Film Adaptation Of Shen Congwen’s Novels

Literature and adaptation is essential for film-making. In the history of modern literature, many well-known writers’ works have been adapted into movies. As the most prolific modern Chinese writer, Shen Congwen’s novel was rarely adapted into movies. Such a high literary achievement, and so few attempts in adaptation is clearly not proportional.In this paper, the four films adapted from Shen’s novels are the main objects of study. Chapter I summarized the current status of film adaptation of Shen’s novels, and analyzed the reasons of this status, i.e. political factors,work style, market factors, and the mass culture. Chapter II discussed the film adaptation of novel text from the following three aspects, i.e. the theme,the plot, and the characters. Combined with the three basic elements of film language——sound, picture, and montage, chapter III discussed the representation of novels’ emotion in the film. The concluding remarks analyzed thepros and cons of film adaptation, summed up the rules that Shen’s film adaptation should be followed.This paper chooses Shen’s film adaptation as a starting point. From display to technology and theory. Hope this paper can offer some experiences and lessons for the film adaptation of Shen ’s novels.