Pathway: Orlando from Novel to Film by Rea Anastasopoulou

Pathway to reflect upon and illustrate the process of adapting Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Orlando, to film.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

A synopsis of the novel
Orlando, after being betrayed by a Russian princess falls upon sleep for seven days and when he awakens he longs to write. He is sent to Constantinople by Prince Charles in order to become an Ambassador to the heavily ritualised court in the midst of revolution. There he falls asleep again and wakes up as a woman seven days later. She escapes from the court and joins a group of gypsies but eventually returns to england were she is beginning to discover what it means to live as a woman. 20th century finds her alone and in a blaze of electricity, ecstatically and independently she enters into the present moment.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Orlando as a female

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Orlando as a male

Video file, Digital, Unedited video rushes of location scouting at Hatfield house -- Sally Potter with Alexei Rodionov operating camera

Sally Potter becoming Orlando, taking a closer look through the maze following the path of the character and Woolf while creating her own path as well. Intertextuality is an important aspect of adaptation and in the transfer from novel to film inspiration from different locations and places - personal and physical is included.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Introduction
Orlando lives through 4 centuries up to the present day, first as a man then as a woman.
Underlying themes: androgyny, immortality, love, loss, language - all manifested visually and symbolically in a feast of imagery and ideas grounded both in action and recognisable historical facts.
Shock of Orlando bursting in the present day is reminiscent of the waking from a dream full of hidden meanings.
Contemplative film conjuring the heightened visual reality of dreams - action film taking us on a dance through history.

A4 pages, Paper, Typed notes on Virginia Woolf's ideas about the future for women

Life is difficult for both men and women

A4 pages, Paper, Typed notes on Virginia Woolf's ideas about the future for women

Neither male nor female would be more accurate in order that the mind can freely look at the entire human experience.

A4 pages, Paper, Typed notes on Virginia Woolf's ideas about the future for women

Orlando writes as a way of looking back and questioning the different selves and reconciling them in one being.

1 x colour slide in transparent plastic hanging sheet, Digital, Film Stills - Scene 4 - Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp) in the film

The casting of Quentin Crisp adds a layer of ambiguity in the differences and ideas between sexes.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Character of Queen Elizabeth, portrait of a Queen who is ageing, lonely, insecure and powerful. Orlando becomes her link with beauty, youth and warmth. Through their relationship we get an intimate sense of an individual woman experiecing the terror linked with power.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Themes of time, sexual identity and love
Orlando's change of sex becomes a meditation on maleness and femaleness, from the inside. Parts of the essense of Orlando can become visible in each historical era depending on what is allowable for a man and woman to show and be. The book suggests an image of a core inner self that is common for both men and women.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Gender ideas
The gradual revelation of Orlando's real and complex self is euphoric: the euphoria of freedom from illusory limitations and restrictions.
Orlando's love objects share this sexual ambiguity, each becoming an androgynous counterpart.

1 x A4 black photograph album; 34 vellum pages; 24 x colour prints, Mixed, Presentation book containing Sally Potter's notes on the film and colour photographs of Tilda Swinton at Hatfield House

Layers of Orlando's character
Orlando: boy, man, woman, lover, adventurer. thinker. Character embodies qualities that co-exist in contradictory tension to each other.
Orlando is an outsider an observer of his/her culture.

Black and white A4 computer printed with handwritten annotations, bound into book, Paper,Orlando Sally Potter’s Shooting Script page 61 front

'The sound of trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being has ever looked so ravishing. His form combined in on the strength of a man and a woman's grace.'

''And then I became a woman. Same person! Oh yes! Absolutely. No difference. No difference at all. Just a different sex.''

Page 3 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Book is written with a female consciousness all throughout when Orlando is both male and female. Enough voice over to meet the inner person.

Page 4 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Story extended up until the present moment. Feeling of racing through history as if in a long incubation period. Present moment is like a birth. Expectancy, moment of delivery.

Page 5 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Orlando's identity: underlying femininity throughout the story. Female consciousness: as a male he is out in the world, as a female the inner landscape expands. Exterior world is a place of restriction. As a woman Orlando seems to be more restrained physically but more free in the way of thinking, processing and expressing beliefs and ideas.

Page 6 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Class in Orlando: obsession with the royals, glimpses of detachment and eventual decline of aristocracy. Written with irony and implied criticism. Class critique through: a portrait of the owning class (p.o.v.) isolation contrasted with the connectedness of the working class. Orlando trapped into a kind of inertia because of his privilege.

Page 9 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Ideas on Orlando as a love story. Search for the other half, the 'perfect counterpart'. Hopeless quest: the other half is one self (the part that has been denied, oppressed, repressed, buried). Orlando's quest takes her out of the past and into the present moment and the realisation of self. Key scene: Orlando on ice. Portrait on how the love object is the embodiment of qualities denied to oneself by the gender conditioning.

Page 10 of general notes on Orlando, black printed text on A4 paper

Key points from Orlando were the film can be regarded as a comedy. Some figures can be considered stereotypes, cliches, conventions of history, phoney history - symbolistic fantasy, mocking patterns, humour in toe of writing is bitter-sweet, parody, satire, caricature.

close up of Orlando's face, she looks and speaks to camera.

''In a more direct way than the novel, Sally Potter puts forth her idea that gender is something that isn't fixed but rather an ideology imposed by society. Orlando still has memories of her past life as a man. For the character, nothing more than her sex has changed. She is still the same person.''

Orlando addressing Swift, Pope and Mr Addison about their opinions of women.

Orlando starts seeing the differences between genders and the inequality women experienced at the time

Medium shot of three servants continuing to voice details of lawsuits against Orlando

First Official: One, you are legally dead and therefore cannot hold any property whatsoever.
Orlando: Ah. Fine.
First Official: Two, you are now a female.
Second Official: Which amounts to much the same thing.

Video file, Digital, Selected Scene Commentary by Sally Potter

Mixture of cinematic and schematic elements
question of gender: what is it to be a man, what is it to be a woman, confusion of the last two decades, grief, misery and misunderstandings
Woolf created a character who lived as a man and as a woman, be a man and then be a woman.
Orlando is an antihero born in a time and a class and fails to be what he is expected to be as a youth, aristocrat, man and then as a woman.
Tilda Swinton as Orlando has a look that hovers between masculinity and femininity
Orlando speaks directly to the camera representing a release of emotions which were flying out from historical time to the present time - equivalent for Woolf's way of directly addressing the reading in the novel
Film about now that happened to go through 400 years
Crisp: Stillness sense of beingness, device of turning the issue of sex and gender right on it's head from the beginning
"? am England and you are mine" "Does this mean I belong to you?" (Orlando)
1750 end of 18th c. orlando is a woman about to go into a labyrinth through which she will get to the victorian period