The nature of cinematic language and its difference with that of literature

The cinematographic adaptation of literary texts is often considered from a defensive or protectionist perspective in a culture where literature has long exercised its hegemony: transposition or adaptation in costume, the spectator is happy to declare respect for the original text, and on the conformity of the filmmaker's vision with his own vision. We would like to propose here a new approach to cinematographic adaptation: whereas cinema is an art distinct from literature, we will start from the hypothesis that text and film, even if they bear the same name, do not belong not the same species, and therefore cannot be the subject of a simple comparison. After examining the traditional evaluation criteria of adaptation (fidelity, spirit and letter, narrative construction, dialogue processing, voiceover, etc.), we will try to move the lines of confrontation to show how cinema, instead of simply illustrating literary texts, by the very fact that it is a means of autonomous expression, necessarily proposes a thought of literature.