# Favourite 'Film of the Book'?



## Ingélou

Everyone's had the experience of loving a novel (or 'literary' play, Shakespeare, say, or Shaw) and going to see a film adaptation and being disappointed. The characters don't look like the ones in your head - they miss half the good episodes or characters out - they change the ending - they modernise. I remember turning off 'Mansfield Park' in the first five minutes, when I realised that they were going to turn Fanny Price, a poignant Cinderella in the original novel, into a feisty slick-talking chick in the film. 

Sometimes, though, the film-makers get it right. When you dramatise something, you have to adapt it, miss bits out, even add or subtract characters. But often as I've used the Julie Christie 'Far from the Madding Crowd' when teaching Hardy to 'O' or 'A'-level, I never get sick of it. Yes, 'Bathsheba Everdene' wears pale lipstick and has a hippy hairdo, but it's still so watchable and dramatic. Terence Stamp as Sergeant Troy is fabulous. Strong performances by Alan Bates as Gabriel Oak and Peter Finch as Farmer Boldwood too - and lots of rustic comedy. 

So that would be my favourite 'film of the book'? What is yours? And please do discuss the problems of adaptation or really bad adaptations that you've seen. 

Thanks in advance for insights, bons mots and general bonhomie.


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## moody

Anthony Hope's 1894 Ruritanian adventure "The Prisoner of Zenda".
It's been filmed many times but THE version is the one from 1937 with Ronald Colman, Raymond Massey, Douglas Fairbanks,JR, David Niven, C.Aubrey Smith and the beauteous Madeleine Carroll. (She was my Dad's favourite pin-up and I named my daughter after her).

ALSO. Romberg wrote an operetta "Princess Flavia " (1925) based on the book.


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## Guest

One of the best: Tom Stoppard's _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead_. Since Stoppard wrote the screen play and directed it, one can presume that it's authoritative! Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfus are amazing. The move plays up the humor more than the stage play.

One of the worst: The color remake of Golding's _Lord of the Flies_. Did anyone involved in the project actually read the novel?


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## Nereffid

Peter Weir's "Master and Commander" is about as good an adaptation of Patrick O'Brian as one could possibly hope for. Neither Russell Crowe nor Paul Bettany would have occurred to me for the two leads, but they both were superb. And there were so many less significant details that the film got absolutely right that it was obviously made with genuine affection for the source material.

Also, when I first read "Great Expectations" (about 7 years ago, before ever seeing any adaptation of it), all I could see and hear when reading Joe Gargery's dialogue was Bernard Miles. Imagine my delight when I later saw David Lean's version and there he was. What larks!


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## Ingélou

I haven't seen 'Master & Commander' but it sounds great.
I remember the Ronald Colman 'Prisoner of Zenda' from about the age of eight. I absolutely love it. A more modern version I've seen was also good - that sort of impersonation plot really can't go wrong. But moody, you are right about the original version being the best. I particularly admired Raymond Massey as the wicked Prince Michael and his look of complete disgust as he realised that his weeping mistress had betrayed him!

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - I love the play & have taught it, and the film was excellent and went down very well with my sixth form class too.
And who could resist 'Great Expectations'?


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## moody

Ingenue said:


> I haven't seen 'Master & Commander' but it sounds great.
> I remember the Ronald Colman 'Prisoner of Zenda' from about the age of eight. I absolutely love it. A more modern version I've seen was also good - that sort of impersonation plot really can't go wrong. But moody, you are right about the original version being the best. I particularly admired Raymond Massey as the wicked Prince Michael and his look of complete disgust as he realised that his weeping mistress had betrayed him!
> 
> Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - I love the play & have taught it, and the film was excellent and went down very well with my sixth form class too.
> And who could resist 'Great Expectations'?


The problem,presuming you mean the James Mason version, is that he seemed to play Rupert of Hentzau as a Prussian. It really did not compare with Fairbank's, devilish and very funny ,rakish characterisation.


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## Guest

Ingenue said:


> I ha
> 
> Rosencrantz & Guildenstern - I love the play & have taught it, and the film was excellent and went down very well with my sixth form class too.


