Soon after the first documentary beginnings, when the film started to evolve into feature film, it was often modelled after literary and theatrical works, trying to preserve both the values of literature as well as its cultural prestige and its audience. Many renowned film directors have admitted that their own invention of individual directing techniques was influenced by literature. The novel and the film communicate by different means of expression; while literature (fiction) makes use of words to narrate the story, develop the characters and create ideas, the film uses pictures or, rather, images and action. However, both media also share many common points. The quality of the film production does not depend solely on the original literary work that has served as the model, yet the decision on whether a literary work should be adapted for film is based on the assessment of whether it contains certain elements which can be transferred to the film that will captivate the audience. The novel Wuthering Heights by the English novelist Emily Brontë is used as an illustrative example as its intense plot has proven a rich source of inspiration in a number of internationally successful film adaptations. The thesis analyses some new correlations between the film adaptations of the novel and the original, in particular the most recent adaptation in parallel with the previous ones. The author's biography, the literary contextualization of the novel with the focus on the elements of literary Gothicism in the Victorian novel, and the discussion of the novel's reception form the basis for an analysis of the film adaptations of this work. The methodological foundations first follow the traditional approach by assessing faithfulness towards the literary original and then includes modern approaches such as narratology, intertextuality and various reception theories, which have recently been united into methodological pluralism of intermediality with a characteristically interdisciplinary approach. The assessment of book-to-film adaptations also reflects the principles of screenwriting in which the process of the literature transformation into expressions of the film language is taken place. Three resounding productions from different time periods have been chosen from a number of film adaptations of Wuthering Heights. Despite sharing an identical literary basis, each of the three is a special and independent work of art in its own way. In the process of adaptation every one of them has formed an integral whole whereby the original has been upgraded. This is also reflected in an overview of the Slovene film critiques of the latest adaptation considering the expressed importance of the original novel.
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