Fidelity critics and counter arguments with examples

In today’s world films are one of the most important tools of communication, entertainment and mass media. Motion pictures have had a substantial impact on the arts, technology and politics.
But, when it comes to adaptations, this belief is not considered to be good enough for the fidelity critics when compared to a book or a novel. Sarah Cardwell argues that the comparative study of literary work and screen adaptation leads to fidelity criticism (52). However, McFarlane admits that a study of screen adaptations should not be limited to a narrow comparison of the screen adaptation and single source text, and should take into account other intertextual influences (Novel to Film 21). Fidelity critics ignore reinterpretation of text and do not keep in mind the vision the director has of the text.


Images influence the state of mind of the audience a great deal. It is the art of the filmmakers that they create such an arrangement of images that it touches the viewer. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1991, p.128) said ‘that the film first and foremost is a visual art, first and foremost directs itself to the eye, and that the picture far, far more easily than the spoken word penetrates deeply into the spectator’s consciousness’. Adaptations are no less than its so-called ‘original text’. It has its own way of interacting with the audience. One such example is ‘The Lord of The Rings’. Younger generation never read the novel, until the movies came out. The sale of the novels went up after the release of the films.

There has been estimation that the proportion of American films that are based on novels is 30 per cent. Approximately 80 per cent of the best selling novels each year are turned into film adaptations. More than three quarters of the Academy Awards "best picture" have gone to adaptations.