A Comparison between the film of the Scarlet Tunic and the Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion by Thomas Hardy

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A Comparison between the film of the Scarlet Tunic and the Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion by Thomas Hardy

The main change in the film to the short story is how they had changed the ending of the story to something completely different, changing the effect of the end. Instead of living to tell the story of her tragedy as said in the short story, the film made it so Phyllis ended up being shot with Matthaus; therefore the story was not told by her (since she was dead) but a narrator.

      In the social background of the film it shows how the soldiers were prepared to fight to reclaim land or die in the process. In the short story it says how Phyllis had no social life and her father was not a good doctor.

      The short story gave an impression that Phyllis and her father not well off but neither poor, but in the film it was shown that she was well off and her and her father were highly respected people.  The character of her father, Mr Grove, was shown as a patient caring man in the film; where as in the short story it portrayed him as a demanding man with no consideration for his daughter. In the story Mr Grove was only brought in when it was describing Phyllis and what he was telling her to do, but in the film he had his own leading role and a separate story along with Phyllis’, and Matthaus’ brother, Christophe. This makes the story not only about one person, but others. There is not only one story line, which makes the story more interesting and brings out the personalities of the characters not letting them just blend into the background.

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     Christophe in the short story was only mentioned when Matthaus decides to run away and took Christophe with him. In the film, Christophe has his own role in which he falls for a local girl. In the short story Christophe is shot with Matthaus when they got caught but in the film he had got away. At the end of the film it shows him coming back to where Matthaus and Phyllis are buried and meeting his daughter for the first time whom was also the daughter of the local he is with before he ran away. This ...

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