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This thesis compares Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient (1992) with its film adaptation (1996, screenplay/director: Anthony Minghella). The theoretical section is divided in two subchapters. The first deals with the ‘language’ of film, giving an overview of the major aspects and techniques of filmic expression and of the ways they can be utilised in order to produce certain effects. The second is concerned with film adaptation of literature as such. The two central principles in the comparison of films with their literary sources are discussed, namely fidelity to the source text on the one hand and the specificity of the medium film on the other. The analysis then compares the film and the novel with regard to selected aspects. Since memory and remembering – also with regard to narrative structure – play a major role in both works, this topic is given close attention in the first subchapters of the analytic section, which look at the different frame structures, the general narrative structure, the connection between narrative levels and the function of the body as a site of memory and identity. It becomes evident that the film focuses strongly on the love story of the characters Almásy and Katharine, which is told in flashbacks. For example, a scene from this narrative level is used as a frame at the beginning and end of the film, which is not the case in the novel. Except for the frame, the fragmentary, nonlinear narrative structure of the novel was smoothed out for the film. This can be explained with the stronger narrative pressure of film reception. As a result, however, the past how it appears to the remembered subject seems to be unambiguous, fixed, and accessible, which contrasts with the concept of memory expressed by the novel. The novel draws frequent connections between present and past, for example by linguistic means, recurring motifs or parallel character constellations. In the film, they find their counterpart in the transitions between narrative levels (e.g. superimpositions with ...
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