature (dissolves and wipes were much more common in the 1940s, before the simple cut became king), the strong performances (including that of an uncredited Elizabeth Taylor as the young Helen Burns), beautiful mise en scene, and inventive camera angles make this work extraordinary. It therefore retains a place in film history while lesser adaptations do not.

Although it is important to recognize the ways in which Stevenson’s film stands as a work in its own right, film-savvy scholars of literature cannot help but notice the masterful way that the picture introduces its Victorian heroine to a modern audience that may be unfamiliar with the source text. The opening credits clearly mark the production as a prestige picture that liberally borrows cultural cache from print culture. This may not appear particularly innovative to a modern audience, bred on Masterpiece Theatre, but this novel introduction worked well to differentiate a Culturally sanctioned film from mere popular entertainment. 

The introduction also does its best to offer the viewer all of the contextual information s/he would need to appreciate the story. The voice-over, which purports to read the opening lines of the novel, actually gives a useful description of the social milieu in which Jane was raised. This prepares the reader for the “acceptable” abuse poured on Jane and helps to position him or her within Jane’s perspective. In other words, the film takes great liberties with its immediate introduction so that it can more effectively immerse a modern audience in Brontë’s literary perspective. 

As the clip demonstrates, the immersion is much more than the function of a clever credits sequence. Effective camera angles continue this perspectival identification when the story begins, as the viewer too sees Mrs. Reed and Mr. Brocklehurst “looming” above him or her, and is able to experience, through a high angle shot, how little and alone Jane is. Although it would be misleading to suggest that the camera in the film is subjective, it is nonetheless true that certain framing devices and shot choices help to convey Jane’s emotions. 

To give but one example, Jane’s trip to Lowood is less tightly framed than the scene in the Reed’s drawing room. The relatively open frame and mobile camera suggest the sense of freedom Jane feels. The brief and jerky point of view shots, meant to replicate the experience of actually traveling in a coach, reinforce the spectator’s identification with Jane and suggest a sense of progress. This freedom and progress, though, is limited by the realities of Lowood, a point suggested by shifts in music and lighting and borne out by the cut to the “novel” and the return of the voice-over, which resumes to remind the viewer of the hardships that Jane will endure. 

The deep focus shots within Lowood (starting especially at 8:13) allow the viewer to see just how much the charity school resembles a Gothic prison, and the final slow dissolve in the classroom, which offers us Jane’s misery from a different angle (see 10:24-10:28) suggests just how long her day has been. (This is one of the few places where the dissolve is highly significant–the slow dissolve in the empty school room contrasts greatly with the quick cuts used during the journey and to demonstrate how differently the time passes for Jane here.) 

Why denoting the “literary” here is somewhat superfluous (in terms of film study): Narrative is not limited to the written word. There are many ways to express the same content, and the confluence of particular effects is really only noteworthy if you wish to validate a source. Brontë’s novel was obviously the inspiration for this film, and the transitional shots that rely on the printed text are indications that Stevenson is drawing on the cultural cache of the Victorian novel in his “prestige” picture, but the film very much exists in its own right, on its own terms, in much the same way that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is appreciable outside of Ovid’s version of Pyramus and Thisbe.