THE CLASH BETWEEN THEATER AND FILM

Abstract

This essay examines approaches to theater‐to‐film adaptation in the 1920s by focusing on Germaine Dulac's writings and films, in particular La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923). It analyzes the systematic nature of Dulac's translation of Denys Amiel's and André Obey's homonymous play to film form, suggesting that her picture maintains a respect for the play up until the concluding moments when her feminist perspective refused to sanction the play's happy outcome. Dulac uses cinematic technique to explore the inner life and drama of her characters (particularly Madeline Beudet), rather than present their exterior actions as in the theater. At the same time she fosters a sense of the theatrical space—the Beudet household—as a claustrophobic, prison‐like locale in which Madeline Beudet has been trapped. The essay also points toward a group of silent films that share a radical approach to the adaptation of theatrical texts. It suggests that these films constitute a formation comparable in important ways to a group of post‐war films identified and celebrated by Bazin.