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Narrative Transformation from Text to Screen a Study of the Adaptation of the Novel in Arabic Cinema

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Narrative Transformation from Text to Screen a Study of the Adaptation of the Novel in Arabic Cinema Narrative Transformation from Text to Screen A Study of the Adaptation of the Novel in Arabic Cinema Jaffar Mahajar | Dissertation submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy t1 School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 2009 1 ProQuest Number: 11010465 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010465 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 To my father; for his enduring support. To my mother. To my stepmother; for doing her best. SPAS LIBRARY] Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own work 1 s n • Jaffar M ah ajar Date 3 Abstract The Arabic novel has been a valuable source for a large proportion of feature films in the cinemas of the Arabic speaking world. In fact, the rise of cinema in the Arab world in the last one hundred years has been parallel to the rise and development of the novel in Arabic culture. From its inception, Arabic cinema resorted to making films of highly appreciated literary texts, to provide films with respectability and relevance. This helped to root cinema in the culture of this region. Early narrative films evolved in parallel to the historical moment at which the Arabic novel was beginning to acquire its autonomy from other narrative forms. The thesis focuses on five works of literature from across the Arab world and studies the process of their adaptation to the cinema, in order to evaluate the extent of success or failure that the filmmakers encounter in the interaction between the two narrative media. Due to the leading and pioneering position of Egyptian cinema in the context of the Arab world and the wider Middle East and Asia, two Egyptian film adaptations have been selected for analysis, and the remaining three case studies were selected from Syria, Iraq and Algeria, in a manner that provides the study with a comparative perspective, covers different cinema genres, and deals with varied approaches to adaptation. The study concludes with a discussion of differences and similarities between these adaptations and endeavours to draw a general thesis regarding the interplay between text and context on the one hand and theme and medium on the other. 4 Acknowledgment s I would like to thank all those who helped me in my research at the School of Oriental and African Studies library, the British Film Institute library, the British Library, L’Institut Du Monde Arabe library, the New York Public Library and the Lincoln Centre Library, New York. I would also like to thank Dr. Debbie Cox of the Arabic collection at the British Library for kindly allowing me access to her personal VHS copy of the film adaptation of Rlh al-Junub. The Syrian director Nabll al-Malih was most kind in locating and sending me a copy of his film adaptation of the Hanna Mlnah novel, Baqaya Suwar. I thank him. The late Iraqi novelist Fu’ad al-Takarfi most generously invested a part of the precious little time he had on a visit to Iraq in 2002 to source a VHS copy of the film adaptation of al-Qamar wa al- ’Aswar. I thank him and wish his family solace. In completing this Ph.D thesis I am indebted to the generosity and mentorship of my supervisor, Professor Sabry Hafez; without his patient notes of guidance and kindly words of support and help, this thesis would not have been completed. Shukran. 5 Contents: Introduction Narration and Techniques of its Transformation 7 Chapter One: Al-Qahirab 30/ Cairo 30: Assimilating Text to Screen and Context 31 Chapter Two: Al- \Ard/ The Earth: Sanctifying the Land and Iconising Resistance 66 Chapter Three Baqaya Suwar / Fragments of Memory: Reconstruction of Memory as a National Imaginary 109 Chapter Four Al- \Aswart The Walls The Dialectic Transformation of Rhetorical Narrative 147 Chapter Five Rlh al-Junub / Wind from the South: The Shift from Rhetorical Narrative to Characterisation and Visual Representation 198 Conclusion 249 Bibliography 257 6 Introduction Narration and Techniques of its Transformation Since the publication of his seminal book Novels into Film} over half a century ago, George Bluestone’s thesis that where the novel described and gave space for thought, film showed, has gone through a series of tests and challenges. The challenges and queries are in many instances derived from theses and debates that pre-date the publication of his work and have disparate theoretical and technical backgrounds; Frank McConnell made a great attempt at condensing into a few sentences the difference between writing and film: WRITING, beginning with a technology at once highly associative and highly personal, strives