Keywords

Henry James, literary adaptation, film and television

Abstract

Henry James's works do not particularly lend themselves to adaptation. They tend to be light on plot and action, heavy on things like characterization and internal monologue, and it's difficult to show the internal struggles of a character like Isabel Archer or Merton Densher on the screen. It might surprise many of us, then, to learn that there have been more than two-dozen film and television adaptations of James's texts, many of them produced in the last twenty years.

Original Publication Citation

“Getting the Big Picture: Henry James on Film.” Review of Adapting Henry James to the Screen: Gender, Fiction, and Film, Literature Film Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 3, 2008, pp. 241-243.