Literature and cinema are an inseparable union of two kinds of art

Cinema and literature are art forms inextricably linked to each other. One of them originated in ancient times. The other was in the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, literature and cinema have a close connection, not weakening even in the age of computer technology. What is the strength of this alliance?

Literature and the Present

A man of the XXI century is in a hurry to live. He does not have time for long deliberation. He needs to have time to make a career, get a new profession, get another novelty of technology. In other words, to build a life in a modern way.

Read the three-volume work of the classic? For what? Viewing the movie-screen version will take no more than two hours. This activity, unlike reading, will fit into the rapid rhythm of life. However, the work of outstanding directors and actors shows otherwise. Literature and cinema have not lost touch. A relatively new kind of art can revive interest in what appeared in Antiquity.

Movies encourage reading a book

Cinematographers and today turn to works of classical literature. In recent decades, not one film adaptation has been created. According to Dostoevsky's novel, for example, one rather well-known director made a television series. Surprisingly, the publishers had to publish the novel "Idiot" in huge editions. After watching the series, the modern man, despite the lack of free time, began to read Dostoevsky.

Examples of screening, stimulating sales in the book market, a lot. But in order to understand what the relationship of literature and cinema, it is worth remembering where it all began. Who and when first used a work of art as material for the creation of the film?

The emergence of cinematography

The cinema was created in the XIX century. But the first sound film came out much later, in 1927. Cinematography became, as Bulgakov's meditating dog put it, the only consolation for women. But not only for them. Cinema gained massive popularity.

The screen adaptation of the work of art, realizing the connection of such kinds of art as literature and cinema, has become an indispensable genre. Directors and screenwriters turned to the creations of the classics. In 1902, a short film based on Zola's work was shot.

Even before the advent of sound cinema, the directors began to film the famous creations of Russian writers. In 1909, Peter Chardynin introduced the audience to his interpretation of the poem Dead Souls. However, if we are to speak about "Russian Literature in Cinema", we should say a few words about the adaptation of Pushkin's stories.

Promotion of cinematography

Until 1917, almost all the works of the great Russian writer were created. We are talking, of course, about prose. The screen versions of the early twentieth century have little in common with modern. Rather, they were some illustrations to famous stories.

In the era of silent cinema, filmmakers turned to Pushkin's texts, which may have been due to the promotion of a new kind of art. The cinema needed a name known throughout Russia. Before the revolution, private film companies operated in the country. After the seventeenth year, their activities were discontinued. However, films based on Pushkin's prose continued to be created in difficult times for Russia.

In the history of Soviet adaptations there were periods of silence. For example, to the era of Khrushchev's thaw there is only one film, based on Pushkin's works, "The Captain's Daughter".

Lev Tolstoy

For the first time, domestic filmmakers tried to translate War and Peace into screens in 2015. Then foreign directors were inspired by Tolstoy's work. In one of the adaptations, the role of Natasha Rostova was played by Audrey Hepburn. But what American filmmakers, even the most gifted, can know about the mysterious Russian soul? The Hollywood director is unable to convey the spirit of the national characteristics of the novel by Leo Tolstoy. So the Soviet workers of culture believed. So they decided to make a film based on the book of the great writer. And equal to this film adaptation on many criteria, the world cinema is not.

The film, included in the Guinness Book of Records

Sergei Bondarchuk was chosen as the film's director. Of the fund allocated thirty thousand rubles (significant for those times the amount). The artists began work on sketches of costumes and decorations. The script writer studied literary studies, Tolstoy's correspondence, military and documentary sources. Several months left for acting. The shooting was accompanied by a lot of difficulties. The cast at the beginning of work has changed many times.

Russian literature in the national cinema has a long and interesting history. But never, neither before nor after, shooting on an artwork were not so large-scale. According to the number of film stars, the film "War and Peace" has no equal in history.

Fedor Dostoevsky

The first film on prose writer was filmed in 1910. A quarter of a century later the "Petersburg Story" appeared, representing a mixture of "Netochka Nezvanova" and "White Nights". Then Dostoevsky created paintings in France, Japan, Italy. As for the domestic cinema, no prose did not cause so much controversy and debate about the methods of interpretation on the screen, as the author created the great "five-book".

