Color Film In Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations

The advent of color film in the early 1930’s served an irrevocable role in revolutionizing the adaptions of novels. With color film, subtleties of meaning through colors beyond that of black and white that can easily imbued upon scenes, whereupon a same sense subtlety cannot be easily imbued into texts. Throughout Alfonso Cuaron’s 1998 film adaptation Great Expectations, the color of green plays numerous pivotal roles in expressing the obsession of modern America with money (along with money equating to success) and the notion that money cannot buy happiness.

As Grace Moore of the University of Melbourne muses, “Far from being impossible to write, the history of the Victorian age has been and continues to be almost obsessively re-written”

In fact, the film’s mansion is overrun from end to end with plant life and insect life, a scene similar to an old ruin teeming with life outside. In the novel Pip narrates, “My young conductress locked the gate and we went across the courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice” (Dickens 1058). The imagery provided by the text gives off a completely contrary scenario than that of Cuaron’s film. The novel focuses heavily on the decay evident inside the house rather than the state of disarray the house is on the outside. Outside the house only has small signs of decay, such as overgrown grass, whereas the film shows that the estate is filled with all sorts of green plant life that give off a strong sense of metaphorical imagery in the wildness of Dinsmoor’s state of mind and her obsession in being surrounded by green. The green that encompasses her entire estate and her own dress are a constant reminder to the audience that she is surrounded in all facets by wealth (as green in modern America is strongly correlated with money). Yet, despite being surrounded and