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Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country: A Tale of
Two Media
by
Glenn Statile - St. John’s University
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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.
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