ABSTRACT
Cinematic adaptations, more often than not, get a bad press. At best they are viewed as faithful copies of a textual original, at worst, inferior copies, betrayals of that textual original. Emile Zola explores the problematic personal origins of specific characters. In L'Œuvre, painted copy replaces the original model from which it was created as Christine's portrait takes her space in reality, a space which it always already occupied. Through certain of his texts, Zola probes notions of literary origin. La Curée explores its own status as a dubious adaptation of Racine's Phèdre. As Zola explored authorship as a palimpsest in La Curée, so Roger Vadim does likewise, teasingly inserting a variety of competing intertexts whose receding origins he encourages his viewer to trace. He adapts both Zola's novel and a number of the texts behind it. In contrast, Fritz Lang, in Human Desire, adapts both Zola's novel and the images of certain of the adaptations made from it.
