From Un Couer Simple to A Simple Heart: An Adaptation of Gustave Flaubert‟s French Story Un Coeur Simple into an English Screenplay

Many movies today seem to be based on a novel or short story. After viewing a film based on a novel, an audience member might respond, “It wasn‟t as good as the book.” When someone reads a novel or short story in English, he or she creates an image of the story, a personal adaptation. The main character may be described in excruciating detail by the author, yet each person will come up with a slightly different mental image, this is his or her individual variation of the story. When watching a film that has been based on a foreign novel, the language barrier and cultural differences make it hard for the author‟s intentions to be transferred onscreen. In this thesis, I will discuss the process of adaptation, taking a novel or short story and making it into a film. This purpose of this thesis is to show the differences between literature and how it is performed onscreen, and then discuss the difficulties posed with translating the text before adaptation, and finally, I will reveal challenges specific to my journey in adapting a screenplay from Un Coeur Simple, a short story by Gustave Flaubert.