Analysis of the Adaptation from the Literary Original of The Godfather to the Film
Liu Xinzhuo *
The College of Art, Sichuan University, Jiang’an Campus, Sichuan University, Shuangliu Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 610207, China.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Since its release in 1972, the film The Godfather has become a classic on the silver screen in the hearts of people around the world, and Mario Puzo has also become famous because of it. Both the The Godfather novel and the film were once extremely popular and sought after. Besides being intoxicated by its epic portrayal of the mafia in the language of the camera and its philosophical plot, it is also worth paying attention to its literary original. By repeatedly reading and comparing the differences between the film and the novel, as well as the adaptation process by the director Coppola, the epic world of "The Godfather" is presented in two different art forms. In comparison, this article focuses on aspects such as the process of character creation, the sublimation of artistic charm and value in different art forms. Literature and film, as two different forms of expression, play different roles in social culture and bear different missions and cultural meanings. Despite their different mission orientations, they both lead to a high level of overall artistic aesthetic characteristics and beauty. In this article, visual and cultural semiotic methods are used to provide thematic analysis of The Godfather text and the film adaptation and making a comparison between them. The hypothesis of the research argues that the literary text of The Godfather is uniquely presenting visual and cultural symbolism with its film adaptation.
Keywords: Coppola, The Godfather, film, novel, semiotics, culture