Filming/Telling of Death: Sándor Kardos’ “Gravedigger” as a “Literary-Related” Film
Abstract
The starting point of this essay is the issue of film adaptations of poetry and poetic prose. They do not happen in the cinema too often, and when they do, it is in the form of animation or experimental work. In this sense, Sandor Kardos’ Gravedigger (A sirasó) - as a full-length feature film - is a unique work. Koschany, in his interpretation, focuses mainly on the director’s storytelling as a film equivalent of Rainer Maria Rilke’s story. Thanks to the slit camera and further deformation of the image, with the emphasis on the auditory layer (Rilke’s text, with directorial amplifications, was here almost entirely read by the actors), and thanks to numerous similarities of film or film tape to the book, Kardos obtained an “archaic” and “literary-related” effect, while at the same time creating a thoroughly modern work. In this manner the eternal theme of love and death, so important for Rilke, has been told again, but in a form that surpasses the limits of what is usually considered to be a film.
Keywords:
Sándor Kardos, adaptation, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hungarian cinemaReferences
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Authors
Rafał Koschanykwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan Poland
Polonista i filmoznawca, doktor nauk humanistycznych w zakresie komunikacji społecznej i nauk o poznaniu, adiunkt w Zakładzie Semiotyki Kultury Instytutu Kulturoznawstwa Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza. Autor książki Przypadek. Kategoria artystyczna i egzystencjalna w literaturze i filmie (2006) oraz artykułów publikowanych w pracach zbiorowych i czasopismach naukowych (m.in. „Kwartalnik Filmowy”, „Przegląd Kulturoznawczy”, „Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne”, „Estetyka i Krytyka”), współredaktor kilku prac zbiorowych (m.in. Musical. Poszerzanie pola gatunku /2013/). Jego zainteresowania badawcze dotyczą teorii interpretacji oraz pogranicza literaturoznawstwa i filmoznawstwa.
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