Filmadaption Study On The Novel The Painted Veil

William Somerset Maugham (1874—1965) is one of the famousmodern writers in Britain. He is also considered as a great Britishnovelist in his day. Most of his works focus on exploring the humanityand meaning of life. The novel The Painted Veil, as one of Maugham’ sthree masterpieces aiming at probing into humanity, was popularamong readers as soon as it published in1925. It concerns about love,disillusion, betray, separation, life and death. In2006, this novel wasmade into a movie by the famous director John Curran. It was favoredby lots of people. Take a overall view of the comments on Maugham’ sworks around the critics. Their comments mainly focus on the theme,characters or humanity of the novel. Though The Painted Veil wasmade into a film, most of the film critics are nothing but simplecomments and instructions. No one gives a detailed compare of thefilm and its original novel, despite of the fact that they belong todifferent areas.The process of making a novel into a movie includes two stageswhich are from the original to script first and then to film. In the wholeprocess, there will be a change in the plot, the characters, the endingof the story, even the spirit of the original works. This thesis is mainlyfocus on the compare of content and artistry of the two works. A deeper and more comprehensive understanding will be reachedthrough the study of different types of works in different areas.Besides, this thesis will also give comments on the strengths andweakness of the film version, which is revised from the novel ThePainted Veil. For the content，this thesis will give a analysis on theshifts made by the film, which mainly focuses on four aspects: theintention of the theme, the redemption of emotion, the ethic ofhumanity and the image of the veil. For the artistry, the thesis mainlyanalyzes from three aspects: the structure of the plot, the portrayal ofthe characters and the design of the ending. On the basis of theanalysis from text, the plot of the film and the comprehensive method,four reasons to these changes made by the film will be summarized:the influence of different spirit, the use of the film technique, the spanof the time and space and the common effect of commercial interestand means. The film The Painted Veil succeeds in embodying thespontaneous imagination of readers who are not at the scene into thepassive perception of audience who are personally on the scene.Withthe develop of the society, this becomes the biggest advantage for thefilm, comparing with the novel. However, the film also has its owndisadvantages. For example, because of the limit of the screen, it isinevitable for the film to have some deletion on the spiritualconnotation and deeper exploration of the humanity.