The five meetings dedicated to ‘Cinema and Literature’ represent a first project of educational offerings for a structure, Giunti Odeon, that has in books and films, and in their creative interaction, its main cultural vocation. Film and literature are two profoundly different languages that have nevertheless found, throughout the 20th century and up to the present day, an extraordinary common ground of interaction. The aim of this atelier is to provide readers/viewers with the basic tools they need to orient themselves in the face of a series of questions concerning the many ways in which these languages have dialogued. Authors, trends, genres, poetic and stylistic forms, and industrial practices will be the focus of an itinerary that, far from being exhaustive, will propose some ‘keys’ to open the doors to a world of images, words and cultural suggestions. 

Dangerous Liaisons: around adaptation

This is the first issue referred to when thinking about the relationship between cinema and literature, i.e. the transformation of a literary text into a film. We therefore address the various issues related to the practice of adaptation, i.e. the ‘passage’ from one language to another, through the 3 main forms and 7 main tools, with a reference to the different historical and production contexts. After this more historical-theoretical introduction, we move on to the analysis of some sequences from two films based on as many novels by Guy de Maupassant: Le plaisir (1952) by Max Ophüls and La scampagnata (1936) by Jean Renoir, to explain how two great directors transform the classic literary text into a reflection on space-time through the language of cinema.

The subscription to the entire Atelier (euro 100, nominal and including five 90' encounters) can be purchased from 27 August at the bookshop checkout.