INTRODUCTION:

DRAMA INTO FILM

This book is especially for people who love theatre and would prefer the
immediate experience of the "real thing," who would rather see plays
mounted onstage than theatre transformed into another medium. But few
Americans have the opportunity to see professional theatre onstage, beyond
those who live in or near cosmopolitan urban centers where theatre still
thrives and is honored -- for example, New York, Washington, D.C., Chi-
cago, and Los Angeles. Hollywood performs a service for the rest of us by
providing a secondhand representation, the nearest thing to the real thing.
Purists unwilling to compromise for an inferior medium can gratify their
theatrical appetites only by becoming pilgrims, traveling to London to wor--
ship at the time-honored shrines of theatrical England, for example, from
the National Theatre complex and the restored Globe on the South Bank,
to the Royal Court on Sloane Square, to Covent Garden and Leicester
Square. We understand that the theatrical experience is unique and that
some of the best plays are simply unfilmable. Cinema cannot replicate the
effect of John Dexter's staging of Peter Shaffer Equus; or Stephen Daldry
revival of J. B. Priestley An Inspector Calls; or Willy Russell Blood
Brothers at the Phoenix; or Caryl Churchill Serious Money, with its abu--
sive chorus; or Dennis Potter The Chosen One at the Barbican; or David Hare's
Pravda at the National Theatre. In short, theatre is one medium,
and film quite another. The two are not entirely interchangeable.

Although the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman once claimed that theatre
had nothing to do with film, that claim is surely an overstatement. Plays
are, after all, written in dialogue that is intended to be spoken and per-
formed, and cinema is a performance medium. On the other hand, film
should not be simply photographed theatre. Such approaches were taken

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Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: Video Versions: Film Adaptations of Plays on Video. Contributors: Thomas
L. Erskine - editor, James M. Welsh - editor, John C. Tibbetts - editor, Tony Williams - editor. Publisher:
Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: vii.

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: Video Versions: Film Adaptations of Plays on Video. Contributors: Thomas
L. Erskine - editor, James M. Welsh - editor, John C. Tibbetts - editor, Tony Williams - editor. Publisher:
Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: viii.
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
Publication Information: Book Title: Video Versions: Film Adaptations of Plays on Video. Contributors: Thomas
L. Erskine - editor, James M. Welsh - editor, John C. Tibbetts - editor, Tony Williams - editor. Publisher:
Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: ix.

Hamlet"
(Ophelia, Hamlet I.iii)

Plays were written as performance vehicles, and one could argue that
they cannot be fully realized or completely understood until they have been
properly performed onstage. Yet they are also read and studied as inde-
pendent works of literature. Students commonly spend whole semesters
reading the plays of Shakespeare, for example, to appreciate dramatic po-
etry of the highest order without necessarily giving much attention to how
such a play as Hamlet or King Lear might be performed onstage. To stage
a play is also to interpret it, however, as Tony Richardson noted, for the
director will have to make many critical decisions about how the characters
should be played, how to enact and frame the action, and what subjects
and themes to emphasize.
In the case of Hamlet, for example, how should the prince be repre-
sented? As the conventional, melancholy Dane consumed by his grief and

Such a script as Persona, however, could not be performed onstag

in the early days of cinema when great moments of drama were captured
on film in an attempt to appropriate the "prestige" of the legitimate stage.
But as cinema developed from the turn of the century, this approach, which
did not take full advantage of film's unique processes and effects, was dis-
missed because of its obvious limitations. Clearly, the circumstances of per-
formance are different. Onstage the action is limited to a given space,
viewed by the spectator from a fixed position and distance. Acting, voice,
and gesture, will necessarily be exaggerated to compensate for that distance.
e, par-
ticularly the fusion sequence in which the camera merges and blends the
faces of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, an effect impossible to achieve preferred
to work in cinema, but he also continued to direct onstage, and several of
his films derived from the plays of John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Edward
Albee, and William Shakespeare. The latter, as will be seen, poses distinc-
tive problems for the film director to resolve.
onstage.

Tony Richardson, who worked both onstage and on-screen, wrote: "The
director in the cinema is a real creative force, while in the theatre he's just
an interpreter of the text." According to Richardson, his frequent collab-
orator, the playwright John Osborne, regarded "a script once finished as
the script of a play, with the director being responsible for staging the
author's vision in the most effective way he can. But in movies the director's
is the final sensibility. Every choice, every decision, has to be filtered
through him and he converts them all into images the way a writer converts
his experience into words" ( 159 ). In his later career, Richardson
"Something touching the Lord
-ix-

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: Video Versions: Film Adaptations of Plays on Video. Contributors: Thomas
L. Erskine - editor, James M. Welsh - editor, John C. Tibbetts - editor, Tony Williams - editor. Publisher:
Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: ix.

In cinema, on the other hand, the camera is able to bridge that distance,
bringing the viewer closer to the action and the actors, embracing a "re-
ality" that is simulated. Gone are the constraints of the stage, since the
camera is able to transport the viewer into apparently "real" settings. The
acting no longer needs to be exaggerated and is more subdued and "nat-
ural." The action is performed and captured in short sequences. Because
the action is organized differently, actors do not have to dominate the
playing space for extended periods of time. Film acting requires less train-
ing, therefore, than acting onstage. Some film directors even prefer to work
with nonprofessional "actors" and have achieved good results, but profes-
sional training for actors can also be an advantage.
Some basic distinctions have been offered by Peter R. Gerdes in a special
issue of The Australian Journal of Screen Theory (No. 7, 1980). and a
recapitulation of these may be useful here. Theatre involves unrepeatable
performances: because "each performance is unique, there is no 'finished
product.' " Filmed performances are repeatable, however, because "[f]ilm
is a finished product; it can only be 'shown,' not performed" ( 12 - 13 ). On-
stage the actor is the "creator," whereas on film the actor is the "created."
Theatre is an actor's medium: "The art of the stage is an art of the actor."
Film, however, is a director's medium: "The art of the screen is an art of
the image," as orchestrated by the director who "is responsible for the
script and its representation," whereas onstage "the representation serves
the play." Theatre requires trained specialists: "On stage the actor is always
present with the whole of his personality," whereas on film "the physical
presence of the actor may be indicated by showing parts of his body only"
( 14 - 15 ). For example, in Joshua Logan film of the William Inge play
Picnic, the action reaches an emotional climax at a Labor Day picnic dance
in Kansas. The scene, remarkable for its sensuality and suggestiveness, in-
volves Kim Novak and William Holden, who was not a gifted dancer;
however, his lack of skill is disguised by close camera work that shows
only parts of their entwined dancing bodies.
Finally, Gerdes contends that "the drama text is an independent art work
to be read or performed," whereas "the film script is not an independent
art work and cannot be read or 'performed'; it is a preparatory element
for a future art work," nothing more ( 11 ). However, the original film
scripts of Ingmar Berman and others have been published and can be read
and studied and in that respect may be considered coequal to play scripts.
-viii-
Such a script as Persona, however, could not be performed onstage, par-
ticularly the fusion sequence in which the camera merges and blends the
faces of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, an effect impossible to achieve
onstage.

Tony Richardson, who worked both onstage and on-screen, wrote: "The
director in the cinema is a real creative force, while in the theatre he's just
an interpreter of the text." According to Richardson, his frequent collab-
orator, the playwright John Osborne, regarded "a script once finished as
the script of a play, with the director being responsible for staging the
author's vision in the most effective way he can. But in movies the director's
is the final sensibility. Every choice, every decision, has to be filtered
through him and he converts them all into images the way a writer converts
his experience into words" ( 159 ). In his later career, Richardson preferred
to work in cinema, but he also continued to direct onstage, and several of
his films derived from the plays of John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Edward
Albee, and William Shakespeare. The latter, as will be seen, poses distinc-
tive problems for the film director to resolve.

"Something touching the Lord Hamlet"

(Ophelia, Hamlet I.iii)

Plays were written as performance vehicles, and one could argue that
they cannot be fully realized or completely understood until they have been
properly performed onstage. Yet they are also read and studied as inde-
pendent works of literature. Students commonly spend whole semesters
reading the plays of Shakespeare, for example, to appreciate dramatic po-
etry of the highest order without necessarily giving much attention to how
such a play as Hamlet or King Lear might be performed onstage. To stage
a play is also to interpret it, however, as Tony Richardson noted, for the
director will have to make many critical decisions about how the characters
should be played, how to enact and frame the action, and what subjects
and themes to emphasize.

In the case of Hamlet, for example, how should the prince be repre-
sented? As the conventional, melancholy Dane consumed by his grief and
sadness, disappointed by his mother's behavior, disgusted by her "o'erhasty
marriage" to his uncle Claudius, both horrified and debilitated by the in-
formation brought to him by a ghost that claims to be his dead father's
spirit, and uncertain about how to avenge his father's murder? There are
no fixed answers here. The character of Hamlet is multidimensional, so
each generation is free to invent its own Hamlet. The oedipal Hamlet
played by Laurence Olivier in 1948, for example, is far different from the
impudent Hamlet played by Nicol Williamson in the 1969 Tony Richard-
son version or the brutally misogynist Hamlet of Kenneth Branagh in 1996.
All of these interpretations have validity, and not one of them is necessarily
"right" or "wrong."

But these decisions necessarily influence how the supporting characters

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