TOPIC 61. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CINEMA ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
1. JUSTIFICATION
2. INTRODUCTION
3. THE CINEMA
3a) American cinema
• Silent era
• Golden age
• Second Golden age
3b) British cinema
• Early years
• Post-war period
• Free cinema to today
4. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CINEMA ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
4a) American screenwriters
4b) British screenwriters
5. ADAPTATIONS
6. THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN LITERATURE AND CINEMA
7. METHODOLOGY
8. CONCLUSION
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. GIMFERRER, P. “Cine y Literatura”
2. HIGSON, A.,“English Heritage. English Cinema”.
3. Mangold W., A Mirror of the English Speaking World
www.imbd.com
Before I start developing the topic itself, I would like to present how I will structure my
exposition: Firstly, I will set the topic within the suitable legal framework, secondly, I will develop the
topic from an epistemological approach, then I will develop the topic from a pedagogical perspective,
to show how it can be integrated in the English classroom, within the appropriate curriculum. Finally, I
will finish my exposition by offering a conclusion and a bibliography.
At a national level, this topic is set within the legal framework established by Royal Decree
2017/2022 of March the 29th (LOMLOE). At a local level, it is Decree XXX that establishes the
Curriculum of Secondary Education in Catalonia. My exposition is going to be carried out considering
the mentioned legal framework.
1. JUSTIFICATION
American writer Rita Mae Brown once said “Language is the road map of a culture. It tells
you where its people come from and where they are going”. As language teachers we know that
cultural aspects of a language cannot be separated from the grammatical ones, given that language
is a social entity.
But, what is more, through acknowledging cultural aspects of the English language, we can
draw our students’ interest towards it. We must not forget that nowadays English is the most
commonly used means of communication among foreign language speakers and it opens
intercultural opportunities, as well as labour doors anywhere in the world.
2. INTRODUCTION
Since the appearance of cinema in the late 19th century, to today’s broadcasting platforms,
such as Netflix or HBO, cinema has been used as a mirror of society’s preferences. But, before
cinema, though, literature in all their forms, poetry, prose and drama, had been the main means of
conveying culture and knowledge.
The main purpose of this topic is to determine how cinema has contributed to the spread of
literature and how this affects our students. It will be done through a general approach to the
different eras of the history of the cinema and its big impact to the literary world production and
consumption.
3. THE CINEMA
Since the appearance of the press in 1450, to the invention of the cinematographer in 1895,
to the popularisation of TV after 1945 up to today’s broadcasting platforms, one can appreciate that
the sources of mass entertainment have varied. Nevertheless, literature has always been their
source of inspiration.
The motion picture industry produces works of mass entertainment for national and
international markets. Americans and British monopolise the screens of most of the world, and thus,
their culture and language spread worldwide.
Cinema has changed a lot through time. Formerly films lasted no longer than ten minutes,
whereas today films can last more than one hour. First films were silent and produced as daily life
documents that soon became boring experiences.
Let us see how American and British cinema evolved from the first experiences to today’s film
industry, and let us also remark on those literary works that have been adapted to become filming
experiences.
3a) AMERICAN CINEMA
Historically speaking, in terms of time, we can distinguish three different film eras in
American cinema, which main features may be described as the following:
The silent film era (1890s-1920s):
Despite not knowing his name or some of his films, our students might have seen some films of
the great Charles Chaplin, through a mixture of mimics and clown, Chaplin became an iconic
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representation of Silent films which has transcended over the years . Silent movies were just that –
movies that did not have any talking or music in them. To provide drama and excitement to films,
live music was played in synchronicity with the action on the screen, by pianos, organs, and
other instruments.
Some silent movie stars of the era were the already mentioned Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and
Hardy, Harold Lloyd and Pearl White. The most famous silent movie is The Birth of Nation
(1915). It is about the relations between two families during the American Civil War and the period of
reconstruction that followed. The film was a success and it earned the cinema a new social and
intellectual respectability.
However, it was also seen as an openly racist depiction since the Ku Klux Klan were
represented heroically as the defenders of civilized values and, as a result, it was banned in many
American cities. The mentioned film and its circumstances can be used to foster critical
thinking, by introducing SDG10 (Inequalities) in the classroom.
The Golden Age: the sound era (1930s-1950s):
The golden age of Hollywood was a period in American filmmaking in which the five major
studios (the big five), MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO, dominated the production of
major motion pictures, controlling every aspect of a film's production, from casting to shooting to
distribution.
