Daisy Miller: The Tapestry of Adaptation

With the rise of literary adaptations in films, interest has surged. This trend boosts profits and helps readers visualize and comprehend the original works better. As Brian McFarlane said in his Reading Film and Literature article, "An adaptation is not the only type of relationship that can exist between film and literature". At the same time, it is the type of relationship that most persistently occupies the theorist, critic, enthusiast, and casual filmgoer. Although adaptations are based on literary works, they may sometimes have different plots than the works, which can be disappointing for many people because everyone's expectations are different. Many literary works deemed suitable for adaptation have contributed much to literature. One of these is Daisy Miller, which will be discussed today, written by Henry James, born in the USA in 1843. Henry James' career is divided into 3 phases, and Daisy Miller is in the first of them. Published in 1879, Daisy Miller is a novella written by James about class and social customs. By writing Daisy Miller, James tried to address and dramatize American and European attitudes toward class. In this essay, Henry James's Daisy Miller and Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation film, shot in 1974, nearly a hundred years after the book, will be analyzed for compatibility and incompatibility by considering Brian McFarlane's article, Reading Film and Literature.

The audience of films adapted from literary works does not include only readers, but it would be decisively incorrect to ignore that the majority are readers. Although this is not often the purpose of making a film of a literary work, many readers sincerely wish that the literary works in which they have feelings were shot and dedicated to their imagination and are often disappointed. As McFarlane said: "Every reading of a literary text is a highly individual act of cognition and interpretation; every such response involves a kind of personal adaptation onto the screen of one's imaginative faculty as one reads". This means that although a film manages to put the entire literary work on stage, it will not be able to make everyone happy because what everyone dreams about when reading the work is different. Did the adaptation of Henry James's Daisy Miller to Peter Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller make people happy? Nothing definite can be said. Although not always, adapting novels to films is more complicated than adapting novellas, as there are thousands of things to tell. However, in novellas or short stories, the narration of the main plot and characters is too short to fit into a film. Some things need more than an hour or two to tell, and novellas are great for that, too. Since Daisy Miller is a novella and the director has plenty of time to tell/show the subject, it can be seen that there are additions that are not in the book when watched.

For example, the conversation between Winterbourne and Randolph during their first meeting in the film is longer than in the novella. Bogdanovich wanted to show the differences between Americans and Europeanized Americans. As it is known, Daisy is American, but Winterbourne, though American, is Europeanized from years in Europe. In the novella, while Winterbourne tells the reader about himself, it is learned from the beginning that he is a Europeanized American. However, to understand this in the film, the conversation between Randolph and Winterbourne is extended, and Randolph constantly asks questions about where Winterbourne is from. Director Bogdanovich, referring to the narration in the book emphasizes that although Winterbourne is American, he does not look like an American. Also, as mentioned in the introduction, there are almost a hundred years between the novella's publication and the film, so the English used is also quite different. In the film, plain and modern English is spoken as Randolph and Winterbourne converse, as a change made for better understanding by modern audiences.

In his article, McFarlane discusses why filmmakers are interested in what novelists have achieved on the pages and why they decided to transfer this success to audio-visual moving images. George Bluestone claimed that the novel and film were "overtly compatible, secretly hostile." Simply put, the common thing that the film and the novel share is the narrative, and narration distinguishes them. Both art styles use a similar structural pattern to bring the elements together in a pleasing manner, resulting in a cohesive and meaningful whole. The narrative is identical in Henry James's and Peter Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller. An American named Winterbourne meets Daisy Miller in Vevey, a beautiful American girl who travels Europe with her family. He is pretty impressed with Daisy but also surprised because he finds her vulgar and uneducated. This story is the same in the novella and the film. However, there are many differences in the narration in the film compared to the novella. A literary text's logical flow of thought could be compared to a film's sequential motion of frames. Both forms could be considered coherent in terms of conceptual and emotional coherence. In the film, Daisy seems more talkative than in the novella and never listens to him, constantly interrupting Winterbourne's conversation. Daisy was supposed to be a representation of the American people. She is not very sophisticated; she is an egocentric and uneducated character. The fact that the Miller family is more talkative than the novella has been added by the filmmakers and is not present in the novella. There is also a puppet scene in the film that is not in the book. Based on what is described in the book, it becomes clear that Daisy is a different and naive character, but through this scene, we see how childish she is and enjoys something that many adults (like Winterbourne) find meaningless and not amusing. 

As Brian McFarlane mentioned in his article, one of the reasons why people are so interested in literature and film is the creation of new worlds and lives. Compared to other literary works, the representational realism of these worlds and lives is broader and more detailed. While watching a book or a movie, consumers have a powerful sense of truth to see even the most minor details and expect this because there is a world and life far beyond the page and the screen. Both art forms inspire the viewer's/reader's imagination. While a literary work uses words on paper, cinema displays visual and auditory elements on the screen. Writers and filmmakers use a set of codes to keep this imagination active. One of these codes is linguistic codes, and to give an example from the movie, Randolph tells the audience that he hates Europeans with his attitude, tone of voice, and questions, allowing the audience to learn where Winterbourne is from. As for non-linguistic codes, towards the movie's end, Daisy is at the piano with Giovanelli and Winterbourne. After making Giovanelli sing very fast and having fun, she gets up to sing and starts singing "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" upon Giovanelli's offer and Winterbourne's request. This song that Daisy sings is a song about lost youth, and everything is viewed from Winterbourne's point of view while she is singing along with the playing piano, which can be perceived as a kind of foreshadowing because, as it is known, Daisy dies at the end of the book/film. In the song, it sounds as if the man is singing it to Maggie at her grave. From Winterbourne's point of view, Daisy's singing of the song, which has a sad meaning behind it, can mean that it is a dedication to things that never happened between them, to missed opportunities. It also plays an orchestrated version of the scene where Daisy's grave is shown in the movie, although this song is not in the book, and for the audience, both scenes are a nice element added by the filmmakers.

Taking everything into consideration, films and literary works are works containing compatibility and incompatibility. Adapting literary works to the film has been done since the beginning of cinema, as it still is today, and it is both appreciated and despised. This is primarily related to whether or not the films are based on literary works. Daisy Miller, the focus of this essay, has a wide range of compatibility and incompatibility. Whether the audience or the reader can decide if they like the film or the literary piece should be considered. People's thoughts and discourses about film and literature are individual reactions, and not everyone's opinion will be the same. Although the plot and most of the characters are similar to those in the book, the Daisy Miller film, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released in 1974, has numerous variations. Nevertheless, these diannoyingkely captivate the audience instead of annoying, enhancing the narrative and serving as a delightful complement. Considering Daisy Miller by Henry James is a novella, the incorporation of additional scenes enriches the story rather than diminishing its essence. Under the direction of Peter Bogdanovich, Daisy Miller achieves a harmonious balance with Henry James' original work, skillfully integrating new techniques and additions to the storyline.

Works Cited:

McFarlane, Brian. ‘Reading Film and Literature’. The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 15–28.

Bogdanovich, Peter, director. Daisy Miller. 

James, Henry, writer. Daisy Miller.