The Other Boleyn Girl
The two adaptations after the controversial novel “The Other Boleyn Girl” by Philippa Gregory present a historical fictional story of the Boleyn sisters, Anne and Mary. This is a ravishing, emotionally intense story of love, loyalty and betrayal in the chase for power and social position, portraying the human desires and flaws in a beautifully described historical background at the English court. The private life of the historical figures from the XVIth century and the intrigues hidden behind the official documents is quite an ambiguous, curiously challenging segment of time, from the historical point of view. The book, and the two film adaptations after – “The Other Boleyn Girl” explore the uncertain times in the life of Henry the VIIIth, before deciding to divorce Katherine of Aragorn, remarry Anne Boleyn and start the Church of England.
The first adaptation is a television film, released by BBC in 2003, directed by Philippa Lowthorpe. It is remarkable for its innovative style, close to experimental, very unusual for the historical fictional drama genre. The film was shot with a digital camera, but what is most striking is the modern use of camerawork – handhelds, the shaky movements at the beginning, the two sisters confessions looking straight into the camera, like in an interview – give a documentary style to the appearance of the movie. While most films of the same genre are trying to recreate the atmosphere of the time, by using the classical parameters, this film is trying to achieve exactly the opposite. This cinéma vérité style has the subtle purpose of bringing the viewer closer to the story and effectively involved throughout the narrative. In the same time the film focuses on the developmen...
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...he purpose anyway. However, the BBC version gives a more realistic sense of the characters and relationships between them, mainly because is not aiming to overwhelm the viewer with the context, as the Hollywood version does, and the documentary-style and the actors give more credibility in recreating the historical figures.
The Hollywood adaptation from 2008 offers a more complex view over the life in the political and historical context presented. “ridiculous, but imagined with humour and gusto: a very diverting gallop trough the heritage landscape” (Peter Bradshaw – “The Guardian”)
Bibliography:
www.imdb.com
www.rottentomatoes.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.timeout.com
www.entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
www.guardian.co.uk
www.movies.nytimes.com
www.englishhistory.net
www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/
www.bbc.co.uk/
www.reelviews.net/
The story of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, has been elusive to historians since her death in 1536 at the hands of her husband. This, in part, can be attributed to the destruction of almost everything she touched soon after her execution. On orders of the king, the castles that were once her home had all memory stripped of her. Portraits were destroyed, letters disappeared, their symbol of the H and A intertwined had the A ripped away. The remnants of her time on the throne are pieces of history that were overlooked in the workers haste to strip the castles in preparation for Jane Seymour to become queen. There are few hints left of what really happened during Anne’s life and how important she was during her reign which has created the widespread infatuation with Anne and who she really was. Why is Anne’s life of such interest to us then? The reasons are many and include the desire to know her role in the English reformation, being the first queen of England to ever be executed, and the impact it had on her daughter and the later Queen Elizabeth I.
November 1998, written for FILM 220: Aspects of Criticism. This is a 24-week course for second-year students, examining methods of critical analysis, interpretation and evaluation. The final assignment was simply to write a 1000-word critical essay on a film seen in class during the final six-weeks of the course. Students were expected to draw on concepts they had studied over the length of the course.
Anne Boleyn Anne Boleyn was a very important, if not the most important character in Anne of a Thousand Days. The way that she behaves, and the decisions that she makes, affect the way that the end. For example, Anne could have refused to marry Henry, and could have run away. These actions and decisions would have dramatically changed the outcome of the story, and for that matter history. Anne has many different personality traits which seem to change over time.
Film making has gone through quite the substantial change since it’s initial coining just before the turn of the 19th century, and one would tend argue that the largest amount of this change has come quite recently or more so in the latter part of film’s history as a whole. One of the more prominent changes having taken place being the role of women in film. Once upon a time having a very set role in the industry, such as editing for example. To mention briefly the likes of Dede Allen, Verna Fields, Thelma Schoonmaker and so forth. Our female counterparts now occupy virtually every aspect of the film making industry that males do; and in many instances excel past us. Quite clearly this change has taken place behind the lens, but has it taken
Rosenstone, R.A, "The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age," in The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media, edited by Marcia Landy, (New Brunswick,New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2001): 50-66.