I teach _R&G_ to my AP seniors--they love it, too! I use it with _Hamlet_, which we read first. I'm switching to _King Lear_ for the upcoming year and pairing it with _Equus_ to keep the eye-gouging motif alive!  BTW, _Equus_ is not bad in its film adaptation with Richard Burton, but I prefer the stark intensity of the play.


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## apricissimus

The movie version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was great, and better than the book, in my opinion.


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## Guest

apricissimus said:


> The movie version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was great, and better than the book, in my opinion.


Well, aside from losing the narrative perspective of Chief Bromden and the symbolism of the climatic attack scene, it's pretty good!  I do think it's perfectly cast and acted, though.


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## Crudblud

I watched David Cronenberg's _Naked Lunch_ last night, it's quite different from the book but it would necessarily have to be, since, as Cronenberg says, a direct adaptation would cost $500m and be banned in every country in the world, brilliant film though. He also did good work adapting J.G. Ballard's _Crash_ in 1996, the setting was shifted from Shepperton/London to North America, but it doesn't impact much at all. I haven't read Don De Lillo's _Cosmopolis_, but I assume Cronenberg's perplexing adaptation is, similarly to his other adaptations, faithful enough to be genuine but different enough to justify its existence in the first place.


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## Ondine

A good film from a book: comes to mind 'Love Story' & '2001: A Space Odyssey'


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## Kieran

*Jaws *was actually a decent adaptation of the book, much as I can't stand Spielberg.

*Lord of the Rings* was a tough book to film, but I thought Peter Jackson did a great job (not sure about The Hobbit and the liberties he's taking there, but anyway).

And of course, some noir movies with Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart were great adaptations of private detective novels...


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

_Amadeus,_ the only film that transcends the book/play it was based on.


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## EricABQ

The Godfather was superior to the book.


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## lunchdress

Kieran said:


> ...
> And of course, some noir movies with Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart were great adaptations of private detective novels...


Raymond Chandler was my first thought! 

'The Big Sleep' and 'Murder, My Sweet' are two of my favorites; though they both stray quite a bit from their original plots and endings they capture the mood and, most importantly, deliver on all that snappy dialog.. 
Also love 'The Long Goodbye' -- Robert Altman was somehow able to modernize and make it his own while staying very close to the story and characters and fatalistic tone of the book.

The Lady in the Lake is a bit of a mess, however; I like that Robert Montgomery was going for something different (it's shot from Marlowe's literal POV throughout) but it just doesn't work at all (imo).


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## GreenMamba

lunchdress said:


> Also love 'The Long Goodbye' -- Robert Altman was somehow able to modernize and make it his own while staying very close to the story and characters and fatalistic tone of the book.


I haven't read the book McCabe and Mrs. Miller was based on, but Altman pretty much said it sucked in his film commentary. He just wanted a basic story upon which to build his visuals.

No Country for Old Men was a better film than book, IMO. (The Road was the opposite.)


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## Mesa




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## Ingélou

Sorry to offend any of John Fowles' fans out there o) but having seen the beguiling film of Meryl Streep as 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' I found the book pretentious and twee.


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## Kieran

I thought Mel Gibson's The Passion was a magnificent version of all the books he based it on, including The Dolourous Passion of Our Lord, by Catherine Emmerich. Not better than the sources, but a tremendous appendix to them...


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## Ingélou

Taggart & I waited ages until we could bring ourselves to watch the version we'd recorded off the TV. Eventually we did, watching it on Good Friday morning. As we'd expected, it was unbearably painful and moving: one of those films like Schindler's List one is glad to have seen but will never watch again.


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## Taggart

I Capture the Castle (2003) from the book by Dodie Smith. Gorgeous eccentric Englishness and quite different from those dalmatians (although the original cartoon was quite a good adaptation too).

We had the pleasure of going round Manorbier Castle (where some of the scenes were shot) shortly after seeing the film.


