This article argues that moralistic language such as “fidelity” is limiting when describing a film adapted from a novel. Many criticisms are based in concerns about whether an adaptation fully embodied the critic’s ideal of the “fundamental narrative, thematic, and aesthetic features of its literary source,”(54). Stam claims that a more effective criticism will be based in “contextual and intertextual history,”(75) less concerned with vague ideas of “fidelity” and more concerned with “readings, critiques, interpretations, and rewritings of prior material,”(76). He believes that absolute fidelity is impossible due to the difference in mediums between novel and film, the lack of a single absolutely correct reading of a novel, and the intertextuality of all novels and films.

A novel is composed of written words, a film is composed of pictures and sounds. Certain changes are inevitable. What was described only in general terms in the novel must now have a specific appearance in the film. There are also many levels available to filmmakers not available to writers, such as music accompanying the action, and the audience’s knowledge of an actor’s previous roles or private life. Filmmakers use these resources, often enhancing the experience of the story but necessarily changing it by that very enhancement.

There is also the question of what the filmmakers are being faithful to. Is it the novel’s plot in every detail or the spirit of the original? It usually isn’t the plot details because movies must condense a thirty hour read into a two hour film. Because of this, characters and plotlines may be condensed or changed. Point of view may be altered to allow for a more “cinematic” experience. These may also be changed to make unpleasant or dated aspects of the film more palatable to mainstream audiences. Finding the spirit of the novel is also problematic. It is fallacy to believe in a single core essence of a text which can be taken and translated to film, when in fact any piece of literature has dozens of readings that will produce different notions of its essence. A story can be read through the lens of feminism, homoeroticism, or hierarchical values, all of which would produce radically different films still based on an identical text. This leaves very little solid work for a filmmaker to be truly “faithful” to in adapting a book to screen.

What should instead be studied is the intertextuality of novels. The experience of a novel or its film adaptation is necessarily affected by the other works referenced within the text (allusion or quotation), the packaging it comes in (cover art, favorable reviews quoted on it, dedications, published remarks from the author about it, etc), the classification derived from its title, and the variety of other texts it is based on or are based on it (or its root theme, storyline, central character, etc). So a film adaptation isn’t really just a single linear translation of a single original novel, but is part of a larger cycle of interconnected works that is constantly growing.