The Relationship Between Dickens' Novels and the Language and Conventions of the Cinema

Abstract

<p>Dickens' imagination is strongly visual and the visual art it most closely resembles is film. We find, in his work, narrative techniques and methods of characterization which actually anticipate the development of film aesthetics. Sergei Eisenstein, the founder of the principles of film montage, WaS the first to draw attention to this cinematic imagination which Dickens possessed, in his essay "Dickens, Griffith and the film Today" in film form. It is the function of the first chapter of this thesis to document, more fully than Eisenstein, these cinematic techniques.</p> <p>D.W. Griffith, who has been called the creator of film language, claimed that he was influenced by his reading of Dickens' novels. His study, he said, allowed him to develop the technique of parallel cut-back which is the basis of montage. This claim is examined by a comparison of Dickens' novels and Griffith's films. In the final chapter I have compared Dickens' work to that of some contemporary film-makers whose concepts of realism seem to resemble Dickens' own. It is hoped that such a comparison will help to defend the novelist against critics who have attacked his frequent refusal to conform to another aesthetic convention--psychological realism.</p>