On The Film Adaptation Of The Dream Of Red Mansions

There exists an everlasting tie between film and literary works, novels in particular, and the film adaptation of literary works began almost at the same time when film itself was born. Immortal literary works over the past thousands of years provide the young filming industry with inexhaustible sources. The mature literary traditions in China, with its long history of five thousand years, give the film adaptation a strong backing power. Because of its audio-visual potentials, the Dream of Red Mansions, since its birth, has been the inexhaustible source of film making, of which the audio-visual language is the modeling tool, and has been adapted many times in the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong.The Dream of Red Mansion has many fantastic descriptions, but what makes it more spectacular are the parallel threads, sophisticated plots, the magnificent framework and rich contents with the numerous characters. Apart from reading the novel, people also hope to obtain a full view of this great work through films. Therefore, after a chronological review of the film adaptation of the Dream of Red Mansion, the author conducts a compressive analysis and interpretation of the two film adapted version of this novel, namely the TV serial version produced by CCTV in 1987, and the 1989 film version produced by Beijing Film Studios.This thesis is divided into three parts, namely, introduction, body, and conclusion.Introduction: Film takes audio-visual language as its modeling language, which reaches a wider audience than the orthographic language. A timely summary of the experiences and lessons in the film adaptation of the Dream of Red Mansion, therefore, is very significant for the arrival of higher quality adaptations and for the wider spread of the novel.The body comprises three chapters. Chapter One traces the history of the relation between film and novels, analyzes the adaptation potentials of the Dream of Red Mansion. The various adaptations of this novel are reviewed; classifications are made, in hope of proving that the theories of the Dream of Red Mansions adaptation can be shared. In Chapter Two, the classical adaptation version, the 1987 TV version directed by Wang Fulin is analyzed in detail, from its breakthroughs over the previous adaptations, say the choice of actors, to its sophisticated realization of the various factors in the novel (the time-space realization, the adjustment of plots, the visualization of describing and summarizing words, the use of montage techniques, the alternation of rhythms, the symbolizing power of various modeling factors and devices). In Chapter Three, the 1989 film version, produced by BFS and directed by Xie Tieli is analyzed. This version, although with its remarkable achievements, has some limitations quite common in any explorations. What's more, it arrived immediately after the 1987 TV version which had great appeal to the audience. Coupled by the film's unsuitability to have a full adaptation of a novel with such rich contents and complex plots, this version didn't have any major impacts on the public, with only moderate audience response.Conclusion: The different appeals of the masterpieces can be revealed with different mediums. The audio-visual language has greater superiority over the orthographic language in linking the world. Successful film adaptations are able to bring new vigor and vitality to the development of literature. The Dream of Red Mansions, and Chinese literature at that will get a wider spread with the help of films.