From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film. Группа авторов
audiences, as it embraces the most American of film genres, namely the musical, and includes a hint of romance in the story. Indeed, this merging of reality and imagination in the depiction of characters, together with the presence of musical numbers have become typical features of animated movies, particularly those by Walt Disney.
In 2015, Heidi 3D, a Franco-Australian co-production of a total of thirty-nine episodes, marked the fortieth anniversary of the anime Heidi, the Girl of the Alps. Even if this CGI-animation remake also draws inspiration from the original novel, it mainly models itself on the Japanese animation series. The physical resemblance of the main characters in the two series is very obvious, even if the most recent adaptation offers more colorful and detailed versions of their anime predecessors. Despite the series being considerably shorter, as a hypertext, it manages both to expand the plot and to develop the characters by being far more interpretive. It even allows the viewer to empathize with one of the main protagonists, the ever-loathed Rottenmeier and depicts her as a more vulnerable and sympathetic figure. In general, all the characters are re-examined and given individual story arcs: from Peter, who finds out he can be good at school, to the grandfather, whose past is gradually revealed, as well as Clara or her grandmother. The series is thus able to develop and somewhat re-invent the original characters, allowing them to leave behind the two-dimensional figures of the first animated version and to provide new insights into their personalities and backgrounds, which were concealed or only implied in the hypotext.
3 Analysis
As mentioned in the introduction, and according to Cartmell and Whelehan (2007: 34), adaptations of literary works for television, unlike their cinematic counterparts, have often been excluded from the realm of adaptation studies, despite their popularity from the 1970s onwards, and have been – more often than not – subject to pejorative judgments from scholars and critics, one of the most common being that they reflect television’s tendency towards “conservative programming in contrast with the more innovative proposals of cinema” (Cardwell, 2007: 183). Spyri’s Heidi was one of the many works of literature which was turned into an animated television series1 in the 1970s and early 1980s, as part of a surge of adaptations of classical works of literature aimed for the small screen which made their way into most Western households.
The first Heidi animated TV series partly fits into the definition of transposition as established by Wagner “in which a novel is directly given on the screen, with the minimum of apparent interference” and in which the film is frequently “envisaged as a book illustration” (Wagner, 1975: 222). Transpositions re-tell in a different platform or genre the content of the story, but nonetheless preserve characterization of figures and the chronotope of the original text (cf. McCallum, 2018: 38). In this regard, the first twenty-five episodes of Takahata’s version closely follow both the plot and even parts of the dialogues of Spyri’s original and also retain the voice of a female narrator, who, as if she were Johanna Spyri herself, sides with the character of Heidi. Nonetheless, from the appearance of Clara’s grandmother in chapter 27, the animated version deviates remarkably from its hypotext: as mentioned before, the religious message conveyed by Clara’s grandmother is silenced and this female character is more intensely profiled in order to forge an educational counterpart to Rottenmeier and, most importantly for my research, the figure of Rottenmeier herself is granted more of a central role than in the novel, as will be shown in the analysis.
The more recent 3D version Heidi rather conforms to the idea of reversion, in which a film may seek to interrogate the values portrayed in the source text, and potentially update it or its adaptations (cf. McCallum, 2018: 20). In this regard, the dialogical (Bakhtin) dimension of the second animated series is thus far more evident. Heidi 3D, as noted above, enables a deeper exploration of the characters. The plot gains in importance, while several storylines aim to strengthen the bonds between the characters.
Among the child figures, for instance, Peter and Heidi are also confronted with a group of children in the village, in order to underline the goodness of those living higher up in the mountains – again strengthening the dichotomy between society and nature. Indeed, even if these children are depicted as selfish and as bullies, Peter and Heidi do not hesitate to offer help whenever they need it. With regard to Heidi’s grandfather, while the anime is very vague about his past, the 3D version – just like the original novel – more clearly addresses the presence of a “past”, from which he would like to escape: he feels guilty for the death of his only son, Heidi’s father, who died in an accident when they were working together. The 3D series also creates a completely new subplot with the love story between Aunt Dete – who in this version works as a maid and cook at the Sesemann’s house – and Sebastian, the butler, who not only keeps the vis comica he has in the novel and in the first animated version, but is also granted a more endearing character. All female figures are explored in more detail in the most recent series. The character of Aunt Dete, for example, is developed in a completely different way than in the anime or the novel, in which she appears to be a negative character, rough and selfish, who does not really care about Heidi’s needs but rather about her own financial survival, and is willing to let her fall victim to whatever destiny awaits her: “(W)enn Ihr’s nicht haben könnt, so macht mit ihm, was Ihr wollt, dann habt Ihr’s zu verantworten, wenn’s verdirbt, und Ihr werdet wohl nicht nötig haben, noch etwas aufzuladen” (Spyri, 1978: 11)2. Furthermore, both in the novel and the first animated version, she finds an excuse not to have to travel back to Switzerland with Heidi, when the child falls ill and the doctor advises her to return to the mountains (Spyri, 1978: 102). In contrast, her 3D version regrets having left her in the mountains, cares about the feelings of the child and always tries to act in her best interest. Although she still retains some of the original’s flaws, she is more far more caring and has lost the roughness in manners and behavior which define her anime predecessor. And, in the final episode, she is able to apologize to Heidi’s grandfather for having taken Heidi away from him (Nakajima, Takahata, 1974: episode 39). As regards Frau Sesemann, Clara’s grandmother, she would deserve a chapter of her own, since her transformation from the page to the screen is very revealing and ideologically loaded: in Spyri’s novels, she is, as has been noted before, the person responsible for “converting” Heidi by teaching her how to pray. In both animated versions, the religious content is silenced3, but Frau Sesemann is still a mentor for Heidi, since she not only teaches her how to read but also inspires in the child a love of reading and learning and thus becomes Rottenmeier’s pedagogical counterpart.
3.1 Characterization of the figure of Fräulein Rottenmeier in Spyri’s novels
The analysis of the figure of Rottenmeier will be conducted on the basis of both (a) linguistic and (b) audiovisual features. The literary characterization of Fräulein Rottenmeier in Spyri’s text will be examined by observing stylistic markers on three levels (as in Culpeper, 2001): what the narrator says about her, what other characters say or how they react around her, and her own utterances and behaviors.
The first description we read of this figure in Spyri’s novel, portrays her as a weighty and solemn being:
Die letztere saß sehr aufrecht an einem kleinen Arbeitstisch und stickte. Sie hatte eine geheimnisvolle Hülle um sich, einen großen Kragen oder Halbmantel, welcher der Persönlichkeit einen feierlichen Anstrich verlieh, der noch erhöht wurde durch eine Art von hochgebauter Kuppel, die sie auf dem Kopfe trug. Fräulein Rottenmeier war schon seit mehreren Jahren, seitdem die Dame des Hauses gestorben war, im Hause Sesemann, führte die Wirtschaft und hatte die Oberaufsicht über das ganze Dienstpersonal. (my italics, Spyri, 1978: 47–48)
This description of Rottenmeier as an imposing figure, who observes others from a distance with a good deal of arrogance and superiority is underlined not only in the narrative descriptions, but also through the utterances by Rottenmeier herself and by the characters who surround her. Her positioning on a higher plane, which reflects both her haughtiness and her lack of empathy, is evident from the first encounter: to present themselves for the first time to Rottenmeier, Dete and Heidi must climb a flight of stairs (Spyri, 1978: 48) and the lady’s immediate reactions to the girl are proof of her coldness and authoritarian attitude: “forschend das Kind ansehend” (Spyri, 1978: