Films of this era are criticized for lacking substance and making up for this deficit with explosions and special effects. Books command a bit more respect from the general public. Many believe that devising a script is a juvenile form of writing, a shrub to the oak of a novel. Upon reading both the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and viewing the film produced by Roland Joffe, one can immediately notice the intense work put into both. , as well as the many differences and similarities between them.
It takes more thought to progress past these common and uncommon factors, to think of why the filmmaker may have used a certain lighting, or how colors were used to symbolize themes from the book. Analysis answers the questions: How did the two differ? How were they the same? Why did the filmmaker make these decisions? The film is freely adapted from the novel. The word free describing the adaptation is well used- there are major differences in terms of time frame, characters, visual imagery and symbolism, plot, narration, and tone.
Nearly an hour of information the reader received only as background was on tape. The film began when Hester arrived in the New World, not at the dreary prison door she passed through on her way to the scaffold in the novel. Many characters were added to the film, several of whom were central to the plot. Mituba, Hesters mute slave girl, Brewster, the lewd, undisciplined rule-breaker, Goody Gotwick, the mouthpiece of the communitys pious women, and Minister Cheever, the powerful church leader who attempted to serve as arbiter of the communitys morals did not exist in the novel.
Mistress Hibbins relationship to Governor Bellingham was of a citizen to ruler nature. In the book, their relationship prevented her persecution, whereas in the movie, no family ties protected mistress Hibbins from the cruel witch trials characteristic of the 1600s. Her character progressed from minor in the book to a supporting role in the movie. She served as the only character besides Hester who behaved according to her personal beliefs, and not the conformities of the Puritans. Dimmesdales character was stronger in the film; less tormented.
He did not appear to have heart trouble, (although it was mentioned when the film commenced that he died before Pearl reached her teens) and took a dynamic role in all occasions except for one involving Mistress Hibbins, when he became angry that Hester hid her from the magistrates. He longed for Hester to name him as her co-sinner, and genuinely despised hiding behind a hypocritical silence. When Hester refused to name her lover in the book, Dimmesdale had this reaction: She will not speak! rmured Dimmesdale, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. Wondrous strength and generosity of a womans heart! She will not speak! He was soothed upon discovering Hesters strength. He sighed and sat back, the pressure off him, while he marveled at her courage. In the exact scene in the film, the viewer could see only Dimmesdales pleading face and a blurred mass of spectators while he begged Hester to reveal him, to liberate him of his sin.
Dimmesdale also displayed his strength through tirelessly visiting Hesters prison cell every day, disregarding the rules that she could receive no visitors, and each day he was wrestled from the prison door by several beadles. In writing, Dimmesdale was not inclined to do anything with the potential of arousing suspicion. Chillingsworth had little influence on Dimmesdale in the film. Hester provided her lover with a wealth of information about her ex- husband; within seconds of their meeting, Dimmesdale was fully aware of the presence of the black man.
Chillingsworths evil influence played more of a public role, not restricted to a gnawing one weak man to wretchedness. Rather than making vague, fleeting comments to Dimmesdale on their sprawling walks, he agitated the community into hatred for the Indians. Pearls film characterization differed largely from her sprite-like, unencumbered by rule attitude she adopted in the book. She appeared as a sweet, tractable child. Pearl showed a lack curiosity of her mother letter; it was she who discarded it beneath the horse carriage as Hester, Dimmesdale, and herself left at the conclusion of the film for their new life in the Carolinas.
In Hawthornes novel, Pearl held the letter as almost an organ of her mothers. She drew it, pondered it, and refused to talk to her mother the few times she removed it from her breast, stubbornly planting herself across the stream from Dimmesdale and Hester, an animal of the untamed forest. Because of the visual nature all films, more emphasis was placed on the outward lives of the characters; one cannot hear their emotionally tortured thoughts. Hester, for example, seems to be living a reasonably happy life with Pearl and Mituba.
She is viewed as taking the circumstances well because of her tough public face. The viewer, however, sees what the townspeople do- only her callused personality. Hours of film of her thoughts and feelings would be needed to effectively show the viewer what the reader sees. There are a number of plot differences between the film and the novel, some of which stemmed from the introduction of new characters. Chillingsworth hung himself after mistakenly scalping Brewster instead of Dimmesdale; in the book he died a year after Dimmesdale passed away on the scaffold.
Hesters affair was brought to light when she gave birth to Pearl, but in the film she admitted it herself when Goody Gotwick told the magistrates she believed Hester was suffering from morning sickness. Several other minute details differed in the film, such as the infamous A. The film version of the letter was fairly simple- a solid, capital, bright red A with a black background, certainly not a masterpiece of needlework. The A of the novel was finely worked in gold thread on a flaming, exuberant background; it was a prominent stigma of passion and sin.