To make a movie from any source takes a lot of people in the process. It's not just one or two people sitting down saying "let's make a movie." There are things to be considered, things to be done and people to contact. In this essay, I plan to make a movie of Haydn Middleton's novel The Lie of the Land, just to give a glimpse of the complications involved with making a movie.
By the time Elizabeth was ten years old, Henry her father had married and divorced three wives in succession. The last wife, Catherine Parr, persuaded him to reinstate Elizabeth’s right as an heir and bring her back to Court. Here, she can shared her younger half-brother’s tutors and received a outstanding education. Now Elizabeth had motivation to be more determined about her future. Sadly, she also had reason to dwell on the prior execution of her third stepmother, K...
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
When a play is presented on film, the director takes the script, and with poetic license, interprets it. A film not only contains the actual words of the author (in this case Shakespeare), but it includes action, acting, and cinematographic techniques; the three are used to better portray the author’s story. Using these elements, the director’s interpretation of the plot is reinforced. The film provides symbolic images and a visual interpretation, hence Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” is better understood by the viewers.
Seger, Linda. "Introduction: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film." The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. New York: H. Holt and, 1992. 1-10. Print.
Many time in our lives, we have seen the transformation of novels into movies. Some of them are equal to the novel, few are superior, and most are inferior. Why is this? Why is it that a story that was surely to be one of the best written stories ever, could turn out to be Hollywood flops? One reason is that in many transformations, the main characters are changed, some the way they look, others the way they act. On top of this, scenes are cut out and plot is even changed. In this essay, I will discuss some of the changes made to the characters of the Maltese Falcon as they make their transformation to the ?big screen.?
Filmmaking and cinematography are art forms completely open to interpretation in a myriad ways: frame composition, lighting, casting, camera angles, shot length, etc. The truly talented filmmaker employs every tool available to make a film communicate to the viewer on different levels, including social and emotional. When a filmmaker chooses to undertake an adaptation of a literary classic, the choices become somewhat more limited. In order to be true to the integrity of the piece of literature, the artistic team making the adaptation must be careful to communicate what is believed was intended by the writer. When the literature being adapted is a play originally intended for the stage, the task is perhaps simplified. Playwrights, unlike novelists, include some stage direction and other instructions regarding the visual aspect of the story. In this sense, the filmmaker has a strong basis for adapting a play to the big screen.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most respected and admired novels of all time. Often criticized for lacking substance and using more elaborate camera work, freely adapted films usually do not follow the original plot line. Following this cliché, Roland Joffe’s version of The Scarlet Letter received an overwhelmingly negative reception. Unrealistic plots and actions are added to the films for added drama; for example, Hester is about to be killed up on the scaffold, when Algonquin members arrive and rescue her. After close analysis, it becomes evident of the amount of work that is put into each, but one must ask, why has the director adapted their own style of depicting the story? How has the story of Hester Prynne been modified? Regarding works, major differences and similarities between the characterization, visual imagery, symbolism, narration and plot, shows how free adaptation is the correct term used.
In the Middle Ages, the roles of women became less restricted and confined and women became more opinionated and vocal. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight presents Lady Bertilak, the wife of Sir Bertilak, as a woman who seems to possess some supernatural powers who seduces Sir Gawain, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale, present women who are determined to have power and gain sovereignty over the men in their lives. The female characters are very openly sensual and honest about their wants and desires. It is true that it is Morgan the Fay who is pulling the strings in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; nevertheless the Gawain poet still gives her a role that empowers her. Alison in The Wife if Bath Prologue represents the voice of feminism and paves the way for a discourse in the relationships between husbands and wives and the role of the woman in society.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.