earticle

영어

A cinematic adaptation can be considered an interpretive reading of the original literary text, so filmmakers adapt the literary material to fit their own approach and thereby cast new light on the original. So codes of meaning in cinema are inextricably linked to the societies and culture that produce the film. This paper aims to analyze the structures of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1861) and its film adaptation produced by David Lean in 1946 focusing on its aesthetics of mythic adaptation. Great Expectations was adapted into film many times. Among them David Lean’s is popularized as an excellent and well made film. First structure and plot of the original text is investigated and then film is examined on the basis of the transformations of characters and plot. Next the differences between them are examined. Many cardinal events and functions lost in process of transformation from novel to film are discussed for the mythic frames showing that cruel characters and behaviors are excluded for mythic adaptations. For the analysis of the film structures, mythic framework theories constructed by Campbell, Voytylla and Vogler are applied. Hero’s phases of growth (psychological journey) and hero’s physical journey are divided in three worlds: ordinary world (increased awareness, call to adventure, departure), special world (experiences in London: road of trials and ordeal), and ordinary world (reconciliation and return). For the mythic structures, Lean transformed the threatening beast-man Magwitch and cold hearted Miss Havisham and Estella into a sympathetic human beings in the final stage of Pip’s hero journey. They represent psychological, not physical, triumphs. Pip, the poor shivering waif, defies Miss Havisham, destroys the power of Satis House, and leads Estella into the sunlight. Pip is a model that combines both moral and practical wisdom as a hero. For these mythic frames Lean uses screen space to show Dickensian larger-than-lifeness hero. In short, Analysis of film adaptations is one means of bringing the “culture text” into collision with its source material to stimulate and renew our understanding of the initial written work. We might say that Lean’s mythic film text is born from this collision and gives him a great success, and it has been loved all over the world up to this day.