Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”

The film uses the hypotext, but only just enough to be able to call the movie “Rear Window”.  In the book Jeff never seemed the least bit interested in sex, or women, except the one that ended up being murdered.  The film took a different approach and gave him an attractive girlfriend that wanted to be with Jeff so bad that she would do anything he asked, including breaking into the neighbors house, also she left the note that told the neighbor that the jig was up, essentially.  Also in the film, Jeff has a female nurse where as in the book he has a male nurse. In the book we didn’t find out til the very end that Jeff had a broken leg, which he he got taken off; whereas in the movie it was apparent from the beginning of the movie that he had a broken leg, but in the end of the film not only does not get his cast off, he ends up having a cast on both legs.

 

George Steven’s “Gunga Din”

The film contained lots of intertechuality, although it didn’t seem like their was a whole lot of hypotechuality between the movie and the poem.  The movie decided to add in humor which was not in the poem.  However, in the beginning of the movie it seemed as though Gunga Din wasn’t well liked.  In the poem he seemed to be at least somewhat respected. In the movie Gunga Din made a grand gesture to save the British Army.  The poem doesn’t seem to mention such a gesture, unless I just didn’t understand the wording of it.  In the movie Gunga Din tries so very hard to be liked, and it finally happens…after he’s dead.  In the poem Gunga Din seems to be much more liked almost from the very start.  When he dies in the movie, he seems to know that he has done something of great importance which might have also lead him to believe that he would indeed be remembered forever. I’ll leave that for the conspiracy theorists though.

 

Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World”

I’m going to start off this blog by saying that this movie reminded me of the HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, in that the movie was so awkward.  The character of Seymour in the movie was an essential character, whereas in the comic strip, Seymour was only the object of the girls’ prank.  The character of Rebecca had about as much attention on her in the comic, but in the movie the attention was placed much more on the character of Enid. All the scenes about Enid trying to find Seymour a date and eventually falling in love with him.  This idea brings to light the intertextuality that love does not know age.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive”

Their were a lot of differences between the film and the book.  The film omitted all of Driver’s back story about his parents, foster parents.  Not to mention the film added a part where Ryan Gosling says, “I give you  minutes, no more”.  Driver never said that in the book.  In the movie, the ultimate goal was to drive in Nascar, no such mention of that in the book.  The agent was completely left out of the movie but he was mentioned several times in the book.