ABSTRACT
The problem of digests and adaptations is usually posed within the frame work of literature. Yet literature only partakes of a phenomenon whose amplitude is much larger. Take painting, for instance: one might even consider an art museum as a digest, for we find collected there a selection of paintings that were intended to exist in a completely different architec tural and decorative context. Nonetheless, these works of art are still orig inal. But now take the imaginary museum proposed by Malraux: it refracts the original painting into millions of facets thanks to photo graphic reproduction, and it substitutes for that original images of differ ent dimensions and colors that are readily accessible to all. And by the way, photography for its part is only a modem substitute for engraving, which previously had been the only approximate “adaptation” available to connoisseurs.1 One must not forget that the “adaptation” and “summary” of original works of art have become so customary and so frequent that it would be next to impossible to question their existence today. For the sake of argument, I’ll take my examples from the cinema.
