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Two issues that have attracted significant academic attention in the context of adaptation are those of point of view and narration. The way each medium handles perspective has always been a point of contention in adaptation studies. Point of view is a difficult term. It is often misinterpreted or used in a much more restrictive way than is productive. One reason for that is that it suggests a visual framework when that is not necessarily the case. But the visual specification of the term is not the only problem. It is a loaded concept, used also to suggest an ideological position. In film, on

the other hand, there is the danger of merging the term with the literal camera angle, the image of a character’s field of vision. This confusion has led to many attempts to rename the term to something closer to its meaning and less ambiguous. Genette in Figures III (1972), suggested the term “focalisation” to describe the relationship of knowledge between character and narrator. For the purposes of this study the term point of view will be used in its narrative capacity to suggest the perspective from which the story is told, unless otherwise stated.

The main argument against adaptation on the subject of point of view is that where the novel can switch between different points of view seamlessly, film cannot. According to this, the novel can play intricate and complex games with point of view while film can only propose a clumsy literal point of view that dismisses the character from the frame. Essentially, the argument is that film only has the choice between an objective point of view and a single poor subjective alternative. This is a simplistic view based in part on the misconception of merging narrative point of view with its literal, visual counterpart. Film is capable of suggesting the identification with a character’s cognitive angle. Empirically it could be argued that the audience is always led to intuitively identify the agency of the assumed perspective. This works through camera positions but also through sound; it cannot be ignored that film is a multitrack format and therefore can signify on multiple levels. Also, the dissemination of narrative information, rather than the visual perception of a character, is the main establishing factor of point of view and that aspect does not suffer in the transposition. Gilberto Perez in his essay “Landscape and Fiction: A Day in the Country”, (published in Naremore 2000, p.129-153), offers an analysis of point of view in the case of Renoir’s A Day in the Country (1936). He explains how landscape and nature are presented through the story and the characters, creating an impressionistic effect. He also describes how Renoir frees the landscape from the characters, by not employing a literal point of view, but a possible one that could be the viewer’s. Identification is achieved not directly with the characters but with an

approximation to them. This suggests that cognitive, narrative point of view can be conveyed seamlessly in film but also that visual point of view does not have to be literal.

Narration is a subject that is closely linked to the discussion of point of view. The argument against film in this case is that it essentially does not have a strong narrator. Where in the novel the narrator, omniscient or not, can comment extensively on the story, in film they cannot. In the novel they can be perceived as an entity with personality whereas in film they stay hidden somewhere out of frame. Verbal narration, on or off screen, is the obvious way to overcome that obstacle and there has been a lot of discussion on whether that practice is cinematic or not. Defining the term cinematic would be a challenge, but in any case a verbal rendering of a verbal structure is not always the only option. It could be argued that film operates in a constant Bakhtinian double-voiced discourse, where the narrator’s and the character’s point of view coexist in an indistinguishable merger. An example of narrative ingenuity is Karel Reisz’s 1981 adaptation of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The book is to large extent comprised of the modern narrator’s commentary on the story that he is telling. The screenplay by Harold Pinter created a second narrative strand that carries the narrator’s view and juxtaposes that to the original story. This constitutes a significant departure from the text but an interesting attempt at mirroring its poetic structure. It is not suggested here that the narrator’s role necessarily needs to be dramatised, this is merely an example of an adaptation that engages with the text in terms of narration.

The second objection against adaptations in this context concerns the rendering of unreliable narration. A novel written in the first person has only one point of reference, the narrator. The reader’s window into the story is limited and they have no way to overcome ambiguity or omission. The disorienting effect of a confused, unstable or false character cannot be transferred in the same way in film. It is not possible for film to provide a completely singular perspective. Even with a

literal point of view shot, the information on the screen will be at the same time more (background, details) and less (subjective interpretation of the data) than the novel form could offer. As Robert Stam points out, in Literature Through Film, “The discursive power of unreliable autodiegetic narration is almost automatically relativised in film. In a novel the narrator controls the only track – the verbal track ... In the film, the other characters gain a physical presence denied them in the novel” (Stam 2005, p.232). In general terms, film does not allow for the application of a filter in the same way that literature can. While film cannot render literal subjective narration in perceptual terms it can very easily achieve the same result in terms of narrative. A shot of someone starting to tell a story is enough for us to know that what we are seeing from that point on is his interpretation of events. The fact that there is more information on the screen than would be logical in a verbal account does not disturb our suspension of disbelief. Interpretations of events can be added as voice-over. Also, film is able to achieve more in terms of the implication of ambiguity or falseness through use of its multi-track nature. The possibility of discord between image and sound, for example a voice-over that contradicts the image, does not have its equivalent in the novel. This discussion demonstrates that adaptation can tackle such issues, but only through a flexible framework that uses comparative methods and accepts divergence. This is the type of framework that this thesis is attempting to provide.