Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations
In 1968 the BBC produced a television miniseries of The Portrait of a Lady, starring Suzanne Neve as Isabel and Richard Chamberlain as Ralph Touchett.
The Portrait of a Lady was turned into a film in 1996 by New Zealand director Jane Campion, starring Nicole Kidman as Isabel, John Malkovich as Osmond, and Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle. The movie gained lukewarm reviews; the author thought the book too elusive for dramatic presentation. When the actor Lawrence Barrett wanted James to turn the novel into a play, he replied that he did not think it could be done. In James' opinion, given in the preface to the 'New York Edition', the best "scene" in the book consists of Isabel sitting motionless in a chair.
Read more about this topic: The Portrait Of A Lady
Famous quotes containing the word theatrical:
“A Carpaccio in Venice, la Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of visual or theatrical art that the prestige surrounding them made so alive, that is so invisible, that, if I were to see a Carpaccio in a gallery of the Louvre or la Berma in some play of which I had never heard, I would not have felt the same delicious surprise at finally setting eyes on the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousands of my dreams.”
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