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## Nereffid

Kieran said:


> I thought Mel Gibson's The Passion was a magnificent version of all the books he based it on, including The Dolourous Passion of Our Lord, by Catherine Emmerich. Not better than the sources, but a tremendous appendix to them...


Now _there's_ a film that almost completely depends on the cultural baggage of the viewer. As a raised-Catholic atheist I saw it as not much more than a snuff movie with high production values. My wife, who knows little about Catholicism, was moved by the scenes involving Jesus's mother. (edited to add: I wonder what someone who knew nothing about Christianity would think of it?)
IIRC the original had a bit more back-story.


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## EricABQ

Kieran said:


> I thought Mel Gibson's The Passion was a magnificent version of all the books he based it on, including The Dolourous Passion of Our Lord, by Catherine Emmerich. Not better than the sources, but a tremendous appendix to them...


I found it to be further evidence that Mel Gibson is a weird dude with a torture fetish.

He just really likes showing people being tortured on screen. Even a kidnap thriller like Ransom ends up with him covered in blood.


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## Nereffid

Also, can I add that Tremendous Appendix would be a great name for a band.


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## Ingélou

Yes, the torture bits were why we put off watching 'The Passion of the Christ'. But I too was moved to tears by the imaginative portrayal of Mary. 

'Little Women' with Winona Ryder I thought was a lovely adaptation. The Hollywood early version with Katherine Hepburn I found too treacly for my taste. My sister and I just wallowed in Louisa May Alcott's series when we were young. Don't think anyone's made a film about our other craze, 'What Katy Did', have they?


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## Taggart

Nereffid said:


> Also, can I add that Tremendous Appendix would be a great name for a band.


Yup and everybody would want to take them out!


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## elgar's ghost

With regards to Shakespeare, my vote would go to Polanski's 1970's Macbeth. Although the director predictably plays fast and loose with regards to some of the play's content (but not as much as Shakespeare's play distorted actual historical fact) at least there was an aura of suffocating evil running all the way through it which I thought helped to make it unsettlingly compelling, and another big plus was that you could tell by the sets and costumes that it was intended to depict 11th century Scotland, complete with dark, dank, rainy weather (it was filmed in North Wales and NE England). My class was studying this as part of our O-level syllabus and we were taken to a local college to see the film - rather surprising seeing I'm guessing it had an X-cert at the time due to the nudity and violence.


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## Ingélou

The benefits of bona fide education! 

I think my favourite Shakespeare is the black and white 'Julius Caesar' with James Mason as Brutus, Marlon Brando as Mark Antony, and John Gieldgud as Cassius. I wouldn't have thought the first two were obvious choices, but Mason was wonderfully anguished and Brando suitably charismatic, and Machiavellian, in the funeral oration. 

Of the Hamlets, I don't like Kenneth Branagh or Mel Gibson at all & would have to pick Laurence Olivier's black and white 'Elsinore' version.


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## Nereffid

I was very impressed by Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, the modern-day setting with Ethan Hawke. It takes a lot of liberties with the text but it's a proper "film" rather than just a film version of a play. Hamlet really seems genuinely depressed rather than philosophically gloomy.

To be or not to be:


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## Kieran

Nereffid said:


> I was very impressed by Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, the modern-day setting with Ethan Hawke. It takes a lot of liberties with the text but it's a proper "film" rather than just a film version of a play. Hamlet really seems genuinely depressed rather than philosophically gloomy.
> 
> To be or not to be:


Hey Nerefidd,

That looks great and on the same YouTube page I saw Arnie as Hamlet!


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## Kieran

EricABQ said:


> I found it to be further evidence that Mel Gibson is a weird dude with a torture fetish.
> 
> He just really likes showing people being tortured on screen. Even a kidnap thriller like Ransom ends up with him covered in blood.


Apocalypto was great though, wasn't it? I don't know if it was based on a book, but I thought it was immense...


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## Ingélou

In children's books, I particularly like E. Nesbit's 'The Railway Children', and they've made two excellent films of the book, both featuring Jenny Agutter, the first time as the eldest daughter Bobby (Roberta) and the second time as the mother whose husband is falsely imprisoned for treason. She was great both times. 

