Adapting a life: semiotic issues in the film and television biopic

Abstract

In the case study of the miniseries Francis. The People's Pope and the film Call Me Francis, which we analyse here following the first part of this research, the intertextual and transmedia mode of the biopic is that of cultural products in which ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’ inextricably hybridise, starting from the writing process, which can be genetically analysed in its expansions in the different versions of the screenplay. The narrative of a biopic is textually constructed in at least two directions: by following traces, documents and their interpretations, i.e. intertextual strategies of reference or citation of different sources, part of a shared cultural encyclopaedia (articles, documents, archives); and at the same time through textual strategies of internal reference (dominant or secondary isotopies, enunciative operations, anaphoras) that produce a strong narrative and textual coherence, as well as a remarkable verisimilitude effect, aiming at veracity.