Galdosian Novels Adapted in Film and Television: 1970-1998
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GALDOSIAN NOVELS ADAPTED IN FILM AND TELEVISION: 1970-1998 Heeju Han Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the department of Spanish and Portuguese Indiana University April, 2007 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee __________________________________________ Chair: Maryellen Bieder, Ph.D. __________________________________________ Josep M. Sobrer, Ph.D. ___________________________________________ Melissa Dinverno, Ph.D. ___________________________________________ Joan Hawkins, Ph.D. Date of Oral Examination - March 5, 2007 ii DEDICATION To my unforgettable grandfather, Sun-Doo Kim, to my loving parents, Suk-Gyu Han and Sook-Rye Kim, and to my dear husband, Ghang-Ho Lee iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would especially like to thank Professor Maryellen Bieder, my advisor, for her enthusiastic support, guidance and encouragement throughout my Ph.D. studies. Without her support, this work would have never been accomplished. Also, I thank all the members of my committee: Professor Josep M. Sobrer, Professor Melissa Dinverno and Professor Joan Hawkins for their advice and support. I want to thank the “Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States’ Universities,” which made my research trip to Spain possible. Finally, I like to extend my gratitude to all the friends and colleagues I met in Indiana University for their continuous support and friendship, which definitely made my life in Bloomington more precious. iv ABSTRACT HEEJU HAN GALDOSIAN NOVELS ADAPTED IN FILM AND TELEVISION: 1970-1998 In twentieth-century filmmaking, most film critics agree that nineteenth- century novels had a special attraction for filmmakers because they established a national discourse or mythology and generated authoritative figures for their cultures. In the case of Spain, Galdós is a popular nineteenth-century author among filmmakers especially in the late twentieth century. In relation to twentieth-century Spanish history, Galdosian adaptations formulate the expressions of cultural critiques questioning the value and the meaning of the existing social order, such as women under patriarchal rule, and even representing national-historical concerns. My studies of three adaptations, Tristana (1970) by Luis Buñuel, Marianela (1972) by Angelino Fons, and Fortunata y Jacinta (1980) by Mario Camus, demonstrate that the adaptations establish oppositional discourses to the patriarchal order of society by means of formulating and underlining the novels’ femininity used in various ways such as the subversion of female body’s conventional concepts, the feminine narrative style, and the emphasis on female perspective and space. The last chapter, which is about the adaptation El abuelo (1998) by Garci, shows that the adaptation questions the conventional way of defining the nation’s identity and suggests another way of formulating it through melodramatic structure and emotional effects. The fact that Galdosian novels were adapted during the most critical times in recent Spanish history indicates a national and cultural authority that Galdosian novels v have. Therefore, studying literary adaptation can generate various ways to read novels, thus lending the novels cultural significance in a different period of time and through a different medium. _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter One. Tristana (1970) by Luis Buñuel: Transgressive empowerment of the female body…………………………………………………………………………...25 1.1.Bodies in the text ………………………………………………..………........27 1.2.The director, Luis Buñuel……………………………………….…………....32 1.3.Bodies In the adaptation………………………………………….…………...33 1.4.Conclusion……………………………………………………….…………...52 Chapter Two. Marianela (1972) by Angelino Fons: Sentimental narrative and social criticism……………………………………………….………………………………55 2.1.The novel, Marianela (1878)...……………….………………………………55 2.2.The director, Angelino Fons…...……………….…………………………….59 2.3.Marianela (1972) as a resisting discourse……….…...………………………60 2.4.Fons’s adaptation as a sentimental narrative…….………………………….. 66 2.5.Conclusion……………………………………….…………………………...77 Chapter Three. Fortunata y Jacinta (1979-1980) by Mario Camus: Femininity in the time of change………………………………………………………………………...79 3.1.The director, Mario Camus…...…………………….………………………...79 3.2.Why a television adaptation?: Mario Camus’s Fortunata y Jacinta and the novel (1886-87)………………………………………………………….…....80 3.3.Problematizing the male voice and perspective…………………………….84 3.3.1. The case of Jacinta……………………………………………............90 3.3.2. The case of Fortunata…………………………………………………95 3.4.Femininity in the cultural transition………………....