Thursday, November 11, 2004
Замечательный фильм, все верно, соответствует книге. Интересно поговорить с кем-то, кто видел фильм, но книгу не читал. Мне кажется, не очень легко понять, что происходит, разве что ближе к концу. Читавшим книгу легче.
Here's what Richard Keller Simon says (mostly about the novel, but at the end he mentiones the movie):
Two of the episodes of the plot that cannot, however, the whorehouse visit and the cock fight, would never have appeared in the movies of the period since both were expressly forbidden by the Motion Picture Production Code of l930, which provided censorship of anything that would have been seen to encourage immoral behavior. "Brothels and houses of ill-fame . . . are not proper locations for drama," the code explained. "They suggest to the average person at once sex sin, or they excite an unwholesome and morbid curiosity in the minds of youth." More broadly, the code argued that "Correct entertainment raises the whole standard of a nation. Wrong entertainment lowers the whole living condition and moral ideals of the race. Note, for example, the healthy reactions to healthful moral sports like baseball, golf; the unhealthy reactions to sports like cockfighting."
...
Thus in the movies, the cowboy hero is quiet but smart, and he gets the girl and wins his fights, but in the novel, Earl is quiet and dumb, and he loses the girls and his fights, even the one with the midget. In the movies, the Mexican sidekick is dominated by the cowboy and helps him out when he gets in trouble, but in the novel, the Mexican sidekick hurts the cowboy and comes to get the upper hand over him, even stealing his girl. In the movies, the girl is sexy but good, going off with the cowboy hero at the end, but in the novel she is sexy and bad, disappearing at the end under morally ambiguous circumstances. In the movies the child star is adorable, but in the novel Adore Loomis is irritating and unnatural, and Homer, who represents the movie audience, is provoked to attack him. In the movies, the comedian is genuinely funny and as played by W. C. Fields, a lovable con artist, to whom no real injury can come, but in the novel, the comedian is no longer funny, and actually dies. In the movies, the gangster is pugnacious, tough, menacing but in the novel, as a dwarf, he is pugnacious and ludicrous. In the movies, the Hollywood executive is a powerful, smart, and compassionate dandy, but in the novel he is a dried up, silly, and foolish old man who goes to whorehouses to watch movies.
...
and so on ...
