Changing Places and Destinies (Émile Zola, Alexander Pushkin, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in British Cinema)

Abstract

The paper analyses the category “place of action” as a structural element in a work of art. The place of action, that is the spacial localisation of the events described or otherwise presented in a work of art, is usually considered part of the setting, that is the whole milieu where the action takes place. For epic genres, the place of action is not only the necessary background of the unfolding events, but also a constituent part of the characters. The history of screen versions of literary works shows that the place of action may be as mutable and fluid as the time of action. The cinema which deals with screen versions is very often obsessed with what A. Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin” called “a desire for changing places”. Gains and losses in each particular case require a detailed analysis, but, in a preliminary way, we may say that when the problems raised by a particular literary work transcend the limits of the localities where the action takes place, the significance of the setting deminishes. In this paper, the problem of “place (and time) of action” is considered through analysing three recent British screen versions of the three literary works: Émile Zola’s novel “Au Bonheur des Dames” (“The Ladies’ Delight”, 1883), Alexander Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” (1823–1831), and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s short novel “The Double” (1846). To appraise adequately these screen versions, we have to understand what has been gained and what has been lost in the interpretations of the original literary texts after their contemporising and changing the places of their action.

Keywords

• place of action
• setting
• screen version
• contemporising
• interpretation
• gains
• losses