From July 1, 1934, to November 1, 1968, the Production Code Administration (PCA) oversaw the creation of American motion pictures, in order to improve Hollywood’s moral standing. To assist in this endeavor, the studios produced film adaptations of classic literature, such as the plays of William Shakespeare. In the first two years of the Code’s inception, two Shakespearean films were produced by major studios: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) and Romeo and Juliet (1936). But were these classic adaptations able to avoid the censorship that other films endured? With the use of archived collections, film viewings, and an in-depth analysis of the plays, multiple versions of the scripts, and other available surviving documents, I was able to see how these productions were affected by the enforcement of film censorship and what it said about the position of Shakespeare’s work in society. A Midsummer Night’s Dream tended to use self-regulation, so as to avoid the censorship of the PCA. However, the film did not escape without some required changes. In spite of the filmmakers’ efforts, there were a few textual changes and the fairy costumes required revisions to meet the PCA’s standards. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, the PCA was far more involved in all stages of the film’s production. There were many documented text changes and even a case in which the censors objected to how the actors and director executed a scene on film. The motion picture was created as if it were of the greatest importance by all involved. And, as it were, the existing archives paint a picture of a production that was a sort of battleground in a sociopolitical war between the censors and the filmmakers. As both films arrived on the international stage, this sociopolitical campaigning did not end. During international distribution, the films were each accepted, rejected, and forced to endure further censorship, in order to become acceptable for public screening. This censorship often relayed a message about the location’s societal views and its contrast to American society.

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In the early 1930’s the film business was booming and filled with sex, drugs, and scandal. All of that changed in 1934 with the enforcement of the Hollywood Production Code which effectively cleaned up the business into what most people today remember as classic Hollywood. By analyzing films from the Pre-Code era, and specifically Baby Face (1933), the roots of self-censorship in Hollywood can be traced to their current incarnation in the film business today.

This is a comparative analysis of two film adaptations (from 1943 and 2011) of Charlotte Brontë’s  Jane Eyre, with a focus on the male characters. My aim is to study how patriarchal control is adapted for the screen, compared to the original novel. The focus is on the characters John Reed, Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and St. John Rivers. The analysis is about how the filmmakers depict the essence of the characters, why they chose to do so and what determinants influenced the two films; furthermore, how this affects Jane’s character and her pursuit for independence. The thesis of this essay is that there is a difference in the interpretation of the male characters in the two films compared to the novel Jane Eyre and this affects Jane’s pursuit for independence. My conclusion is that although the films differ in narration and filming technique, the strongest impact on the discourse is the changed script due to politics and production code.

Sherlock Holmes har adapterats till film i över hundra år. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att genomföra en studie om adaptioner av Sherlock Holmes romanen The Hound of the Baskerville har anpassats för sin samtid mellan 1939 och 2012. Analysen utgår därmed ifrån Sidney Lanfields adaption ifrån 1939 med Basil Rathbone, Terence Fishers adaption ifrån 1959 med Peter Cushing. Slutligen TV-serien Sherlocks adaption ifrån 2012 med Benedict Cumberbatch i rollen som Holmes. Den grundläggande teorin för uppsatsen är adaptionsteori, för att få fram hur Sir Arthur Conan Doyles roman har ändrats och anpassats för att bli lämplig för sin samtida publik. Analysen är uppdelad i tre kapitel, i vilka olika delar av det som har adapterats analyseras. De olika kapitlen handlar om filmskaparna har omarbetat och tolkat Doyles roman för sin samtid? Har de tolkat och omarbetat de kvinnliga karaktärerna för sin samtids publik? Har Sherlock själv utvecklats mellan de tre adaptionerna? Slutsats omfattar sedan en diskussion om uppsatsens resultat, baserad på Linda Hutcheons teori om adaption. / Sherlock Holmes have been adapted to film for over a hundred years. The purpose with this essay is to conduct a study of how adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles have been adjusted between 1939 and 2012, to make the story more appropriate for their contemporary audience. The analysis is based on Sidney Lanfields 1939 adaptation with Basil Rathbone, the 1959 Terence Fisher adaptation with Peter Cushing and the 2012 adaptation for the TV series Sherlock. The Essay is based in adaption theory, to determine how Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel has been changed and adjusted to make the story more appropriate for the contemporary audience of the adaptation in question. The analysis is divided into three chapters, which examines different aspects of what has been adapted. The different chapters analyze how the filmmakers have reworked and interpreted Doyle’s novel for their time, how they have interpreted and reworked the female characters and how Sherlock himself has evolved between the three adaptations.

“Prestige and Prurience: The Decline of the American Art House and the Emergence of Sexploitation, 1957-1972” presents a historical narrative of the art house theatre during the 1960s and its surrounding years, examining the ways in which art theatres transformed into adult theatres during the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in earnest in the immediate post-war period, art houses in America experienced a short period of growth before stagnating in the middle 1950s. With the release in 1957 of the erotically charged Brigitte Bardot film …And God Created Woman, a new era of art houses followed, one that is characterized by the emergence of sexualized advertising, content and stars. As the 1960s came, sex films like The Immoral Mr. Teas played on art film marketing strategies and even screened in many art houses. Gradually, sexploitation films began to dominate art house programs and replace European art films and Hollywood revivals. In this transitional period, however, sexploitation films used key strategies to emulate many art film characteristics, and likewise art films used sexploitation techniques in order to maintain marketability for American distribution and exhibition. By studying the promotion and programming used by art house theatres during this period, this thesis identifies and announces a number of key trends within the dynamic period for art houses. The period is distinguished by its convergence of practices related to prestigious and prurient signs, merging art and sex in ways unique to the era and to the circumstances by which sex films infiltrated art houses and art films pandered to salacious interests. It presents a new perspective on the history of art houses, art cinema, American exhibition, sexploitation films, hardcore pornography and censorship. / text

The discursive and critical positions of the ‘classic’ nineteenth-century novel, particularly the woman’s novel, in the field of adaptation studies have been dominated by long-standing concerns about textual fidelity and the generic processes of the text-screen transfer. The sociocultural patterns of adaptation criticism have also been largely ensconced in representations of literary women on screen. Taking a decisive twist from tradition, this thesis traces the evolution of representations of masculinity in the malleable characters of Rochester and Heathcliff in film and television adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights between 1939 and 2009. Concepts of masculinity have been a neglected area of enquiry in studies of the ‘classic’ novel on screen. Adaptations of the Brontës’ novels, as well as the adapted novels of other ‘classic’ women authors such as Jane Austen, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, increasingly foreground male character in traditionally female-oriented narratives or narratives whose primary protagonist is female. This thesis brings together industrial histories, textual frames and sociocultural influences that form the wider contexts of the adaptations to demonstrate how male characterisation and different representations of masculinity are reformulated and foregrounded through three different adaptive histories of the narratives of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Through the contours of the film and television industries, the application of text and context analysis, and wider sociocultural considerations of each period an understanding of how Rochester and Heathcliff have been transmuted and centralised within the adaptive history of the Brontë novel.