Horatio Hornblower
Jan. 17th, 2005 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWe've been watching A&E's Hornblower miniseries (starring the delectable Ioan Gruffudd), which has been making me think about storytelling.
I like C. S. Forester's novels (although I can't stand to reread the one set in France, in which both protagonist and author make unmitigated asses of themselves), and I'm sure the purists have been up in arms about the adaptations, because that's what purists do, and the adaptations are certainly very, um, free, including the invention from whole cloth of a set of secondary characters among the crew. Forester is essentially uninterested in anyone not an officer.
But I think the difference is something to do with storytelling. What kind of stories you tell, and what kind of stories your medium will let you tell. Really, the main characters of Forester's books are the ships as much as Hornblower himself--and Hornblower gains his greatest credibility and charm when he is on a ship or otherwise dealing with naval matters. The books are lovingly detailed depictions of a captain's life, down to the burnt-bread coffee and tapping your hardtack on the table to encourage the weevils to vacate the premises. And they're exciting, but it's generally a very intellectual excitement: what is Hornblower's plan and will it work?
The television adaptations, while retaining a certain amount of this (and I've only seen The Duel, The Fire Ships, The Duchess and the Devil, and The Frogs and the Lobsters, so my generalization may not hold true throughout), are much more interested in the characters and in questions of social hierarchy that Forester takes for granted.
Partly, this is a matter of cultural change. Forester started writing Hornblower novels in the '30s and his last completed Hornblower novel was published in 1962. Partly, as I said, it's a matter of medium. Novels can do exposition and description. Movies can't. And there's a difference between a description and a visual. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but if you get the picture, you don't get the thousand words. This is particularly noticeable in Hornblower because there is a vast yawning gulf between Forester's careful description of the rigging of a sailing ship and the beautiful shots of a ship sailing that the movies can provide. Movies are hell on details.
And so the storytelling has to move into other arenas.
I like C. S. Forester's novels (although I can't stand to reread the one set in France, in which both protagonist and author make unmitigated asses of themselves), and I'm sure the purists have been up in arms about the adaptations, because that's what purists do, and the adaptations are certainly very, um, free, including the invention from whole cloth of a set of secondary characters among the crew. Forester is essentially uninterested in anyone not an officer.
But I think the difference is something to do with storytelling. What kind of stories you tell, and what kind of stories your medium will let you tell. Really, the main characters of Forester's books are the ships as much as Hornblower himself--and Hornblower gains his greatest credibility and charm when he is on a ship or otherwise dealing with naval matters. The books are lovingly detailed depictions of a captain's life, down to the burnt-bread coffee and tapping your hardtack on the table to encourage the weevils to vacate the premises. And they're exciting, but it's generally a very intellectual excitement: what is Hornblower's plan and will it work?
The television adaptations, while retaining a certain amount of this (and I've only seen The Duel, The Fire Ships, The Duchess and the Devil, and The Frogs and the Lobsters, so my generalization may not hold true throughout), are much more interested in the characters and in questions of social hierarchy that Forester takes for granted.
Partly, this is a matter of cultural change. Forester started writing Hornblower novels in the '30s and his last completed Hornblower novel was published in 1962. Partly, as I said, it's a matter of medium. Novels can do exposition and description. Movies can't. And there's a difference between a description and a visual. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but if you get the picture, you don't get the thousand words. This is particularly noticeable in Hornblower because there is a vast yawning gulf between Forester's careful description of the rigging of a sailing ship and the beautiful shots of a ship sailing that the movies can provide. Movies are hell on details.
And so the storytelling has to move into other arenas.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-18 01:47 pm (UTC)I still need to see the newest one, with Maria (Julia Sawalha!).
Movies are hell on details.
Oh, definitely. Though, to take the other tack (heh), Jim Macdonald made an interesting comment on the MASTER AND COMMANDER film--he said they got the sound of wind in the rigging perfectly. That's not something one can get from a book.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-18 06:25 pm (UTC)