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Friday, November 9, 2012

Depression-era Los Angeles

Despite T sustaine being quite faithful to the dialogue from Fante's novel, he undermines the original by adding elements of his own that make the movie more about a romance than a struggling writer's tormented odyssey through pre-war Los Angeles. Instead of the at loggerheads and masochistic kindred in the novel, the romance between Camille and Arturo in the film is more conventional. As Hoberman (1) says of this modification by Towne, "In a concession to popular taste, Towne supplies a romantic idyll that b arely exists in the novel, complete with puppy and Camilla coughing up blood." While there are scenes in the film that turn up the masochistic nature of the relationship between Camilla and Arturo, they often come out gratuitous, not a result of their extreme differences, as it is in the novel. One instance is when she gives him a free beer and he cast away it in a spittoon, only to have her tear up his story and put it in the same place.

One of the of import themes of the novel by Fante claverms to be that individuals often seem to vote out the thing they love the most. However, this is undermined as a theme in the film due to Towne's adaptation. In the novel, we see that the nature of the relationship between Camilla and Arturo is brutal at times. Arturo often looks for ways to enter Camilla in the novel. He criticizes her purposefully to gain power everywhere


Ironically, the one aspect where Towne is extremely faithful in adapting Fante's novel is in his respect for Fante's dialogue. However, in the novel this sets a languid pace that is mainly taradiddle and works because of the breadth and scope of the form of a novel. In the film, however, this languid pace and narrative approach seem to infringe with the more visual nature of the medium. Passages in the novel are vivid and alive whereas narrative in the film seems to bog down it down. One passage from the novel expresses this vivid and entertaining imagery. We see this when Arturo criticizes Anglo society, "I see them...limping out of ugly little churches, their faces slow from proximity with their strange gods...
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I have vomited at their newspapers, read their literature, observed their customs...they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood" (Fante 47). In the film much(prenominal) narrative bogs down the action and fails to reveal depth about character. As Crust (1) says of Towne's faithfulness to the narrative, "it is a reverent interference of the novel...that perhaps clings too closely to the original while neglecting the intricacies of its main character." What works to reveal in the novel serves to conceal in the film version of the work.

Hoberman, John. "Smothering Heights." Village Voice 28 Feb. 2006: 1-2.

her. He notices her huaraches are horribly worn and stares at them in order to make her self-conscious. As Fante (36) writes, "Once I saw her glance down quickly and examine her feet so that in a few minutes she no interminable laughed; instead, there was a grimness in her face, and finally she was plain at me with bitter hatred." In the film, Towne tries to reveal this aspect of the relationship. In one of the best scenes in a hotel room, Camilla becomes frustrated with the complete(a) and writer-blocked Arturo, telling him "You can't write or fuck" (Towne 2006). Yet the focus is on the
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