The Unknown Adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: Amateur Theatre, Film Avant-garde, and the Magic Lantern

IF 0.7 1区 文学 0 LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES DICKENS QUARTERLY Pub Date : 2023-05-23 DOI:10.1353/dqt.2023.0023
A. Kovalová
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Abstract

In December 1932, the Rochester Community Players (RCP), one of the oldest continuously operated amateur theatre organizations in America, premiered A Christmas Carol, an adaptation of the famous story by Charles Dickens. This innovative production included scenes “on screen”: Scrooge’s visions of the past were presented as films projected during the performance. These films were made with the involvement of Dr. James Sibley Watson, Jr. and Melville Webber, key figures in the history of American avant-garde cinema. Adaptations of Charles Dickens’s works have become a wide field of study; there are many excellent books and articles on how Dickens has been adapted in theatre and in cinema.1 Some of these works are focused on A Christmas Carol in particular, but none seems to mention the Rochester version. In Dickens Dramatized, by H. Philip Bolton, the fundamental reference for the dramatic versions of Dickens’s works, there is a list of 357 adaptations of A Christmas Carol staged in 1844–1984 (Bolton 237–67), but the RCP adaptation is not included in this list. The same can be said about the list of “Notable Film, Television, and Radio Adaptations of A Christmas Carol” compiled by Richard Kelly (233–37), as well as the more detailed filmography in Fred Guida’s monograph, A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations (171–232). One might expect that, thanks to the involvement of Watson and Webber, the RCP production would interest historians of the American film avantgarde rather than Dickens scholars. However, although the revolutionary films by Watson and Webber, The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) and Lot in Sodom (1933), have become classics of world avant-garde film, and have
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查尔斯·狄更斯《圣诞颂歌》的未知改编:业余戏剧、前卫电影和魔术灯
1932年12月,美国历史最悠久的业余戏剧组织之一罗切斯特社区剧团(RCP)首演了根据查尔斯·狄更斯的著名故事改编的《圣诞颂歌》。这种创新的制作包括“在屏幕上”的场景:斯克罗吉对过去的看法在表演期间以电影的形式呈现出来。这些电影是在詹姆斯·西布里·沃森博士和梅尔维尔·韦伯的参与下制作的,他们是美国前卫电影史上的关键人物。查尔斯·狄更斯作品的改编已经成为一个广泛的研究领域;关于狄更斯是如何被改编成戏剧和电影的,有许多优秀的书籍和文章其中一些作品特别关注《圣诞颂歌》,但似乎没有一个提到罗切斯特的版本。菲利普·波顿(H. Philip Bolton)的《狄更斯戏剧化版》(Dickens戏剧化版)是狄更斯作品戏剧版本的基本参考,书中列出了1844年至1984年(波顿237-67年)上演的《圣诞颂歌》的357个改编版本,但RCP改编版本不包括在这个名单中。理查德·凯利(233-37)编撰的“圣诞颂歌的著名电影、电视和广播改编”名单,以及弗雷德·圭达(Fred Guida)的专著《圣诞颂歌及其改编》(171-232)中更详细的电影记录也是如此。人们可能会认为,由于沃森和韦伯的参与,RCP的制作会引起美国电影先锋派历史学家的兴趣,而不是狄更斯学者。然而,尽管沃特森和韦伯的革命电影《厄舍之家的陷落》(1928)和《索多玛的罗》(1933)已经成为世界先锋电影的经典,并有了很大的发展
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来源期刊
DICKENS QUARTERLY
DICKENS QUARTERLY LITERATURE, BRITISH ISLES-
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
16.70%
发文量
33
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