THE CİNEMATİC IMAGES OF GUSTAVE DORÉ'S İLLUSTRATİONS

Gustave Doré (1832-1883) was an important French artist who produced works in various disciplines such as painting, printmaking, caricature, and illustration. Born and died in the same years as Édouard Manet, Doré created art in a style that differed from the dominant artistic movements of the time when compared to Manet’s work. He worked in a more symbolist and realistic style (especially in engravings), in contrast to his realistic approach, he depicted fantastical worlds. During Doré’s lifetime, French writers, particularly those traditionally excluded from the French literary canon, began to explore the works of both contemporary and centuries-old writers such as Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Byron. What made Doré’s art so powerful was his ability to transport places and characters that did not belong to this world from words to lines, from literature to visual art. The depictions of heaven and hell in the works of Milton and Dante, Don Quixote’s delusions, the grotesque creatures in La Fontaine’s fables, the enormous creations in the works of Rabelais and Hugo,Doré brought all these nightmarish hallucinations to life, creating immortal images. Beyond the earthly, his drawings depicted cosmic fears. The images born from Doré’s imagination deeply influenced filmmakers such as Henry James, Cecil B. DeMille, George Méliès, Jean Cocteau, Walt Disney, and Merian C. Cooper, the creator of King Kong. Silent films like Inferno offered a direct reflection of Doré’s prints on the big screen. From silent cinema to the present, filmmakers have continuously brought Doré’s earthly hells to the silver screen. This study examines the interdisciplinary interaction of the images present in Doré’s works. The interaction between literary works, visual art, and cinema forms the framework of this study.

This study aims to reveal the connection and interaction between plastic arts and visual arts. A qualitative research method has been employed, with cinema, literature, and painting forming the broad scope of the study. Current sources have been utilized, and the journey of immortal images—emerging from the connection between speech, writing, and drawing—throughout the centuries has been the focus of this research. The journey of the image, from early films to contemporary cinema, has been examined.

Keywords

Doré, Dante, Milton, illustration, magic lantern.