The railway porter, ?Perks, was played first time round by Bernard Cribbins, and he was good, but I liked the second film better mainly because of Gregor Fisher, whose offended class pride and English accent made the porter seem like a real person, not just a comic turn. 

Gregor Fisher is a fine actor, and so much more than 'Rab C. Nesbitt'!


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## elgar's ghost

Ingenue said:


> ...Gregor Fisher is a fine actor, and so much more than 'Rab C. Nesbitt'!


True - I remember him on TV some years back as a horrendously effective Wackford Squeers.


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## PetrB

For novels, other literature, I have yet to have found even a near match. I've learned to expect that a film of the book is NOT in any way going to be even a close second, and has to be taken as 'a film' based upon the story from the book.

(Plays, quite reasonably, are already much more set for the change of medium.)


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## Ingélou

You're so right - there's no substitute for the imagination; though there's a certain pleasure in analysing why they have made certain adaptations. For example, in the Emma Thompson 'Sense and Sensibility', Elinor's beau, in the book, is a little quiet, and the third daughter, Margaret, an 'extra' without much character. So - ta-da! - they make Edmund (Hugh Grant) much jollier and boost Margaret's part as a cute little girl. It's not Jane Austen, but it's quite effective...


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## Kieran

LA Confidential was a good adaptation. I went through a James Ellroy phase when I was looking for something seamy a long time ago. White Jazz and The Big Nowhere, part of the same spectrum as LA Conf. I think Ellroy is a self-professed expert pervert and he writes like that. LA Confidential (book) captures that jazzy LA fifties feel. I thought the movie was excellent too. 

They made The Black Dahlia later on but I don't know if that's any good so I dunno why I mentioned it...


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## TrevBus

"To Kill a Mockingbird". Glorious adaptation of a modern classic.


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## GreenMamba

Just remembered: La Gloire de mon père (My Father's Glory) was a superb film based on Marcel Pagnol's memoir.


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## Ingélou

I remember a pretentious 'David Copperfield' I watched as a student. I think it must have been the 1969 version with Ralph Richardson as Mr Micawber. 

The novel opens with a joke: 'whether I shall be the hero of my own life ...?' 

The film turns this into existential angst, cue Jean Paul Sartre and black polo necks. The film opens and we see David Copperfield prowling moodily up and down Dover beach, muttering darkly, 'Whether I shall be the hero of my own life...'

Good for a laugh, anyway. :lol:


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## moody

PetrB said:


> For novels, other literature, I have yet to have found even a near match. I've learned to expect that a film of the book is NOT in any way going to be even a close second, and has to be taken as 'a film' based upon the story from the book.
> 
> (Plays, quite reasonably, are already much more set for the change of medium.)


I thought that Captain Corelli's Mandolin was better as a film,I found reading the book heavy as hell.


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## schuberkovich

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


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## moody

EricABQ said:


> I found it to be further evidence that Mel Gibson is a weird dude with a torture fetish.
> 
> He just really likes showing people being tortured on screen. Even a kidnap thriller like Ransom ends up with him covered in blood.


Yes,but you must admit that for a 5"5' midget he is wonderful as the 6"6' William Wallace--mustn't you ???


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## Ingélou

And what book was that based on, that had medieval knights painting themselves blue?


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## Couchie

There should be more films based on Joyce and Faulkner. And why hasn't Paradise Lost been made into the film epic to end all film epics yet?


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## Taggart

Couchie said:


> There should be more films based on Joyce and Faulkner. And why hasn't Paradise Lost been made into the film epic to end all film epics yet?


Joyce hasn't done too bad if you look at IMDB. Faulkner wrote some crackers for the screen like the screenplays for The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not although his own stuff wasn't commercial enough.

Trouble with Paradise Lost is they also want to do Paradise Regained and it's currently at 27 films and counting and they can't get anybody to sign up for a project of that length.


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## Kieran

Taggart said:


> Joyce hasn't done too bad if you look at IMDB. Faulkner wrote some crackers for the screen like the screenplays for The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not although his own stuff wasn't commercial enough.
> 
> Trouble with Paradise Lost is they also want to do Paradise Regained and it's currently at 27 films and counting and they can't get anybody to sign up for a project of that length.


