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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
Date:         Sun, 27 Sep 1992 09:50:00 EDT
From:         Peter.Giordano@WILLIAMS.EDU
Subject:      MALTESE GILGAMESH

Some arguments were made that texts like Homer's epics and Gilgamesh have
been saved because they have be translated and that colorization saves
Black & White films - There is no connection between the two ideas -
COlorization is not translation - Take your average Junior in high school -
Present him or her with a copy of the original Greek of Homer or a
cuniform version of Gilgamesh - Of course it can't be read - Now show
the same person the B&W version of THE MALTESE FALCON, then show the
colorized version - The High School Junior could easily follow the plot
and even be drawn into the B&W version of the film, but watching the colorized
version adds nothing to his/her understanding of the film.

Some rather droll comments were made about how of course we should only
read "great works" in the original - Having the ability to read five
or six languages in the original I can see why this makes sense - The first
time I read Homer in Greek I realized how shallow and hopeless any translation
of any literary work really is (see William Weaver et al on the "art of
translation" - The most any translation does is give you a vague idea of
what's in the original - In many cases that's enough - I'm told for
instance that Dostovesky's Russian prose is terrilbe but he tells a good
story - on the other hand nobody can claim that there's even a passable
translation of Horace's Odes into English (including John Milton's
efforts) - To bring this back to film nobody goes to an adaption of
a literary work thinking that it is a substitute for the novel (well
maybe some desperate students do sometimes) - SOme adaptions work very
well and enhance the experience of reading the book (MALTESE FALCON,
A ROOM WITH A VIEW) - Generally, these films stand alone as separate
artistic achevements in their own right - Other film adaptions only
make sense if you've read the book (I can't think of an example
right now) and oddly enough some books are better understood after
having seen a film version - The are other literary adaptions that
are total failures as films (take one of the earlier versions of
MALTESE FALCON) but generally the failure is the film makers',
not the novlist - Other adaptions are of crummy books that turn
out to be swell movies - Other adaptions take a great book and
turn it into a film that may or may not be a good film but the
intentions of the film makers' are directly opposed the intentions
of the writer and one wonders why they bothered to claim to be
based on anything at all (COLOR PURPLE and ONE FLEW OVER THE
CUCKOO'S NEST come to mind) - In another message I mentioned that
I thought it odd that they've produced a film called the LAST OF
THE MOHICANS when the writer and director has given interviews
about how much he dislikes the book and how everything in the book
is wrong - I don't know if it's a good film (I suspect it will be
swell) but I do know that they got nothing from claiming
James Fenimore Cooper as an influence (beyond name recoginition)
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU