The “Great Image-Maker,” or the Animation of Illustrations in Karel Zeman’s Deadly Invention

Illustration and adaptation may be seen as two modalities of intersemiotic translation. However, their connection has not been as extensively studied as the numerous studies devoted to the relationships between literature and cinematographic adaptations. Indeed, one might suggest that illustration is a possible avenue for this more popular subject of study, given that, in addition to the homology between both processes, many filmmakers developed their graphic universes based on their predecessors’ illustrations. This is the case for the Czech animated film director Karel Zeman, whose Deadly Invention (Vynález Zkazy, also known as The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, 1958) is less an adaptation of Jules Verne’s Facing the Flag (Face au drapeau, 1896) than a movie inspired by all the engravings from Hetzel’s editions of his Extraordinary Journeys (Voyages extraordinaires). To what extent does this phenomenon drive the dynamics of adaptation toward animation cinema or mixed technique? Is it more likely to overcome the media gap, by using not only real shots, but also drawings, which are common to books and animated films? The adaptation process differs when it starts from an iconotext or even from a technical and material support through a direct animation of the pages. It can go as far as challenging the “transcendent criterion of the canonical text” when it gives priority to a “visual fidelity” or a “fidelity to the spirit of the medium”. Thus, the metaphorical “Great Image-Maker” who is supposed to “turn the pages of the album” (as it happens, the movie) finds here a literal embodiment.