Peter Jackson, no? :lol:


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## Ingélou

Couchie said:


> ...why hasn't Paradise Lost been made into the film epic to end all film epics yet?


I think that's a great idea. It would be best as a cartoon, with Blakean illustrations, and occasional narrative links using Milton's verse. What about the occasional musical interlude, say, for Satan's journey.... I could wax quite enthusiastic about this...


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## Nereffid

Alex Proyas (The Crow, I Robot, Dark City, and Knowing) was going to make a Paradise Lost film, with Bradley Cooper as Lucifer, but the project was cancelled because of costs...


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## Ravndal

Mesa said:


>


Haha omg. I love parks & rec.


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## Selby

Crudblud said:


> I watched David Cronenberg's _Naked Lunch_ last night, it's quite different from the book but it would necessarily have to be, since, as Cronenberg says, a direct adaptation would cost $500m and be banned in every country in the world, brilliant film though. He also did good work adapting J.G. Ballard's _Crash_ in 1996, the setting was shifted from Shepperton/London to North America, but it doesn't impact much at all. I haven't read Don De Lillo's _Cosmopolis_, but I assume Cronenberg's perplexing adaptation is, similarly to his other adaptations, faithful enough to be genuine but different enough to justify its existence in the first place.


I love Cronenberg's adaptations. Another to add to this is A History of Violence starring Viggo Mortensen. I give it my highest recommendation. I have yet to see Cosmopolis. DeLillo is one of my favorite contemporary authors; if anyone can do him justice I am sure it is Cronenberg, but I am a little wary. Cosmopolis is not DeLillo's strongest work, but it is worthy, if you haven't done so you should read White Noise - it is a must.


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## moody

Ingenue said:


> And what book was that based on, that had medieval knights painting themselves blue?


It was a dreadful film and not true to history,it had Wallace rescuing the Bruce in the losing battle when it was actually the other way round.
The midget belongs to an anti English group and you will see this in many of his films.
The reason for this is that he is half Irish and his family fiercely so,look at his entry on Wikipedia.


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## science

Sometimes a movie makes a book better. For example, _The Last of the Mohicans_. Horrible book. Absolutely awful. Worst "classic" book ever. _Ever_. But the Daniel Day-Lewis movie of it is good.

In terms of good books with good movies, I'll go with _Fight Club_. Decent book, decent movie.

In terms of great books with good movies, the closest I can think of are Roman Polanski's _Macbeth_, Lawrence Olivier's _Henry V_, and Olivier's _King Lear_. I endorse Baz Luhrmann's _Romeo + Juliet_, but his _The Great Gatsby_ is merely ok.


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## Taggart

Of course, for those of us of a certain age, it will always be the TV series with Lon Chaney Jr as Chingachgook and John Hart as Hawkeye (should that be hocum  ).

For those of you with a taste for 1950's TV Westerns:


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## Ryan

The passion of the Christ. 

The book was poorly written with very little character depth and no real storyline. The film however was much more believable, you could really sense the directors anger and hatred where as the book seems fairly monotone and could have been written by someone suffering from dementia. The main character actually seemed plausible in the movie, something the book never really delivered.


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## brianvds

Ingenue said:


> And what book was that based on, that had medieval knights painting themselves blue?


It was broadly based on the Belgian comic book artist Pierre Culliford's series "Avatar." :devil:



Ingenue said:


> Taggart & I waited ages until we could bring ourselves to watch the version we'd recorded off the TV. Eventually we did, watching it on Good Friday morning. As we'd expected, it was unbearably painful and moving: one of those films like Schindler's List one is glad to have seen but will never watch again.


Speaking of "Schindler's List," some time ago I borrowed the book it was based on from the library, and found the book unreadably boring. I can't understand how anyone can make that subject matter boring, but there you go. If you ask me, the film was much better.

