Cinematographic Reception of Tennessee Williams' Play "Orpheus Descending"

Student: Polina Kristal

Educational Programme: Philology (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2024

This work is devoted to the analysis of the cinematic reception of the play by Tennessee Williams «Orpheus Descending», which was filmed twice: in 1960 by American director Sidney Lumet («The Fugitive Kind») and in 1990 by Englishman Peter Hall («Orpheus Descending»). The main purpose of the work is to trace how the text of the play is translated into the space of another medium, while maintaining its motivational and thematic structure. As part of the study of the above adaptations, such aspects of the film language as lighting, color palette, narrative structure, editing and frame composition are considered. The theory of adaptation based on the monograph by Linda Hutcheon and the semiotics of cinema by Yuri Lotman will be used to interpret the films.

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