This period relied on “stars” such as Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Rita
Hayworth, to carry its films to success at the box office. The star system was the method of
creating, promoting and exploiting stars in Hollywood films. Movie studios would select promising
young actors and glamorize and create personas for them, often inventing new names.
The first revolution of the golden era was the introduction of sound in cinema. It changed the length
of the films and added the need for interesting narratives, which had to be extracted from literature.
In the early 1920’s, “talkies” were films which included synchronized dialogue, but were exclusively
short. The earliest feature-length movies with sound included only music and effects. (see Fritz
Lang’s “M” in 1931). The first long talking movie was released in 1927 and was a musical titled
“The Jazz Singer”.
From the 30’s, as the soundtrack was introduced in films, producers were in need of new
stories. That is when “story departments” appeared, where hundreds of workers spent their
working hours reading books and any kind of fiction story, looking for materials that could fit into the
stars type and become a major hit in the studio.
The second development of that era was colour. Technicolor; a filmmaking process that allowed
films to be shot in color. Technicolor was initially most commonly used for filming musicals such as
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“The Wizard of Oz” (1939), costume pictures such “Gone with the Wind” (1939), and animated films
such as “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). “Serious” films would still be filmed in
black and white.
Hollywood’s Golden Age finally came to an end due to two main factors: antitrust actions against the
5 major companies, and the invention of television. Anyway, some examples of literary works turned
into major hit films of this era would be “It happened One Night” (1934), based on S.H. Adam’s
short story called “night bus”, and “the Maltese Falcon” (1941) based on Dashiel Hammett’s
novel, both films starring Humphrey Bogart.
The Second Golden Age (1960’s-1970’s):
By the early 1960’s the European renaissance in film gained international fame via various film
festivals (Berlin, Venice, Cannes). This put the pressure on the American Film Industry to show
social and cultural responsibility within film productions.
Meanwhile, a group of young Americans studying film as an art at USC and UCLA became the
advocates of the innovative European cinema. These talented soon-to-be filmmakers would totally
dismantle the old studio system and would adapt to the style, themes and modes of the French New
Wave.
These new filmmakers and screenwriters were known as the "film school brats," that included
Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Brian de
Palma. They were given unprecedented creative freedom by the majors to make films, which made
this period into an era of authors, where the director became the major creative force.
Nevertheless, the acting became also important, where the expression of feelings and
naurality of the acting were paramount, and the starring roles were given to new young stars,
such as Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson or Dustin Hoffmann, who were nothing like
the handsome matinee Hollywood idols of the Golden Age.
Some examples of literary works turned into film hits in this era are “Clockwork Orange”
(1971) directed by Stanley Kubrik and adapted from A. Burgess novel and “Kramer vs. Kramer”
(1979) from a novel of A. Corman, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.
3b) BRITISH CINEMA
EARLY YEARS (1895-1945)
At the end of the 19th century, the Brighton school developed their own style and created
some of the most important documentaries of British life of their time. Some of the Brighton
school filmmakers were W.F. Greene, R.W. Paul or J. Williamson.
At the turn of the twentieth century, American films began flooding the British market
and British film making showed at near halt. By 1926 the British film industry had virtually ceased
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to exist, but in 1927 Parliament passed the Cinematograph Films Act, requiring local cinemas to
show a certain percentage of British films. Thanks to this measure, and the advent of sound in
1928, British productions began to be on the rise.
Note the parallelism here with the current Catalan Cinema Act. This relation between the
past and the present can engage our students into an interesting debate.
One of the most important British cinema directors, Alfred Hitchcock, started his career within
this period, in Britain, though he moved to America by the 1940’s. Hitchcok became the pioneer of
the suspense and psychological thriller genre. He was influenced by earlier figures, such as
F.W. Murnau, D,W. Griffith or S. Eisenstein. He made no less than 60 films and inspired a herd of
directors to come after him.
Hitchcok used many literary adaptations for his scripts. One example of a British Hitchcock
film inspired by a novel could be “The Thirty Nine Steps” (1935), based on a novel of J. Buchan
(1915).
POST-WAR BRITAIN (1945-1960)
After World War II British film cinema began to change course and directors brought a
high level of creativity to their films. Towards the later part of the fifties, a darker comedy took
scene, which led directors to make the most exciting thrillers. Several of them included
“Dracula” (1958) an adaptation from Bram Stoker’s novel and starring Christofer Lee and “The
Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), from Mary Shelley’s literary work and also with Lee as leading
actor.
FROM THE BRITISH NEW WAVE TO THE PRESENT
The 1960’s were the years of the flourishing of a new British cinema. Realism imposed as
a means to explore social and political issues of the lower classes. This realism was labeled as
“kitchen sink realism”. This period includes films such as “Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning” (1960), directed by K. Reisz and based on the novel of A. Sillitoe.
