Subversive Adaptations

This book deals with film adaptations of literary works created in Communist Czechoslovakia between 1954 and 1969, such as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Zeman 1958), Marketa Lazarová (Vlácil 1967), and The Joke (JireS 1969). Bubenícek treats a historically significant period around which myths and misinformation have arisen. The book is broad in scope and examines aesthetic, political, social, and cultural issues. It sets out to disprove the notion that the state-controlled film industry behind the Iron Curtain produced only aesthetically uniform works pandering to official ideology. Bubenícek's main aim is to show how the political situation of Communist Czechoslovakia moulded the film adaptations created there, but also how these same works, in turn, shaped the sociocultural conditions of the 1950s and the 1960s.

Petr Bubenícek is Assistant Professor in the Department of Czech Literature and Library Studies at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. He specializes in the history of modern Czech literature, literary interpretation, film adaptation, and intermediality. He has published several studies, in addition to editing three issues on film adaptation for the journals Ceská literatura, Iluminace, and Pandora.

1. Introduction.- 2. Adaptation as Subterfuge: Silvery Wind.- 3. Adaptation as Play: The Worlds of Jules Verne Come Alive.- 4. Adaptation as Challenge: Marketa Lazarová and Romance for Bugle.- 5. Adaptation as a Reflection of the Zeitgeist.- 6. Epilogue.