Words as images: study of the adaptation of Vidas secas to cinema

Abstract

In 1938, Graciliano Ramos published the novel: Vidas Secas. A “little book without landscapes, without dialogue and without love” that has become one of the classics of literature. In 1968, Nelson Pereira dos Santos adapted this “dry little book” and produced one of the classics of Brazilian cinema. The proposal of this article is to show how Graciliano Ramos looked and translated the landscapes into literary images and how Nelson Pereira read the words of Graciliano Ramos and transformed them into cinematographic images. Specifically, the article will focus on the understanding of how the arrangement of words and images in the construction of the narrative keeps a work current and provokes readers and viewers, keeping the work always read, seen and studied.