This chapter deals with the problems facing those who adapt the written word to film.  The chief issue facing the adapter is that the two forms of media operate under different constraints and use different languages. Techniques in film and literature, namely the description of parallel action and montage.   The author uses a quotation from Tolstoy to address the benefits of cinema in its apparently “enhanced representation of reality.”The author addresses how film and cinema have become largely interdependent despite working in separate languages.  The chapter goes on to describe the difference between creation and distribution of the mediums—mainly that the novel is the brainchild of a single person with a single vision that is designed to be consumed individually, where the opposite holds true for all aspects of cinema.  However, the author counters the notion that this results in the ‘high’ art of fiction and the ‘low’ art of film.  She observes that essential aspects of a work exist which are necessary for a successful adaptation but concedes that deciding which aspects those are can be difficult.  She lays out the three types of adaptation and addresses the relative practice of each.  She continues to address further issues that make adaption difficult, such as the omniscience of film’s perspective, the lack of tense in film, the tendency to heighten love stories in classic adaptations and the difficulty of translating formal devices, such as metaphor and perspective, to a visual medium.

            From many of the criticisms of the film adaptations of The Day of the Locust, it is apparent that many of the difficulties described in this chapter faced Waldo Salt as he attempted to make a faithful adaptation of West’s novel.  The philosophical passages containing the narrator’s perspective were largely left out, much to the detriment of the film.  The mentioned tendency to heighten love stories in adaptations holds true, as the level of interaction between Tod and Faye in the film was much greater than that of the book.  Also, it resulted in a weakened ending as the focus on romantic relationships forced the film to add a scene to the end which stripped the power of the scene which directly preceded it.