Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation

Filmmakers have drawn inspiration from the pages of Emile Zola from the earliest days of cinema. The ever-growing number of adaptations they have produced spans eras, genres, languages, and styles. In spite of the diversity of these approaches, numerous critics regard them as inferior copies of a superior textual original. But key novels by Zola resist this critical approach to adaptation. Both at the level of characterization and in terms of their own textual inheritance, they question the very possibility of origin, be it personal or textual. In the light of this questioning, the cinematic versions created from Zola's texts merit critical re-evaluation. Far from being facile copies of the nineteenth-century novelist's works, these films assess their own status as adaptations, playing with both notions of artistic creation and their own artistic act.