Adapting Fiction to Film: Marleen Gorris’s Film Production of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway Revisited

Adaptation is a kind of violation of the unity of the text. Whatever the film producer is doing, his quest is no more than a deconstruction and a reconstruction of the text. This reconstruction is, almost, a new creation of a new type of artistic production. Though the author manifests himself, here and there through the screen, he is devoiced and his identity is fragmented through the making of the scenes and images of the film. Any text has a variety of interpretations. Its plurality is potential with endless possible significations: its signifier has many signifieds. Negotiations, manipulations and focalization of the camera eye decide upon the product orientation of filmconstruction. Reproducing literature into film is, then, very challenging. The novel fictionalizes life, whereas the film literalizes it. The case of Marleen Gorris's film of Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway is very illustrative.