Questioning Un/faithfulness In Films Adaptation: The Case Of H.g Well’s Novel The War Of The Worlds (1898)

Résumé: The mutual influence between literature and cinema resulted in the emergence of a new art form called "Film Adaptations", which has opened the door wider for several dialectic issues on the question of in/fidelity or un/faithfulness to be overtly discussed. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate faithfulness within the sphere of adapting novels into films and pinpoint what new scenes were added and those deleted in the adaptation of H.G Well’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898) into a film under the same title in 1953 by the Hungarian American film director and producer George Pal. As for the method, it consists of comparing and analyzing the film (target source) to the novel on which it was based (original source). The study reveals that being un/faithful to the original source is a relative matter as the transformations happening from the script to the screen were influenced by historical, cultural, as well as political connotations that took place in the process of adaptation. The researcher concludes with the idea that the degree of faithfulness should not be the main concern in judging the quality of film adaptations and that other factors may interfere and thus must be taken into consideration.

Publié dans la revue: المجلة الجزائرية للمخطوطات