Imagistic interweaving in Os Maias, from the literary to the cinematographic: on the horizon of transcreation
Literature and cinema; Adaptation theory; Image; Eça de Queirós; John Botelho.
Literature and cinema are two arts that are increasingly obtaining space in discussions among literary and film critics, as they often relate to each other. This relationship can be observed in film productions such as Os Maias: cenas da vida romântica (2014), directed by João Botelho. This film, along with the literary work entitled Os Maias (2017) by Eça de Queirós, originally published in 1888, constitute the focus of this thesis. The main objective is to analyze the cinematographic resources used by director and screenwriter João Botelho in the mentioned film, with emphasis on the image, in order to demonstrate the reconstruction of the visual messages identified in Queirós’ text and verify the aspect of "capture" of photography in João Botelho's screenplay, as a consequence of the rupture in the linearity of the film narrative. From this investigation, we also explain how the film dialogues with the work and with other intertextual references present in it, such as those written by Victor Hugo, Spencer and Baudelaire. To do this, we conducted readings of texts belonging to theorists Robert Stam (2008), Linda Hutcheon (2013), Thomas Leitch (2004) and James Dudley Andrew (2002) which provide the basis for this work. Therefore, from this analysis, it is possible to identify the imagetic relations between João Botelho's film and Eça de Queirós' literary work, revealing the functioning of Portuguese society at that time and the reconstruction of the characteristic psychological elements of the characters.