Nikos Kazantzakis’ Unshot Adaptations of Don Quixote and Decameron

Abstract

This article examines two of Nikos Kazantzakis’ unshot screenplays of the early 1930s: his adaptations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Boccaccio’s Decameron, kept in typed manuscripts at the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Foundation in Iraklion, Crete. The article analyses Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron in the contexts of early talking cinema and his ideas of the image-language relationship. Written at a time when the artistic value of talking cinema was still debated, Kazantzakis’ adaptations demonstrate that he sought to express ideas with images rather than dialogue (Don Quixote) and use sound as a creative element (Decameron) in ways alluding to Eisenstein’s 1928-1929 writings, with which, as evidence suggests, the Greek author was familiar. Thus, Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron show how a technological development in film history – the coming of sound – and the Soviet film theory influenced this author’s adaptation techniques, while also enhancing our understanding of his creative career as well as the worldwide resonance of Cervantes’ and Boccaccio’s literary milestones.