Fiction in the cinema of the Soviet period is, first of all, the adaptation of Dostoevsky's stories, novels, novels. His characters are so complex that playing them in the acting environment is considered a great honor. For filmmakers, the same adaptation of "Idiot" or any other work of Dostoevsky is not just a transfer of the plot to a movie screen. This is an opportunity to give viewers a special vision of the prose writer's ideas.

Mystical book

The Union of Literature and Cinema collapsed more than once when trying to film the "Masters and Margarita".

Bulgakov is the most mysterious Russian writer. A lot has been said about the evil fate that persecutes the actors who played the heroes of the novel. Filming of Bulgakov's book, as a rule, was interrupted. Completed started only two directors.

Perhaps the whole thing is in the mysticism surrounding the writer. Or, perhaps, there are areas of human consciousness in which literature and cinema still do not intersect? The composition of Bulgakov today does not have a film adaptation, which would correspond to the original. No director could recreate the atmosphere of Moscow society, the devastation of the Master, the suffering of Margarita, the tricks of Koroviev and Behemoth, so that the impressions of the film were comparable in strength to the sensations that the reader is experiencing. But to say that Bulgakov's prose is not subject to film adaptation is impossible.

"A human heart, not a dog ..."

In 1987, in one of the literary magazines was published the story "Dog Heart". A year later, Vladimir Bortko proceeded to shoot a film based on Bulgakov's work. The result of the work of the director, outstanding actors and the famous composer was the best screen version of the prose of this writer in the history of cinema.

The director did not shift the plot to film. He created a system of images based on Bulgakov's prose. Sharikov would not have become such an interesting and colorful kinopersonazhem, if in the creation of his character, the scriptwriter and director used only the text of the original.

Scenes were added. In the creation of the film, the director involved Julia Kima. The poet wrote the texts for the songs performed by the participants in the meeting, so unloved by Preobrazhensky. Kim is also the author of unprintable chastooshkas, which, in combination with Sharikov's dances, led the professor into an unconscious state. "Is he still dancing?" The professor asks in a weak voice. Comic response is not in Bulgakov's story. The film's screenwriter has invested with these words the awareness, the bitterness that the luminary of world science is experiencing at the sight of the result of his own experiment.

Who is Sharikov? This is not a man with a dog's heart, as Dr. Bormental put it. Sharikov is a scoundrel with a human heart. And in this, according to Preobrazhensky, lies the reason for the terrible consequences of the operation.

Sharikov creates his new world in hatred of the old. He is uneducated, stubborn and categorical. He expresses an opinion on the necessary economic reform very briefly, concisely: "Take and share." In the movie Bulgakov's character would not have been so vivid, if not for a talented actor's play, additional, seemingly insignificant scenes. The director gave the spirit of the time, the so-called ruin, the atmosphere of catastrophicness. The tragedy of the post-revolutionary era is also conveyed by music creating a background in the picture.

Sholokhov

In a talented writer, a small, minor character rises to the level of a full-fledged hero. In the novel "Quiet Flows the Don" there are only such characters. Sholokhov was a representative of the realistic trend in literature. But he did not "photograph" what he saw. The way a writer endured experience and impressions on paper can be compared with the skill of a painter. And the more talented the author, the more difficult it is for the director to translate his ideas on the screen.

Sergei Gerasimov managed to create a decent adaptation of Sholokhov 's novel . Subsequently, attempts by other filmmakers to take a picture of the "Quiet Flows the Don" were caused by the fair rage of film critics and the disappointment of the audience. Cinema is associated with literature. But only if the mastery of the director is not inferior to the writer's gift of the author of the book, for the adaptation of which he is taking.

Vasily Shukshin

The prose of this author was easy and close to the simple reader. Shukshin was not only a writer, but also a screenwriter, director, actor. So he knew better than other filmmakers, how strong the connection between such concepts as literature and cinema.

Children today are difficult to understand why read a book, if there is a film. Such ideas about literature will lead to the fact that soon the book will become a rarity. An impractical and useless souvenir thing. Shukshin believed that no screen adaptation could replace the reading of the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol. The means of cinema and literature, in his opinion, are not equal. Cinematography is an art. But only the reading person is able to assess the mastery of the director.

Domestic literature in the cinema is a topic devoted to a lot of research. These spheres have a mutual relationship. But literature can exist without adaptation. Cinematography, however, without classical prose would represent a primitive form of entertainment. Even films on original subjects are awarded positive criticism only if they are created according to the laws of classical prose.