Translating Huck: Difficulties in Adapting "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" to Film

• Main Author: Cundick, Bryce Moore
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2005
• Subjects: film; cinema; adaptation; adaptation theory; Huckleberry Finn; Mark Twain; Michael Curtiz; Stephen Sommers; Peter Hunt; Georgi Daneliya; Richard Thorpe; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/256; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1255&context=etd

Filmmakers have had four main difficulties adapting The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to film: point of view, structure, audience and the novel's ending. By studying the different approaches of various directors to each obstacle, certain facts emerge about both the films and the novel. While literary scholars have studied Huck from practically every angle, none have sufficiently viewed the book through the lens of adaptation, despite the fact that it has been adapted to film and television over twenty times. The few critics who have studied the adaptations have done so using dated methodologies that boil down to little more than a question of how faithfully the films recreate the novel. By judging a movie solely on the basis of the book's merits, critics ignore the fact that a change in medium necessitates a change in material. With each adaptation, a new opportunity arises to study the novel from a fresh standpoint.