toward the fulfilment of its own projected reality in an ideally objective, depersonalized world, while FILM, beginning with a technology at once highly objective and highly depersonalized, strives toward the fulfilment of its own projected reality in an ideally associative, personal world.2 He goes on to give a summary of the foundations of the debate surrounding the difference between the two narrative media of the novel and film respectively by pointing to the starting point of a literary narrative as being the ‘perception of the individual, the suffering, passionate, isolated consciousness, in reaction against the outer universes of both society and unthinking, inhuman physical reality.’3 In other words, written narrative is seen as inherently perceptual where ‘we begin with the consciousness of the hero and have to construct out of that 1 George Bluestone, Novels into Film (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957 - reprinted in 2003) 2 Frank D. McConnell, Storytelling and Mythmaking: images from film and literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 5 3 ibid 1 consciousness the social and physical world the hero inhabits.’4 The argument is echoed by the late Iraqi novelist Fu’ad al-Takarli who spoke of the disparity in the portfolio of tools available to the filmmaker in comparison with the novelist - narrative writer - who only has his ‘use of language and the imagination and memory of the reader.’5 In order to explore the different, as well as overlapping, sets of tools available to the novelist and the filmmaker, respectively, in addition to looking at influencing factors in the process of adaptation that are beyond the strict remit of filmmaking and fiction-writing per se, this introduction will be divided into two sections: firstly, for investigating those elements that are intrinsic to the two media; and secondly, extrinsic dynamics influencing the adaptation process. Intrinsic factors Bluestone provides the classic and often reiterated position towards literary adaptations: Where the novel discourses, the film must picture. [...] Perceptual knowledge is not necessarily different in strength; it is necessarily different in kind. The rendition of mental states - memory, dream, imagination - cannot be adequately represented by film as by language. If the film has difficulty presenting streams of consciousness, it has even more difficulty presenting states of mind which are defined precisely by the absence in them of the visible world. Adding, ‘the film, by arranging external signs of our visual perception, or by presenting us with dialogue, can lead us to infer thought. But it cannot show us thought directly.’6 Where Bluestone emphasises the difference in the act of consuming a book and the process of viewing a film, Brian McFarlane points to the process of interacting with the communal memory of a work arrived at previously through a conceptual method - reading - and replacing it with a new memory that is arrived at perceptually - by watching and listening, and, at 4 Ibid. 5 Fu’ad al-Takarfi, Azzaman Newspaper, March 12th, 2008. Available online at: http://www.azz aman.com/index. asp?fhame=20080303- 12698.btm&storytitle=%DA%E4%20%C7%El%E3%DA%C7%ED%D4%C9%20%E6%20%C 7%E 1 %E3%CE%ED%E 1 %C9. My translation. 6 Bluestone, Ibid, pp. 47-48, emphasis in original. times, reading [road and street signs, newspaper headlines etc.].7 Further, the act of reading a novel involves the imagination of the reader, and utilizes a verbal sign system. Watching a film, argues McFarlane, relies on the simultaneous use of visual, aural, and - as stated above - verbal signifiers. The act of reading is characterized by its Tow iconicity and high symbolic function’, and works conceptually. The act of watching a film, on the other hand, deals o with a cinematic language that is iconic and appreciated ‘perceptually’. This point is linked to the written nature of the narrative and its dependence on the ability of the reader to attach images and meanings to the written form of communication where, as underlined by the work of the practice of semiotics, words and names do not necessarily correspond to their images. In alphabet- based written form of languages, the word ‘horse’, for example, does not correspond in its shape and appearance on the page to the image of the animal. Through cultural and social codes accumulated over time, the reader constructs this universe through the written text. In film, on the other hand, the situation, as McConnell states, is, ‘essentially and significantly, reversed,’ for film can ‘show us only objects, only things, only, indeed, people as things.’ He finally adds, ‘our activity in watching a filmed narrative is to infer, to construct the selfhood of the hero who might inhabit the objective world film so overwhelmingly gives us.
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