Читать книгу From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film - Группа авторов - Страница 15

As mentioned in the introduction, and according to Cartmell and Whelehan (2007: 34), adaptations of literary works for television, unlike their cinematic counterparts, have often been excluded from the realm of adaptation studies, despite their popularity from the 1970s onwards, and have been – more often than not – subject to pejorative judgments from scholars and critics, one of the most common being that they reflect television’s tendency towards “conservative programming in contrast with the more innovative proposals of cinema” (Cardwell, 2007: 183). Spyri’s Heidi was one of the many works of literature which was turned into an animated television series1 in the 1970s and early 1980s, as part of a surge of adaptations of classical works of literature aimed for the small screen which made their way into most Western households.

The first Heidi animated TV series partly fits into the definition of transposition as established by Wagner “in which a novel is directly given on the screen, with the minimum of apparent interference” and in which the film is frequently “envisaged as a book illustration” (Wagner, 1975: 222). Transpositions re-tell in a different platform or genre the content of the story, but nonetheless preserve characterization of figures and the chronotope of the original text (cf. McCallum, 2018: 38). In this regard, the first twenty-five episodes of Takahata’s version closely follow both the plot and even parts of the dialogues of Spyri’s original and also retain the voice of a female narrator, who, as if she were Johanna Spyri herself, sides with the character of Heidi. Nonetheless, from the appearance of Clara’s grandmother in chapter 27, the animated version deviates remarkably from its hypotext: as mentioned before, the religious message conveyed by Clara’s grandmother is silenced and this female character is more intensely profiled in order to forge an educational counterpart to Rottenmeier and, most importantly for my research, the figure of Rottenmeier herself is granted more of a central role than in the novel, as will be shown in the analysis.

The more recent 3D version Heidi rather conforms to the idea of reversion, in which a film may seek to interrogate the values portrayed in the source text, and potentially update it or its adaptations (cf. McCallum, 2018: 20). In this regard, the dialogical (Bakhtin) dimension of the second animated series is thus far more evident. Heidi 3D, as noted above, enables a deeper exploration of the characters. The plot gains in importance, while several storylines aim to strengthen the bonds between the characters.

Among the child figures, for instance, Peter and Heidi are also confronted with a group of children in the village, in order to underline the goodness of those living higher up in the mountains – again strengthening the dichotomy between society and nature. Indeed, even if these children are depicted as selfish and as bullies, Peter and Heidi do not hesitate to offer help whenever they need it. With regard to Heidi’s grandfather, while the anime is very vague about his past, the 3D version – just like the original novel – more clearly addresses the presence of a “past”, from which he would like to escape: he feels guilty for the death of his only son, Heidi’s father, who died in an accident when they were working together. The 3D series also creates a completely new subplot with the love story between Aunt Dete – who in this version works as a maid and cook at the Sesemann’s house – and Sebastian, the butler, who not only keeps the vis comica he has in the novel and in the first animated version, but is also granted a more endearing character. All female figures are explored in more detail in the most recent series. The character of Aunt Dete, for example, is developed in a completely different way than in the anime or the novel, in which she appears to be a negative character, rough and selfish, who does not really care about Heidi’s needs but rather about her own financial survival, and is willing to let her fall victim to whatever destiny awaits her: “(W)enn Ihr’s nicht haben könnt, so macht mit ihm, was Ihr wollt, dann habt Ihr’s zu verantworten, wenn’s verdirbt, und Ihr werdet wohl nicht nötig haben, noch etwas aufzuladen” (Spyri, 1978: 11)2. Furthermore, both in the novel and the first animated version, she finds an excuse not to have to travel back to Switzerland with Heidi, when the child falls ill and the doctor advises her to return to the mountains (Spyri, 1978: 102). In contrast, her 3D version regrets having left her in the mountains, cares about the feelings of the child and always tries to act in her best interest. Although she still retains some of the original’s flaws, she is more far more caring and has lost the roughness in manners and behavior which define her anime predecessor. And, in the final episode, she is able to apologize to Heidi’s grandfather for having taken Heidi away from him (Nakajima, Takahata, 1974: episode 39). As regards Frau Sesemann, Clara’s grandmother, she would deserve a chapter of her own, since her transformation from the page to the screen is very revealing and ideologically loaded: in Spyri’s novels, she is, as has been noted before, the person responsible for “converting” Heidi by teaching her how to pray. In both animated versions, the religious content is silenced3, but Frau Sesemann is still a mentor for Heidi, since she not only teaches her how to read but also inspires in the child a love of reading and learning and thus becomes Rottenmeier’s pedagogical counterpart.