From the 19th-Century Novel to the Portuguese Contemporary Film Adaptation

Abstract

The literary adaptations of canonical novels for film provide a unique repository of both identity contents and socio-cultural observations which can be revisited through the filmic representations. These recreations symbolize not only a privileged visual interpretation of a nation, but they also allow us to examine how a given society reflects itself through the fiction. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to reflect upon the Portuguese updated filmic adaptation of The Crime of Father Amaro (1880) by the canonical author Eça de Queiroz. On one hand, the author intends to rethink about the Portuguese identity portrayed by the film and, at the same time, the author manages to observe how the Portuguese society is revealed. On the other hand, the paper aims to analyze the particular process of the adaptation of The Crime of Father Amaro following a qualitative methodology.