The Poetics of the Screen Idea: Nostromo

Abstract

Nostromo (1904) is widely regarded as Joseph Conrad’s finest novel. ‘It brilliantly captures the tragic and brutal essence of Latin American politics, and, by extension, the spiritual emptiness of modern politics and politicians’ (Crawford 2002, v). Between 1986 and 1991, the British film director David Lean worked on an adaptation, but he died in April 1991, just a few weeks away from principal photography.