The influence of kitchen drama has continued in the work of many recent directors, but very
significantly in the work of Ken Loach, who started his film career in the sixties and whose work still
continues as in “I, Daniel Blake” (2016)
Many of the best films of the nineties were adaptations of British novels. The turn of the
century brought more British films, including “Bridget Jones’ diary” on Helen Fielding’s novel
and the whole Harry Potter series, based on the novels of J.K. Rowling.
4. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CINEMA ON THE ENGLISH LITERATURE
Film has influenced the conception of literary work, as from its birth cinema has
adapted literary novels to assure success. The language, the length, the cinema stars and the
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effortless world for the spectators that was introduced by cinema, brought about the fact that some
people went through the film rather than the novel.
As teachers, we can use the film adaptations of important masterpieces to engage our students, but
we must also draw attention to the importance of reading stories that were firstly written and
thought to be read, to transmit through the use of specific words and timings. Our students
can debate about the differences and foster their critical thinking skills.
Cinema and literature, being both narrative media, share some similarities, but also present
many differences, as we will see as follows. Although it is true that both means are thought to
narrate, they differ in the ways they communicate and represent the world. The main difference
might be that films appear in a format in which description cannot be separated from
narration, as images without words keep telling the story.
Music and sound also play a key role in the film, whereas literary works need more
description and clarification than films to depict the environment or the details that surround
the action. That is why books have to be adapted to “translate” them into cinematographic
language, where narration is more fluid, as it carries not only text but also image and sound, which
boosts the possibilities of narration.
Nevertheless, filmmakers have assumed
that a famous novel guarantees a large
percentage of the audience. Many writers have produced scripts out of their literary works, as is
the case of John Steinbeck, Truman Capote or Arthur Miller, as we have seen. Thus, the history of
film production is also the history of literary adaptations.
AMERICAN SCREENWRITERS
There have been many American screenwriters who have written scripts or adapted literary
works to be filmed. Since I cannot mention them all here, I will cite some of whom I consider the
most important, as follows:
JOHN STEINBECK wrote many scripts for many well-known films, many of them based on
his own works, such as “Of Mice and Men” (1939) or “Grapes of Wrath” (1940), directed by John
Ford, starring Henry Fonda, or “Lifeboat” (1944), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
ALDOUS HUXLEY adapted Jane Austen’s classics “Pride and Prejudice” (1940) and
“Jane Eyre” in 1943. Finally, WILLIAM FAULKNER was one of the most prolific screenwriters,
although he was uncredited many times. He wrote hits such as “To Have and Have Not” (1944)
and “The Big Sleep” (1946), both directed by Howard Hawks and starred by Humphrey Bogart.
BRITISH SCREENWRITERS
One of the most important British screenwriters, who also was a film critic, was GRAHAM
GREENE. He saw many of his novels projected onto the big screen. His writing style was so
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cinematic that it was perfect to be translated into the filming language. Some of his works are
“Ministry of Fear (Fritz Lang, 1944) or “The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
5. ADAPTATIONS
A controversial aspect in the relationship between cinema and literature is the
adaptation of the original script. It is necessary to do some changes such as reducing the
average duration of the literary work (elimination of whole chapters, passages or incidents in the
novel); time settings; changes due to commercial or industrial conventions. Therefore, this
necessity to attract the general public has meant that many novels have been severely modified.
An adaptation is the process of changing a literary work (novel, play, short story) from
a written medium to an audiovisual format. There are different types of adaptations depending
on the amount of modifications to be made, and they may be seen as the following:
1) Transposition: It is a rather literal reproduction of the original with a few interventions from
the director, which are usually little alterations in the order of the events. An example of
transposition could be Luisa May Alcott’s “Little women” taken to the screen by G.
Cuckor in 1933.
2) Reinterpretation: The original script is kept in its most part, but the context is recreated. It is
not aimed at creating a literal reproduction of the original, but an interpretation of it. Here we
can include Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992.
3) Free adaptation: The literary text is only an excuse, a starting point to create a
cinematographic text, different and completely new. Here we can see Copola’s
“Apocalypse Now” (1979), based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.
6. THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN LITERATURE AND CINEMA
Women characters in both literature and cinema seem to be aimed more at satisfying
the subconscious male voyeuristic desires than at how the females have come to take on the
world. Women have been consistently stereotyped as unintelligent human beings who are
expected to serve in kitchens and follow the directions of their male and female in-laws,
The former can be proved with the example Marilyn Monroe, who was often sexualized
and who usually played roles of naive or innocent, being an adult woman herself. Some Like it
Hot (1959) uses the undeniable sexual power of Marilyn Monroe to stereotype her character as a
sexy, brainless girl who uses her looks to get through life. This and other cases can be
analysed by our students in the classroom as it refers to SDG5 (gender perspective)
7. METHODOLOGY
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Throughout the following lines, I will give account of the applicability of this topic by setting
some classroom examples. Before doing so, though, I want to highlight that according to Hymes,
communicative approaches are the current basis of the teaching of foreign languages (FL). They
aim to develop communication competence (Hymes, 1966).
In that regard, FL Learners need to be given opportunities to take part in meaningful
interactions in a given context, with a clear purpose and, as much as possible, integrating the 4
language skills: listening (SC2), reading (SC4, speaking (SC3) and writing (SC5).
This example could be applied in any ESL classroom ranging from lower to higher
levels by adding more complex grammar content when necessary. It consists of a
communicative activity.
The activity forms part of a project with language subjects (Spanish and Catalan) where
they will work on the features of an interview; and the History area, where they will try to depict
the historical features where the period where the character lived in; and ICT area, where they will
learn how to use a film edition app. It is so, as, as the pedagogical principles of the catalan curriculum
advocate for a globalised treatment of languages and subject areas. The final product will
consist of the filming an interview of a famous (real or invented) character.
The activity is to be undertaken in pairs. Students pick a character on the topic we are
dealing with. For example, if we are covering romanisation, they can pick a Roman soldier or a Celt
king. If we are covering the Industrial revolution, the teacher can suggest various authors such as
Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Gaskel. Here, I would ask students to pick an actor/actress of the
Hollywood Golden Era: Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe… (www.imbd.com)
Then, students must create a character’s profile with background info on the character (life,
studies, accomplishments, works, etc.), which can be real or invented, but based on real facts of the
period. Then they must write a draft on possible questions to be asked to the character.
After that, they write the script of the interview. Students must find out how the character
would dress or look, taking into account the characteristics of the history period they lived in.
(Students will check it out at History class) Then they will film, edit and post the video on a Google
classroom task. (The filming and editing will also be tackled at ICT class)
The activities cover Specific Competences SC2 (Listening comprehension) and SC3
(Speaking production), as the delivering during group work and in the classroom must be in the
target language, and the video will also be in TL. They also activate SC9 (metaknowledge) since at
the same time students must focus on the good use of the language form. SC4 (written
comprehension) is covered when they must look up for information for the profile, as it is SC6
(information search). SC5 (written production) is covered when they write the video draft and the
script of the interview.
As they work in pairs, students make use of their CC5 ( Cross-curricular Personal and
social competence), and have the chance to learn from and with others. By filming the activity, they
will be making use of one of their CC4 (Cross-curricular Digital Competency)
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The activities also activate CC7 (Cross-curricular Entrepreneurial Competency), as they
must think of an original way to present the interview and its content and visual features.
We must not forget that as teachers, we must provide students with valid assessment
methods, such as oral feedback and formative assessment tools integrated in the classroom
(grids, checklists, correction codes, quizzes, etc.) and be sure that students understand procedures
and are fully aware of the assessment criteria applied to each of the tasks or activities covered in
class.
What is more, as pedagog Francesco Tonucci one said, “We are teaching students for real
life, so it is important to bring real situations and motivating topics to the classroom, taking into
account their interests and the context in which the lesson is performed.”
Therefore, by bringing real-life situations and by applying different methodologies, tools and
strategies into the classroom, we can scope our students’ different learning styles and
intelligences (Gardner) as well as enhance our students' language learning experience and turn
it into a holistic one within the curricular framework. What is more, setting high expectations,
differentiation, and motivation will surely help learners deepen their English language skills.
To finish with my description of the topic, I will provide a conclusion.
8. CONCLUSION
It seems quite clear that film productions have had a decisive effect upon the spreading of
literary works. This is especially relevant considering that today’s society is dominated by the
audiovisual media, and students must find ways to resort to books and not just watch things that
happen on a screen.
The knowledge about the history of literature and cinema should become part of every
literary student’s basic competence, since the current educational system focuses on sociocultural
aspects. Therefore, students must be aware of the richness of English-speaking countries'
literature and understand how literature and cinema reflect the main historical events of a country.
The Internet, DVD, video camera, TV, radio, cinema, etc. may provide a new direction to language
teaching as they set more appropriate context for students to experience the target culture.
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