The prison door Hawthorne acquainted the reader with was weather-stained and gloomy, not newly built of intertwined iron. The fates of the characters were much different as well. Hester and Dimmesdale escaped to a fulfilling life in the Carolinas at the end of the film. Chillingsworth hung himself, and no mention is made of Hester giving back to the community as in the book. She seemed only to relate well with Mistress Hibbins and some of the other women who are not part of the strict Puritan community.
Pearl is also used as the narrator in the film. The narrator of the novel seems to express more personal opinions than Pearl does and clearly holds some Puritanical ideas himself. When Hester and Dimmesdale perished, he explained that their headstones were not together and implied that they should not be, for example. There was more of a sense of having to achieve atonement for sin in the novel; hence Pearls depiction as being almost a devil-child and the more religious discussion of the letter A.
Some of the similarities noted in both the novel and the film are the concepts of original sin, lust, the symbolic use of the color red, Chillingworths evil nature, the theme of the uncivilized and witchcraft, and the Puritanical obsession with rules and order. Hawthorne and Joffe both placed an emphasis on the concept of original sin. Hester, upon first seeing her new home in the film, referred to it as her Eden. When she was shown in the forest, the symbol of passionate and uncivilized life, she wore her hair down, adorned with vines and flowers, looking very much like artists renderings of Eve.
The books early symbol of the rosebush gave the reader some idea of how the narrator felt about sin. While the rose was beautiful, it was protected by thorns and bloomed directly outside the prison door; its positive and negative traits inseparable. In other words, while love and passion are beautiful, they cannot be separated from the conscience and concept of sin. The city in the film was one saturated with evil; it was governed strictly by rules alone. It was no more divine in its righteous beliefs than Hester and Dimmesdale.
While the viewer had a sense that the narrator (and thus the filmmaker) felt that what happened between Hester and Dimmesdale was consecrated by God, the theme of punishment for sin persists. Pearl, at the films conclusion, stated that her fathers death at a young age and her mothers consequent loneliness were probably a punishment for their behavior. Lust, an important theme of the novel, is central to the films development also. In his sermon, Dimmesdale spoke of the power of divine love, and how it must exist between Indians and free men and slaves.
He also preached of lust, but not merely in the physical sense. With great force, he exhorted his parishioners to avoid lusting after what is not theirs, but interestingly used money and other trappings of power as his example. The Scarlet Letters filmmaker, Roland Joffe, mastered the coloring of his film just as Hawthorne did. An interesting visual cue he used was a slight, brilliant red bird. The bird first glided across the screen when Hester was planting her garden.
Joffe silenced all background noise and music while the bird, in nearly slow motion, flapped out of the forest. The effect was hazy and surreal; all focus was on the radiant animal. Time resumed its interminable course once again, and the bird flew into the dark depths of the forest. Hester was as stunned as the Joffe intended the viewer to be, and trailed the bird through the labyrinth of underbrush and thick vegetation to a forest paradise, where she first laid eyes on Dimmesdale swimming nude in pristine water.
The red bird, obviously the temptation leading her to her co-sinner, was strongly tied to the themes of life (planting), to the unruly nature of the forest, and to Dimmesdale. The bird was used as an unmistakable symbol again when Hester and Dimmesdale were having their affair in the barn. During this scene, Joffe cut back and forth from the couple to Mituba bathing sensually with the red bird by her side. As Hawthorne used the color red to show Pearls passion and life, Joffe utilized the bird as an equally strong symbol. Thus, Joffe created a different symbol to make a similar point.
Joffe used a variation of scarlet in defining Chillingsworths character, rather than ebony overtones in the book, but once again to prove the same point of Chillingsworths evil. When he reunited with Hester, he wore a faded jacket of an unattractive, sickly red. A pitcher of reddish liquid was plainly visible on a table behind Chillingsworth when he met Dimmesdale. Brewsters bleeding scalp was the same lifeless red. The use of the color red for Pearls blanket and clothing as a symbol of life, love and passion is used in the film and novel as well.
In both works, she consistently dressed in a bright crimson dress or clutched a red blanket in stark contrast to the grays and blacks of the other characters in both the film and the novel. Chillingworth is as the epitome of evil in both the novel and the film. He is referred to as the Black Bird of Satan an interesting juxtaposition to the symbolism of the red bird that Joffe uses. The symbolism of the forest is used similarly to the novel. Hesters home is on the border of the forest and the sea- inside the forest in the novel- displaying her wishes to be as close to nature as possible.
Her being near nature takes her away from the town, illustrating her alienation. Her link to the wild and witchcraft is strengthened in the movie, but was also evident in the book. The theme of the Puritan founding fathers evil is vigorously stressed. As in the novel, the characters arent portrayed as inherently evil, merely bound by laws at the expense of human suffering. At the start of the film, the founding fathers were shocked when Hester showed a will to live in her own way, and told her sternly that rules and order equal survival.