Cyrano De Bergerac Fidelity

Every Film Adaptation is Not Necessarily Faithful Throughout history, philosophers wrote thoughtful poems and sophisticated plays; plays sought to challenge the intellectual minds of those who would read them. Inevitably, as time progressed, people found ways to stage the plays for entertainment. When staging the play, whether it would be literal actors reciting lines on a stage or a movie with the reenactment of the play, the director always faces the problem of fidelity of the adaptation and how true their adaptation has to be to the original source. Fidelity in the terms of film refers to the authenticity and familiar similarities an adaptation has to its original source. Although every director knows there is no such thing as a faithful

However, as the director adapts the original text, some of the elements of the original text have to remain the same. The seven elements that will be focused on are the plot, the theme, the genre, the characters, the setting, the language, and the mode. The elements of genre, setting, language, and mode could be easily changed, but plot, theme, and some properties of characters cannot be changed. These elements are essential because by changing the plot, theme, and some properties of characters, the director would have a completely different story to tell, making it not an adaptation but an original piece. The play Cyrano de Bergerac, written by Edmond Rostand, tells a tragic love story in which Cyrano loves his cousin Roxane, Christian loves Roxane, and Roxane loves the thoughts and words Christian says to her which actually belong to Cyrano. There were three cinematic adaptations of this play, which includes Cyrano (1950), Roxanne, and Let it Shine. Each of these movie adaptations showed similarity to the original play, while some were more faithful than others. The entire mise-en-scẻne is the filmmaker’s choice and what they decide is right for their

Many, if not most, of the elements were changed in this movie except the essential elements. This movie did not reference Cyrano de Bergerac at all as an inspiration which leads the audience to wonder if the original play needs to be recognized since the movie is completely different. The time period changed to the 21st century, the ethnicity changed of the characters, the genre changed, the language changed, and the mode changed. However, the essential elements were kept the same. Let it Shine is about an embattled teenager, Cyrus, who is trying to show his conservative father, Jacob, that not all rap music is bad. While working in a club that has rap battles, he supports his confident friend, Kris, with his rapping verses even though he knows he could be better than him. During a competition, Roxie, a talented young singer and old friend to Cyrus and Kris, recruits Kris as a rapper and Cyrus as his Dj to become the next big star. Cyrus keeps on writing songs for Kris, but then stops and tells him he needs to do it himself. Roxie then finds out that the songs she loved hearing and the raps that allure her was the words of Cyrus not Kris. In this movie, Kris’ confidence is synonymous to Christian’s good looks in the original play. The theme is inner beauty, not the individual characters, but the genre of music, rap. Rap music was always looked at as music that was “evil’’ and always associated