A Failed Romance: Literary-to-Cinematographic Adaptation of Gunga Din

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

While the film theories enrich the scope and depth of film analysis and interpretation, the theories borrowed from disciplines exterior to the cinema have also tended to slight the fact that filmmaking process inevitably involves materially and discursively diverse mediums—story, script and screen. Or if acknowledged, the details of the material distinctions have been given short shrift. While capable of offering an insightful explanatory grip on a film’s underlying structures, implications and values, these extraneous theories often ignore this inter-medial transformation which filmmaking goes through.
Gunga Din instantiates the ways in which an imperialist master narrative propagates as the medium of representation changes. By examining the methods of operating at the shooting and observing imperialist discourse prevalent in the film industry, we can posit two, if related, possibilities: first, Stevens’ decision to have an “on location” film, where the visual overrides the textual and enlivens the historical-mythical memories long inscribed in the landscape text; second, genre conflict, where romance becomes unviable to grow on the larger genre template of masculine adventure. The top-down theories, though powerful and efficient in interpretation, may pre-empt what might otherwise become crucial to the understanding of a filmmaking. The transaction of ideology can be grasped not only through the analysis of film narratives, but also through the feasibility of inter-medial transformations. Gunga Din is construed interactively and inter- medially among genres and media, and the analysis of its filmmaking gives us some empirical purchase on just how imperialist discourse materializes in the making.

참고문헌 (Reference)

1 Richards, Jeffrey, "Visions of Yesterday" Routledge and Kegan Paul 1973

2 Hecht, Ben, "The Front Page" Covici-Friege 1928

3 Chatman, Seymour, "Story and Discourse" Cornell UP 1980

4 Singh, Shailendra, "Novels on the Indian Mutiny" Arnold-Heinemann 1980

5 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith, "Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics" Routledge 1983

6 Rochelle, Reed, "George Stevens" Dialogue on Film 4.8 1-13, 1975

7 Metz, Christian, "Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema" Oxford UP 1974

8 Behlmer, Rudy, "America’s Favorite Movies" Frederick Ungar 1982