Canudos.Two different points of view: The “ Canudo’s” war in literature and in the cinema

Abstract

Some literary works are turned into movies, miniseries and theatricalpieces. This process requires a rethinking of the literary text and actuates a fewassumptions, characteristic of cinematic language. This paper seeks to discussthis process and its implications relating the book “The Hinterlands” by Euclidesda Cunha (1902) and the movie “War of Canudos” (produced in 1997). Thestory of Canudos, turned into a movie and later adapted for a televisionminiseries, shows a little of this “make-up”, through which the director “invents”characters to give continuity and follow-up to the ruptures between what isconsidered historical fact and what is transformed into fiction, or to the cinema,or still for television.