문학영화의 평가에 대한 비판적 고찰- 막스 프리쉬와 폴커 슐렌도르프의 <호모 파버>를 중심으로 -

Abstract

The 'literature film', film based on literary work, has usually been criticized by the literature group for it's reduction or destruction of the original and by the film circle that it is a impure film. But there must be some reasons why literature films, in spite of the negative criticism of the whole, are still being made. Even though they are a different media, Literature and film have a common fact, that they can transfer stories, feelings or informations effectively. By a close observation, we can see that the negative evaluations often come from wrong position or prejudice or misunderstanding about the medial characteristics. This work approaches critically to the criticism on 'Homo faber' by Max Frisch and Volker Schlöndorff. Published in 1957 Frisch's 'Homo faber' has been regarded as a representative text of german modern literature and several attempts has been undertaken to make it into film, which were in vain until 1991, when Volker Schlöndorff brought his film <Homo faber>. This film, although it was a box office flop in the USA, showed a remarkable box office record in Germany. But the reviews gave mainly cutting remarks that the movie failed to have a originality as a film, that it was overwhelmed by the original and merely illustrates it. This argument is based on the movie's excessive faithfulness to its original. But other negative remarks argued that it cut down its original too much, that the philosophical and mythical contexts are missed. On the argument of reduction, two counter-argument can be brought forth. First, it is impossible for film, as a specific medium, to transfer a huge literary text without any reduction. So it can't be a reason to take criticism. Secondly, film as a 'Multimedia' can represent simultaneously through many channels, which can be mistaken as reduction. The original takes a narrative form of report, which can't easily be translated to filmic form. Therefore modification of the narrative form is unavoidable, even though it results in losing the multi-faceted contexts of the original. Nevertheless the movie tries to suggest the original's philosophical and mythical contexts by means of diverse filmic devices. The fact that Faber wears dark sunglasses, and that he looks at a sketch for 'Roger Freeing Angelica' of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, implies the philosophical and mythical contexts of the film. The critical remarks on deformation also doesn't give regard to the medial characteristics. Instead of the complicated narrative structure of its original, the movie takes a simple and consistent structure of flash-back, which signals much more effectively in the movie Faber's character as a technician, who doesn't believe in unpredictable world of feeling and insists on objective recognition. In conclusion the analysis and evaluation of the literature film require well-balanced understanding and careful approach, which can be achieved by investigating into the intermedial and historical characteristics of media. It guarantees correct evaluation about literature film as an eternal point of intersection between literature and film.