SOURCE: Orr, John. “Introduction: Proust, the Movie.” In Cinema and Fiction: New Modes of Adapting, 1950-1990, edited by John Orr and Colin Nicholson, pp. 1-9. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Orr compares literature and film, characterizing the relationship between the two mediums as somewhat symbiotic and usually mutually beneficial.

In film history from 1930 onwards cinema and fiction have always closely intertwined, not only in the United States but throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Hollywood produced a set of classic adaptations in its classic period—Anna Karenin, Madame Bovary, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and in Europe Josef von Sternberg adapted Heinrich Mann, Jean Renoir adapted Zola and David Lean adapted Dickens. Hollywood now adapts Stephen King, Mario Puzo and Thomas Harris for global audiences, and trans-national co-productions of the eighties have brought Proust, García Marquez, Fowles, Kundera and other major novelists to...