15 - Filmed Forster

Summary

Five novels by Forster were adapted for the cinema in the 1980s and 1990s - A Passage to India (1984), A Room With A View (1986), Maurice (1987), Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991), and Howards End (1992). They have all generated debate about their style and politics. These adaptations are implicated in contemporary disagreements about the means and ends of historicising through film, particularly about the exploitation of 'heritage' culture. The appropriation for film of canonical literary texts from an earlier era has been identified with the commercial values of the heritage industry and its often retrograde or nostalgic view of British culture and politics. Through discussion of the styles of the Forster adaptations, my chapter tests the adequacy of this assessment.

Traditionally, discussions of literary adaptation focused on a film's fidelity to its 'original', on the 'notion of a text as having and rendering up to the (intelligent) reader a single, “correct” meaning which the filmmaker has either adhered to or in some sense violated or tampered with'. More recently, this view of adaptation has altered. 'The most successful adaptations of literature . . . aim for the spirit of the original rather than the literal letter; they use the camera to interpret and not simply illustrate the tale; and they exploit a particular affinity between the artistic temperament and preoccupations of the novelist and filmmaker'.