Narrative Comparison Between Maugham’s Fiction AndIts Adapted Film

Fiction and film are the arts influencing the whole world. Although they are very different in many aspects, they have one thing in common:they both have the function of narrative and narrative is the common goal for them. As the mutual borrowing between fiction and film creation increases continuously, fiction and film become increasingly interdependent. The comparison between fiction and film has a solid foundation for the occurrence of the adaptation from fiction to film. Furthermore, it is possible for us to make a comparison between fiction and film, for the narratives of which are from the same theoretical system.The film The Painted Veil is a Sino-US cooperative one and it is adapted from the Somerset Maugham’s fiction. Since its release in 2006, the film has been hailed as an unprecedented success, which draws great attention from the audience to the original fiction. With the help of Maugham’s fiction The Painted Veil, this study takes an interdisciplinary research and tries to analyze the differences between fiction and film from the two levels of discourse and story. Narrator and narrative time belong to the discourse level; events and character belong to the story level. Through the research from different levels, this study tries to compare the fiction and film and find the differences between them in the process of adaption. In the end, the causes for these differences will be probed into in detail.The significance of this research is as follows:The present study uses the interdisciplinary research methods to make a comparison between Maugham’s fiction and its adapted film, which is of great significance to the study of fiction and film as well as the development of both fiction and film. Moreover, the present study fills a gap which hitherto existed in the comparative study of different narrative styles of Maugham’s works, which lays the foundation for further study. In the end, the narrative comparison between fiction and its adapted film provides some useful suggestions for the cinematographic adaptation.