E.M. Forster: Novels Into Films

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) is one of the greatest British novelists in the 20th century and an excellent essayist and arts critic in the meantime. During his lifetime, he wrote six novels, several short stories, essays, travel notes, comments and so on. In Forster's time, the film was in the period of its initial development. There is a very close relation between films and novels and there are not only distinct similarities but also obvious differences between them. There are a number of filmic features in his works, such as the plastic feature of vision of his novels, the filmic dialogue, plot, theme and characters, as well as the use of Montage and Long Take and so on. Since the 1980s, many of Forster's works have been adapted for good films, which has not only demonstrated the filmic features of his works, but also provided some helpful inspirations for the further interaction and integration and mutual advancement and development between films and novels.This thesis attempts to begin with an analysis of the filmic features of Forster's novels, exactly discuss the connections between the novels A Room With A View and Howards End and their film versions, compare the differences between them. The process of adapting Forster's novels into films is enlightening. Based on the analysis and study of this process, the thesis extensively studies the interlinking and interaction between the two different art forms: novels and films. The author believes that these studies will have a two-way theoretical significance in the practice of adapting novels into films and also in novel writing in such a film-flourishing age.