Doktor Meluzin (1973) a Dým bramborové natě (1976) : ztráty a nálezy
| Title in English | Doctor Meluzin (1973) and Smoke on the Potato Fields (1976) : Losses and Findings |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Česká literatúra a film III |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Mass media, audiovision |
| Keywords | Literary criticism and filmology; film narativeness; diachronous approach; plurality; heterogeneity; alternativeness; ambivalence; encoded messages |
| Description | The author of the present study compares the novel by Bohumil Říha and the film made by František Vláčil demonstrating the losses and findings of the film adaptation compared with the chronicle novel. The introduction is devoted to the problems of the pictorial and narrative character of the novel and the film in general; the author asserts the unpreparedness of contemporary filmology to define its object, methodology, terminology and its boundaries. The film unlike the chronicle novel is one-dimensional, while the novel offers more alternatives and not only synchronous, but also diachronous thematic strata. The main conflict is between the demiurgic approach to the man and the world and the concept of the passing connected with empathy and understanding. Several characters are missing in the film adaptation which deprives the film of the defocusing, alterativeness, ambivalence, heterogeneity and plurality of meanings, encoded messages. The Czech “normalization”, the period after the Soviet 1968 invasion, is not concealed, but manifested as temporary part of the eternal passing of men and things accentuating ruralist conservatism of values and poetics of anchoring in tolerant, industrious and perceptive village community. Though the novel and the film are two quite different artefacts, the film seems to lose some potentials epxessed in the chronicle novel narration. |