………………………102 3.5.Conclusion…………………………………………….…………………….108 Chapter Four. El abuelo (1998) by José Luis Garci: Melodramatic structure and historical questions…………………………………………………………………..111 4.1.The novel, El abuelo (1897)………………………………………………...111 4.2.The adaptation, El abuelo (1998): Historical questions and melodrama……119 4.2.1. The director, José Luis Garci………………………………………..119 4.2.2. The adaptation, El abuelo (1998)……………………………………120 4.2.3. The melodramatic narrative of the adaptation……………………....123 4.2.4. The evolution of Lucrecia…………………………………………...127 4.2.5. Melodramatic effects………………………………………………...135 vii 4.3.Melodramatic adaptation in its contexts and conclusion……………………139 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….146 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………….156 VITA ………………………………………………………………………………..176 viii Introduction In the film industry, literature has traditionally been a good material for the filmmaker since many movies adapted literature to the screen and literature is believed to offer a great variety of narrative styles, themes, characters, and situations, etc. Even if there are many adaptations of a novel, each adaptation has its unique way of adapting the original text. In the case of Galdós in Spain, Galdós’s novels seem to be a good source for filmmaking since there are a fair number of Galdosian novels adapted in film and in television in the twentieth century. Here is the comprehensive list of Galdosian adaptations produced in Spain and the name of the director: Film Adaptations: La duda (1916) Domenec Ceret El abuelo (1925) José Buchs La loca de la casa (1926) Luis R. Alonso Marianela (1940) Benito Perojo Nazarín (1958) Luis Buñuel Fortunata y Jacinta (1969) Angelino Fons Tristana* (1970) Luis Buñuel1 Marianela*(1972) Angelino Fons La duda (1972) Rafael Gil Tormento (1974) Pedro Olea Doña Perfecta (1977) César Fernández Ardavín El abuelo*(1998) José Luis Garci Television Adaptations: El abuelo (1969) Alberto González Vergel La Fontana de oro (1970) Jesús Fernández Santos Miau (1971) José Luis Borau Misericordia (1977) José Luis Alonso Fortunata y Jacinta*(1980) Mario Camus La de San Quintín (1983) Alfredo Castellón (Navarrete 31) As is evident in the list of the adaptations, the greatest number of adaptations was produced in the 1970s. Regarding this fact, Thomas G. Deveny who studies Spanish 1 An asterisk indicates an adaptation studied in this dissertation. 1 cinematographic adaptations of literary works, states about the adaptation of nineteenth-century novels around the 1970s, a period that I will focus on later in this dissertation: Adaptations of nineteenth-century Spanish works (as well as earlier classics) have continued in recent decades with works such as Fortunata y Jacinta, Tristana, Doña Perfecta, Los pazos de Ulloa, and El buscón . Indeed, although there was a paucity of adaptations of contemporary novels in the early 1970s, Buñuel’s adaptation of Tristana in 1970 might have inspired Spanish filmmakers to bring classic literary works to the screen, since the main examples of the transformation from novel to screen from this period are mainly nineteenth-century works: Galdós’s Marianela, Tormento, and El abuelo (The grandfather, called La duda in its screen version); Alas’s La regenta, and Valera’s Pepita Jiménez. However, there is no doubt that nineteenth-century narratives have continued to attract the attention of directors in many national cinemas. (17) Deveny’s comment provides us the information that Galdosian novels were inspiring ones for filmmakers and that Galdós is considered one of the authors whose works are highly adaptable in cinema. At this point, we may pose a question, such as why nineteenth-century narratives, particularly Galdós’s works, were good material for the film industry at that time. Exploring the relation between nineteenth-century narratives and adaptations, André Bazin seems to provide a good explanation for that question. 2 Studying adaptations, Bazin realizes that many nineteenth-century novels were adapted to film and examines why these works became attractive to filmmakers: The nineteenth century, more than any other, firmly established an idolatry of form, mainly literary, that is still with us and that has made us relegate what has in fact always been essential for narrative composition to the back of our critical consciousness: the invention of character and situation. It is interesting to note that the novelists who so fiercely defend the stylistic or formal integrity of their texts are also the ones who sooner or later