Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country:  A Tale of Two Media

 by

Glenn Statile -  St. John’s University

(1)    From Printed Page to Silver Screen:  The Midas Touch

The medieval alchemists, as we all know, had one hell of a time in trying to transmute lead into gold.  Yet I would maintain that the goal of transmuting or adapting a gem of a novel into an equally great work of art for the silver screen is just as difficult and leads, in the case of failure, to much greater disappointment.  After all we do not really expect something for nothing in this world, but do genuinely hope that our cherished aesthetic experiences are not in any way diminished or tarnished in the translation from one aesthetic medium into another.  And yet it somehow does not grate against our ultimately realist inclinations, despite the imaginatively escapist character of fiction and film, to hope that our literary pleasures are in some way enhanced in the adaptation of a treasured novel into a feature film.  Those cinematic alchemists who succeed in such a task, contrary to the pessimism of Plato in Book X of The Republic in regard to the mimetic arts, are thus deserving of our undying praise and gratitude.  In this essay I argue that both the letter and the spirit of Alan Paton’s masterpiece Cry, The Beloved Country have, for the most part, been preserved and in certain ways enhanced by the medium of film.