ARTISTIC HYPERPLANE. GIOVANNI ARPINO – DINO RISI, NARTIN BREST – GIOVANNI ARPINO

Abstract

The article considers current cultural problematics – connections and interrelationships in the field of “literature and cinematography”. The importance of literary works as one of the foundations of the activity of modern cinematographers is emphasized. The significance of successful feature (artistic) cinema for raising the status of individual literary texts is identified. The article singles out the figure of the Italian writer and journalist Giovanni Arpino, provides a brief outline of his life and work, and emphasizes the diversity of his literary interests. Of special interest in the context of the research is the fact that prose works of Giovanni Arpino were repeatedly addressed by film directors and that feature films based on his works oftentimes turned into cultural events on a European and worldwide scale. The article pays special attention to Giovanni Arpino’s novel “Darkness and. Honey” (“Il buio e il miele”), which at the time of its publication in 1969 did not receive the same recognition as a number of his earlier prose works. The characteristics of the main plot and psychological properties of the novel “Darkness and Honey” are presented. The research points out the eloquent fact that the novel in question aroused wide social interest after first the Italian director Dino Risi staged a psychological story called “Profumo di donna”, and then the Hollywood director Martin Brest staged a psychological thriller “Scent of a Woman”. The compositional and conceptual features of each of these films are analyzed in detail, while the gender specificity realized in the films “Profumo di donna” and “Scent of a Woman” is identified. The article justifies the conclusion that the plane of “literature and cinematography” can be transformed into the hyperplane of “literature – cinematography – literature”.