A film is a composite of concrete, audio-visual images. This sets it in a completely different class from the novel or the play composed of abstract written or spoken words. A film is a kind of writing, but picture writing. It can even express completely abstract ideas provided they are adapted to the nature of the medium and formulated in concrete, pictorial terms.

Geoffrey Wagner divided film adaptation into three ‘modes’: the transposition, in which a novel is directly given on the screen with a minimum of apparent interference; the commentary, where an original story is taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect; the analogy, which must represent a considerable departure for the sake of making another work of art, DeWitt Bodeen, co-author of the screenplay for Peter Ustinov Billy Budd (1962), claims that: 'Adapting literary works to film is, without a doubt, a creative undertaking, but the task requires a kind of selective interpretation, along with the ability to recreate and sustain an established mood'.

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When the camera becomes a character in Indian cinema

Indian cinema, call it Bollywood or regional cinema, mainstream, middle-of-the-road or off-mainstream, are often inspired by original works of literature to present these as films by very famous and not so famous filmmakers. This is true of all Indian films across the language, time and cultural barriers. The interpretation of a piece of literature may present the perspective of the filmmaker which might be distanced from the original piece of work. Or, it may be an original translation from word to picture and with the different degrees of difference between these two polar opposites.

Literature’s presentation through the audio-visual magic cinema is famous for, is a challenge many filmmakers love to take. Or, they simply might find the literary piece of work inspiring to turn into film. Or, they might invest their own transposition into something very different from the original. So different that you cannot recognize the original literary piece as you watch the film. A classic example of this last one is Anurag Kashyap’s Dev D which turned Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s classic Devdas on its head to give a very different interpretation distanced from the original classic. And it turned out to be a big box office hit! On the other hand, Satyajit Ray has repeatedly said that for his first film Pather Panchali, the original source – Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadyay’s novel helped him tremendously because the author........

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