مشخصات پژوهش

The present study sets out to illustrate and examine the notion of the American Dream in two of Walter Tevis’s novels entitled The Hustler (1959), and The Color of Money (1984) along with an in-depth visual analysis of their cinematic adaptations. The project in hand is composed of two phases, at root, whose goals and nature vary from one another, in that, one belongs to the domain of literature, whereas the other falls into the province of film theories and adaptation. The literary-oriented portion of this research will make its best efforts to utilize the concept of the American Dream to unravel the intricate labyrinths of the above-cited novels, not only within each but also along the path from one to the other, since the second novel happens to be a sequel to the former. As for the second phase, this project is inclined to aim its focus on The Hustler (1961), and The Color of Money (1986) of cinema – directed by Robert Rossen and Martin Scorsese, respectively – rather than that of literature, albeit exhibiting close affinities in various respects in the light of film and adaptation theories, whose application could simply and efficiently illuminate the detailed process of the transformation of the novels into the films. This line of analysis will shed light on the collaboration between the novelist and the directors and that how the directors kept true to, or moved beyond the original thoughts of the author. Thus, this study has on its agenda the priority of initially calling into play the grounds on which the literary medium diverges from or converges to that of cinema, and secondly it leans towards the similitudes and discrepancies at work between The Hustler and The Color of Money of literature and cinema in areas such as plot additions and elisions, setting, and characters.