Having read some non-fiction works on the Holocaust, I have to say, mind you, that "Schindler's List", as horrific as it is, is actually a quite sanitized version of what really went on. The reality is so mind-numbing that I'm not sure any film could ever quite capture it.


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## Taggart

brianvds said:


> Speaking of "Schindler's List," some time ago I borrowed the book it was based on from the library, and found the book unreadably boring. I can't understand how anyone can make that subject matter boring, but there you go.


That's Australians for you!


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## elgar's ghost

moody said:


> It was a dreadful film and not true to history,it had Wallace rescuing the Bruce in the losing battle when it was actually the other way round.
> The midget belongs to an anti English group and you will see this in many of his films.
> The reason for this is that he is half Irish and his family fiercely so,look at his entry on Wikipedia.


Braveheart was anti-English rubbish and the perfect vehicle for Gibson's own personal agenda. Worse, it distorted Scottish history and the execution scene was pathetic - as if the crowd would shed tears of pity after he had attempted to lay waste to half of the North of England. The only comedy was Gibson's accent - he was to Scots what Sean Connery is to Irish. Patriot was absolute codswallop - nuff said. And to top that he also managed to subvert the role of Fletcher Christian in a version of Mutiny on the Bounty. What next for him? My money's on either Wolfe Tone, Tippu Sultan or Joan of Arc.


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## Taggart

elgars ghost said:


> What next for him? My money's on either Wolfe Tone, Tippu Sultan or Joan of Arc.


I'd love to see him in Brecht's St Joan of the Stockyards as a labour leader!


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## brianvds

Ingenue said:


> elgars ghost said:
> 
> 
> 
> Braveheart was anti-English rubbish and the perfect vehicle for Gibson's own personal agenda. Worse, it distorted Scottish history and the execution scene was pathetic - as if the crowd would shed tears of pity after he had attempted to lay waste to half of the North of England. The only comedy was Gibson's accent - he was to Scots what Sean Connery is to Irish. Patriot was absolute codswallop - nuff said. And to top that he also managed to subvert the role of Fletcher Christian in a version of Mutiny on the Bounty. What next for him? My money's on either Wolfe Tone, Tippu Sultan or Joan of Arc.
> 
> 
> 
> Given his predilection for blood and guts, maybe he'll return to the Roman Empire, this time as a saint that eventually gets martyred. We'll get to see Christians burned alive and ripped to pieces by lions and so on.
Click to expand...


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## Kieran

I think a Viking movie was in the offing until he went berserk. Both the Passion and Apocalypto are the two greatest movies of the last 15 years, imho...


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## Guest

Interesting question. I might suggest that the only valid question is whether a film-maker makes a good job of the 'story of the book'. A book is an entirely different experience from a film, not least because it must inevitably be a sequential experience - one word following another - which builds up a unique set of silent images in each reader's head. A film offers a semi-real (movement, sound) set of simultaneous experiences with a different set of ambiguities and subtleties (or not-so-subtleties) from those of the written word.

What a film-maker can at least do is to take the story and replicate it; or take the ideas that the book explores and do the same, though rarely does the producer or director take the trouble to make sure that the audience notices the disclaimer 'based on' or 'inspired by' the novel.

I suspect too that novelists are less subject to the commercial pressures that film producers are - to make an artistic artefact with both length and content limitations. I don't mean they are not subject to commercial considerations at all, but much of the movie industry is dictated to by what the studios think will earn dollars in, for example, middle America, and films are shot and cut accordingly. This means that what is included in the adapted story and what is left out; who is cast; where the story is set; what is shown and what is left to the imagination is subject to such pressures, as well as the producer's choices.

So, David Lean's movies of novels by Dickens and Forster are splendid cinematic experiences - _Oliver Twist_ is probably my favourite - but since I find Dickens a hard read, I may not be a good judge of the extent to which it is a good adaptation!


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## Ingélou

brianvds said:


> Given his predilection for blood and guts, maybe he'll return to the Roman Empire, this time as a saint that eventually gets martyred. We'll get to see Christians burned alive and ripped to pieces by lions and so on.


............


