ABSTRACT
It is essential to be aware from the start of the effect of different styles on the same material. There are many examples from the history of cinema of different directors tackling the same or similar stories. A classic example is how Renoir (in 1945) and Buñuel (in 1964) treated Le Journal d’une Femme de Chambre. Had the two films been given different titles, it would be some time before one became aware that they both had their origin in the same story by Octave Mirabeau. The translation of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) into The Outrage (1964) by Martin Ritt, and his Seven Samurai (1954) into The Magnificent Seven (1961) by John Sturges, though inspired by the originals, have little in common with Kurosawa’s style. The various adaptations of Raymond Chandler’s detective thrillers from Edward Dymytryk’s Farewell My Lovely to Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye show the breadth of interpretation available to directors ostensibly working in the same convention.
