Chapter 2 combines one aspect of Eisenstein’s theory, his concept of film sense, with Ovid (and beyond Ovid) and, in addition, applies the idea of cinemetamorphosis introduced in Chapter 1. Eisenstein considered classical antiquity as a kind of foundation for the cinema. On several occasions he related cinematic techniques to his expositions of classic (but not classical) literature: Dickens, Pushkin, Zola. Following Eisenstein’s model, this chapter demonstrates what might be called Ovid’s inherent film sense by transforming parts of two famous myths from the Metamorphoses (Arachne’s tapestry, the fate of Niobe’s children) into preliminary screenplays and by analyzing a famous moment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window in conjunction with the beginning of Ovid’s Amores 1.5. The mirrored image of Ovid’s Narcissus (also from the Metamorphoses), who is deceived by his own reflection in water, is an analogy to the nature of insubstantial images on screen. Additional observations address the visual qualities in classical literature beginning with Homer. The chapter closes with Christoph Ransmayr’s The Last World, in which some of the tales from the Metamorphoses are being shown as films at the time of Ovid’s exile in Tomis. The intentional anachronism of impossible cinematic images in this postmodern novel illustrates, from a different (textual) perspective, the visual nature of Ovid’s art and his affinity for a creative medium he could not have foreseen.

It was exciting, no doubt, to watch silent films to the accompaniment of musical excerpts played by cinema orchestras, but the 1930s gave audiences the chance to see stars sing and act. That decade consequently offers valuable historical insight into vocal practice and performance technique. This chapter begins with an overview of freshly created screen operettas and of films adapting stage operettas. It briefly examines Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930) and other German films, before moving to British and American films. The demands of film are contrasted with techniques required in the theatre. The chapter then looks at the practice of adaptation in Hollywood, and it ends with a discussion of the operetta Heimat film in Germany.