Theatricality and interculturality in the cinematographic treatment of Molière’s comedy

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Université du Caire

Abstract

The French classical repertoire was, until the 1960s of the 20th century, an important vector of Egyptian dramatic and cinematographic adaptations for both historical and cultural reasons. Establishing from the credits a hypertextual relationship with French comedy, the screenwriter and director of the Egyptian film entitled Qissa Mamnou’a (Forbidden Story) identify it as a transposition of Molière’s L’Ecole des femmes. Consequently, this film deserves to be the object of a reading adopting a transcultural and comparative approach to reflect on questions such as the process of reappropriation which leads to discovering the dynamics generated between the work and the cultural context of its reception.
The analysis of the film sequences of this artwork makes it possible to identify some clues of theatricality reflecting a preference for the use of scenographic language in the production of the movie. The observation of these extracts illustrates the liberation of the film from its attachment to the principle of fidelity to the original work, thus offering the possibility of presenting a new interpretation of the chronotopic framework in which the traditional trio of characters evolve. The selected scenes underline the gap between the original intention of the French comedy and the specific means of the target culture: the Egyptian film modifies the French source to extract only a few elements used in the service of stereotypes concerning women, love and marriage in Egyptian society at the time.
 
 
 

Keywords

Main Subjects

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics