Film Adaptation in the Hollywood Studio Era

In this exceptional contribution to literary adaptation studies, Guerric DeBona shifts the focus away from determining a film's fidelity to the original source and redirects the conversation to the industrial choices, audience reception, and socio-cultural environment that contribute to the construction of the cinematic text. Film Adaptation in the Hollywood Studio Era analyzes the intertextuality, cultural value, and authorship of four films from the 1920s to the 1950s based on canonical British and American novels. This unique methodological alternative to formalist "fidelity" approaches to literary adaptations blends archival research with DeBona's own deft and culturally rich interpretations of David Copperfield (1935), Heart of Darkness (1939), The Long Voyage Home (1940), and The Red Badge of Courage (1951).