Screening the Word: Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900-2001. Ed. by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski. (BASEES/RoutledgeCurzon Series in Russian and East European Studies) Abingdon and New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2005. 228 pp. 65 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 978-0-415-30667-6.

Since its emergence as a new medium in the early twentieth century, cinema has entertained a close mutual and, to a large extent, symbiotic relationship with literature. Approximately half of all films adapt, or borrow from, literary sources in one way or another. Compared with this intense cinematic practice, scholarly analysis of the complex relationship of linguistic and visual realization is sadly lagging behind, since it has been caught up in a catch 22 for decades: film adaptations of fictional narrative texts are either judged by the degree of their fidelity to the literary source or accused of failing to fulfil the potential inherent in the medium of film. Only recently scholars have gone back to the seminal study What is Cinema? by Andre Bazin, who had--as early as 1948--pointed out that a literary text and its screen adaptation should be considered as two equally important but separate entities that each make use of their particular means of expression, a task they accomplish either well or badly. General debates about the transformation process from text to screen, and the relevance of the so-called 'original', led to the view that screen adaptations should no longer be measured according to the criteria of fidelity, but should be judged on their inherent qualities.

In their preface, which summarizes these and other theoretical considerations on film adaptations, the editors also point out that film adaptations which focus on the interface between word and picture are particularly pioneering--an interface where abstract concepts or ideologies are transformed into a form accessible through the senses. As Terry Eagleton argues in 'Signs, Sense and Sentiment', Times Higher Education Supplement, 27 April 2001, mediation through the senses sets limits to the universality of the intellect and makes ideas sensually accessible. This approach is also the guiding principle of the present volume: its main focus is on the mediation of ideological abstractions of the Soviet era, i.e. the transformation of written narratives into cinematic images.

The 24-page introduction contains a survey of Soviet and Russian practice. The approaches of Russian formalists such as Viktor Shklovskii, Boris Eikhenbaum, Roman Jakobson, and Iurii Tynianov, who describe film as an independent semiotic system of conventions, have had little impact on Soviet film critics, who continued to uphold the principle of fidelity and to give unwavering priority to the literary text. This continual overemphasis on the literary source also explains the presence of three texts in the creation of adaptations of contemporary prose works: the literary original; the film script composed by the author, using a literary style but already anticipating the future film; and the director's script, using film language. The fact that many directors did not, however, follow the principle of fidelity in their actual film adaptations provides interesting material for the present volume.

The third part of the introduction contains a chronological survey of the basic principles governing Soviet and Russian film adaptations. The contributors develop useful paradigms for every decade and illustrate them with examples. These ten pages alone represent a comprehensive history of film adaptations, which illustrates the complex interaction between ideological premisses and a reassessment of the great writers of Russian and Soviet literature, as well as world literature. Many observations coincide with findings that are by now general currency in literary criticism as well as film analysis. It is, however, also appealing to focus on literary film adaptations, because such a focus can often reveal details and mechanisms of the interaction which have so far attracted considerably less attention, and because it explores the ideological abyss and the inherent contradictions of the seemingly 'innocent' genre of film adaptations.

The case studies by the twelve contributors are based on papers presented at a conference on the topic of film adaptations, organized by Stephen Hutchings at the University of Surrey in 2002. The contributions cover the whole period from the beginnings of the Russian and Soviet film up to the post-Soviet era and are divided into four parts, adhering to a chronological pattern. Thematically they are linked to the dominant national myths and their treatment in particular periods: (1) film adaptations from the beginning to Stalin: manufacturing the myth; (2) literature and film in the post-Stalin period: the myth in retreat; (3) reviewing Russia: myth and nation; and (4) from text to screen, Soviet to post-Soviet: reinterpreting the myth. For the case studies the contributors have selected film adaptations that illustrate those developments, such as Chapaev (Jeremy Hicks), Commissar (Graham Roberts), or Grigorii Kozintsev's film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (David Gillespie). The period of the Thaw is represented by analyses of film adaptations based on Vasilii Aksenov (Julian Graffy) and Vasilii Shukshin (John Givens). Apart from the aspects mentioned above, the contributors also deal with other discourses, such as gender--in the films on the Caucasian issue (Joe Andrew), or imperialism--in the great number of Soviet Sherlock Holmes versions (Catherine Nepomnyashchy). The part about myth and the nation places great emphasis on the work of the Mikhalkov Brothers (Birgit Beumers, Russell Valentino), which is justified by the prominent position these directors occupy in Russian film production. The period of the silent film is regrettably represented only by Evegnii Bauer's film Child of the Big City (Rachel Morley). Apart from the analyses of individual films, some contributors deal with larger issues, such as post-Soviet film adaptations of Russian classics (Anat Vernitski) or screen versions of children's literature (Stephen Hutchings).

The extensive bibliography includes Anglo-American and Russian works on film; German and French publications are listed only if they are available in English. Overall, the volume contains thorough studies, which in their entirety do justice to the editors' claim of providing a general overview, as set out in the introduction.

University of Innsbruck Christine Engel