고려대학교

초록/요약

Discussions of Ian Softley's screen adaptation of Henry James' The Wings of the Dove often focus on whether he understood and appreciated James' ambiguity. The master ambiguity of James' spiritual world was laboriously represented by his using the subtle pen. Softley was correct in his attempt to modernize the social and cultural background of Wings of the Dove in a way that Merton Densher was successfully recreated as one of the young intelligentsia who spoke for the lower classes. However, Softley indiscreetly sacrificed James's ambiguity and high-brow taste to save his own work from being neglected by the tasteless majority, only to be accused of consciously pandering to public taste. In Softley's film, Gustave Klimt was exchanged for John Singer Sargent as Milly's portraitist in defiance of previous critical pairings of James with Sargent. Given some affinities of style and subject between Sargent's pictures and James' texts, Gustave Klimt, of whose talents James' words never communicated acknowledgement, was just an unfair and wrong choice. Softley introduced Klimt only to make Milly pass for the heroine in a picture magazine. Through Milly, James represented how powerful and beautiful the achievement of spiritual life could be. At the stage of Merton Densher, Milly's spiritual power continued to compete with the practical and sexual power of Kate Croy. Finally, Milly's spiritual power survived the war between spirit and materialism and wrought something precious and incalculable for both Merton Densher and Kate Croy. Milly's spirit is superior to the practical and immoral society in which it is required to function. In conclusion, one requirement of a successful film adaptation of James' art is to fully represent the potential of James' spiritual world according to his vision of imaginary and practical life.