Terra matta on the screen: Film in the form of reliquary

Abstract

The process of adapting a book to create a film has generated an expanding specialist literature on its theory and practice; a substantial toolbox of concepts and tropes to describe the nature of the cross-media shifts is now available to analysts (Stam 2005). The conversion into an acclaimed film of the best-selling autobiography by a Sicilian manual worker and autodidact, Vincenzo Rabito, offers an opportunity to explore further ways of depicting the relationship. Here I examine the treatment of Rabito’s original typescript in the film from which it derives and suggest that the metaphor of a reliquary captures to particular effect the intentions of the director, the presentation of the text on the screen and the impact of the film on audiences.