Between Sign and Symbol : Huston's Intersemiotic Translation of "The Dead"

When directing the film version of James Joyce’s “The Dead” in 1987, John Huston faced the challenge of reproducing on the screen Joyce’s atmosphere of claustrophobia and spiritual barrenness as well as his hints to the reader. In this paper, Huston’s film is analysed by adopting the point of view expounded by C. S. Peirce in his theory of intersemiotic translation, an act that he defined as the process of reproducing “a sign into another system of signs”. After an introductory analysis of the use of symbols in “The Dead”, the paper focuses on Huston’s filmic adaptation of Joyce’s symbolism. To this end the text is staged through the use of “fading lights”, the choice of dark and oppressive colours, props, music and the quality of photography and framing. The aim of this contrastive analysis is to ascertain whether and to which extent Huston managed to reproduced the symbolic meanings embedded in Joyce’s text despite slight changes due to his resorting to a different semiotic system.