The filmstrip was a common form of still image instructional multimedia, once commonly used by educators in primary and secondary schools (K-12)...
A filmstrip is a spooled roll of 35 mm positive film with approximately thirty to fifty images arranged in sequential order. Like 16 mm film, a filmstrip was inserted vertically down in front of the projector aperture, rather than horizontally as in a slide projector...
The instructor would turn on a filmstrip projector that would show the first frame (image) of the filmstrip. The instructor then turned on a 33 RPM record or cassette tape containing the audio material for the filmstrip which included narration. At the appropriate point, a tone would sound, signaling the instructor to turn a knob, advancing to the next frame.
So we watched it, and I liked it, and I went on (sometime later) to read more of Madeleine L'Engle's young adult novels, and then her non-fiction and autobiographical works. In 2003 a film adaptation made by a "collaboration of Canadian production companies" was distributed by Disney, on television. I was not particularly impressed by it as an adaptation. According (once more) to Wikipedia, "In an interview with Newsweek, when L'Engle was asked if the film "met her expectations", she said, "Yes, I expected it to be bad, and it is." "
Now Disney itself is venturing their own version of a film adaptation. I, of course, have not seen it, so I can't make any final judgements, but I must confess to feelings of unease from the film trailers I've seen. I can't help but feel (again, from only what is shown) that they have missed a basic element of the work itself. How so? Let me make a few comparison.
In the book, this is how L'Engle describes Mrs. Whatsit:
"It seemed small...The age or sex was impossible to tell, for it was completely bundled up in clothes. Several scarves of assorted colors were tied about the head, and a man's felt hat perched atop..black rubber boots covered the feet." She takes off the hat and scarves, and "Under all this a sparse quantity of grayish hair was tied in a small but tidy knot on the top of her head. Her eyes were bright, her nose a round, soft blob, her mouth puckered like an autumn apple."
The movie gives us this:
Mrs. Who, from the book:
"...a plump little woman...She wore enormous spectacles, twice as thick and twice as large as Meg's..." and later she is described as having a "clawlike hand."
The movie gives us this:
In the book, Mrs. Which, the most senior and wisest of the three, gets even less of an manifestation:
"...in a circle of silver something shimmered, quivered..."
And later she solidifies for a moment, as a joke, into the stereotypical appearance of a Halloween witch.
The movie gives us this:
It could be argued that a film adaptation needs this sort of bezazzlement; a ripple of light does not play well on the big screen. And, after all, the three Mrs. W.'s appearances are in fact just that: appearances assumed for the comfort of their interaction with humanity. They can be assumed and doffed again, as demonstrated in Mrs. Whatsit's transformation into a flying centaur that so impresses Meg. But the point of the forms they assume is that they are not there to overwhelm with majesty and authority of presence, but to persuade and encourage -- as all good "guardian angels," as Charles Wallace calls them -- should. What I do like is their diversity. It gives off that medieval "Three Kings" vibe in which all nations have a part in the Nativity.
But, as troubling as this element appears to me, I have not seen the movie yet. Perhaps they appear in humbler forms at first, which are just not shown in the trailers lest we be confused as to who is what. But the way they are being presented in the trailers seems to emphasize their being more like goddesses than angels. We shall see; the proof is in the pudding, not necessarily the crust.
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