adaptation, stage, film, and TV
adaptation, stage, film, and TV.It was the development of the cinema that made adaptation a commonplace. The early pioneers of film simply trained their cameras on the stage, producing drastically condensed versions or highlights of classic plays. The first film stars were the leading theatrical performers of the day. Shakespeare was a favourite. In 1899 Beerbohm Tree made a short film of King John , and the following year Sarah Bernhardt starred in a three-minute Hamlet .
Most of the acknowledged landmarks in the early cinema had literary origins. Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery ( 1903 ) was based on a stage melodrama that had been performed in New York in 1896 . D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation ( 1915 ) was adapted from The Clansman ( 1905 ), a stage play (originally a novel) by Thomas Dixon , in which Griffith had appeared as an actor in 1906 . Griffith was...
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