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## Ingélou

MacLeod said:


> Interesting question. I might suggest that the only valid question is whether a film-maker makes a good job of the 'story of the book'. A book is an entirely different experience from a film, not least because it must inevitably be a sequential experience - one word following another - which builds up a unique set of silent images in each reader's head. A film offers a semi-real (movement, sound) set of simultaneous experiences with a different set of ambiguities and subtleties (or not-so-subtleties) from those of the written word.
> 
> What a film-maker can at least do is to take the story and replicate it; or take the ideas that the book explores and do the same, though rarely does the producer or director take the trouble to make sure that the audience notices the disclaimer 'based on' or 'inspired by' the novel.
> 
> I suspect too that novelists are less subject to the commercial pressures that film producers are - to make an artistic artefact with both length and content limitations. I don't mean they are not subject to commercial considerations at all, but much of the movie industry is dictated to by what the studios think will earn dollars in, for example, middle America, and films are shot and cut accordingly. This means that what is included in the adapted story and what is left out; who is cast; where the story is set; what is shown and what is left to the imagination is subject to such pressures, as well as the producer's choices.
> 
> So, David Lean's movies of novels by Dickens and Forster are splendid cinematic experiences - _Oliver Twist_ is probably my favourite - but since I find Dickens a hard read, I may not be a good judge of the extent to which it is a good adaptation!


Dickens constructed his books round commercial pressures, of course, with thousands waiting for the next serial instalment, packed with melodrama, cliffhangers and coincidences. I don't read Dickens much these days, but he is a wonderfully vivacious writer.

My favourite is 'A Tale of Two Cities', and no film can go wrong with that plot! I remember teaching it at a girls' school & showing them the video before we'd read the end. When we watched the finale ... well, it's a pity moody wasn't there to witness the blubbering! 

One thing I don't like about recent Dickens films is the fashion for drab scenery, dirty clothes, brown furnishings, and all, it seems, shot through a brown filter by the light of two wickering candles. 'Authentic', maybe, but you can't make out a thing through the fog...


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## Notung

Brannagh's "Hamlet".


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## TrevBus

elgars ghost said:


> Braveheart was anti-English rubbish and the perfect vehicle for Gibson's own personal agenda. Worse, it distorted Scottish history and the execution scene was pathetic - as if the crowd would shed tears of pity after he had attempted to lay waste to half of the North of England. The only comedy was Gibson's accent - he was to Scots what Sean Connery is to Irish. Patriot was absolute codswallop - nuff said. And to top that he also managed to subvert the role of Fletcher Christian in a version of Mutiny on the Bounty. What next for him? My money's on either Wolfe Tone, Tippu Sultan or Joan of Arc.[/QUOTE
> 
> Other than that, you like him a lot, right. LOL


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## elgar's ghost

TrevBus said:


> elgars ghost said:
> 
> 
> 
> Braveheart was anti-English rubbish and the perfect vehicle for Gibson's own personal agenda. Worse, it distorted Scottish history and the execution scene was pathetic - as if the crowd would shed tears of pity after he had attempted to lay waste to half of the North of England. The only comedy was Gibson's accent - he was to Scots what Sean Connery is to Irish. Patriot was absolute codswallop - nuff said. And to top that he also managed to subvert the role of Fletcher Christian in a version of Mutiny on the Bounty. What next for him? My money's on either Wolfe Tone, Tippu Sultan or Joan of Arc.[/QUOTE
> 
> Other than that, you like him a lot, right. LOL
> 
> 
> 
> Actually, yes - I think MG can be a fine actor but all too often he undoes potentially fine work by letting less conducive tendencies interfere. As it represents a key period in American history The Patriot could have been a fine movie if more sensitively handled but all it turned out to be was essentially big budget cliche-ridden agitprop fodder complete with the requisite national stereotypes - not that MG was singularly to blame seeing he didn't direct it. I'm beginning to think Roland Emmerich's a joke anyway - all too often his direction amounts to little more than self-indulgent flights of fancy with a large side order of pretentiousness.
Click to expand...


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## Guest

Ingenue said:


> