Adaptations and Translations

One of the defining characteristic of several of the films studied in this course is that they are translations. Of course, all films we are watching are translations in the sense that they are adaptations of novels and short stories. One of the meanings of the word translation is, after all, “the expression or rendering of something in another medium or form.” However, according to the OED, the main meaning of the word is, somewhat surprisingly, “transference; removal or conveyance from one person, place, or condition to another.” Therefore, Blowup, The Spider’s Stratagem, and The Kiss of the Spider Woman are also translations in that they transfer a “story” from a Latin American “location” and its readers— and, obviously, their culture and language—to a US or European “location” and corresponding audience.
The example of Tune in Tomorrow, mentioned in an earlier post, serves to illustrate the liberties which a filmmaker may take in adapting a novel. (This film is based on Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). The story is literally translated from Lima to New Orleans. The novel is comprised of two parallel and interrelated story lines—the young Marito’s courtship and marriage with the older Julia, his aunt by marriage, and the former’s apprenticeship as a writer with the radio soap opera scriptwriter Pedro Camacho—that one imagines were felt by the producer to be more believable in a setting which, for many, is exotic, despite being still in the US. Can one imagine a nephew and an aunt marrying in NY? (In the case of Marito and Julia, however, it would have been perfectly legal). Moreover, by the 1950s, soap operas had been superseded in the US by their TV counterparts, when the novel and the film are set. (For instance, Guiding Light, which had been on the radio since 1937, transferred to television in 1952). I guess the filmmakers assumed that this anachronism would not be noticed in a story set New Orleans.
One can contrast the freedom with which Tune in Tomorrow was made with the attempt at fidelity with which Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera has been adapted. The locations used in filming, the names given to the characters, even the “Hispanicity” of the actors—Bardem, Leguizamo, Bratt—all seem to indicate an attempt to exhibit, if not necessarily achieve, fidelity to the novel. (One assumes in the mind of the producers this Hispanicity or, better said, Latinism, also includes Italian actress Mezzogiorno). Moreover, this impression of fidelity is even present in the language used, despite the unavoidable fact—for a US produced movie—that the actors speak English. They speak with slight “Spanish” (or Italian) accents. Even the advertisements emphasize its links with the novel, claiming to be “from Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez.”
On the other hand, Tune in Tomorrow attempts to fully translate Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. In the film Spanish is translated into English, Peru into the United States. Even the characters’ names are “Americanized”: Marito becomes Martin, Pedro Camacho, Pedro Carmichael. These changes evidence the manner in which the links of the film with the novel—its origin as an adaptation or translation—and its author are forgotten. This erasure of the author is already present in the change of names and locale given that the novel is autobiographical: the Marito in question is Mario Vargas Llosa and the aunt Julia is Julia Urquidi, the novelist’s first wife. (The great commercial success of the novel in the Spanish speaking world owed much to it being read as a narration of the author’s forbidden romance with his aunt).
Is this difference in treatment of the novels in their US adaptations a reflection of the difference in canonicity of the Vargas Llosa’s and García Márquez’s novels or in that of the authors? Ironically Vargas Llosa is arguably the only Spanish language writer that is seen by most Spanish speakers to be García Márquez’s peer. However, there is no doubt that Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel beloved by many who would have resisted it being translated to, let’s say New Orleans—even if there are paddle boats in the Mississippi. And it was this international cadre of readers of the novel that constituted the core of the viewers for whom the film was intended.
While none of the adaptations we are seeing erase the source text, questions of canonicity and cultural capital strike me as being central to the issue of adaptation. Does the fact that Antonioni was at the height of his reputation as a film master explain why he felt he could deal so freely with Cortázar’s story? (But short stories are frequently less prestigious cultural artifacts than novels). Of course, it could very well be that freer adaptations lead to better films. But, if we take the ratings at imdb.com as an index of quality, a problematic decision to be sure, Tune in Tomorrow and Love in the Time of Cholera are tied at 6.2.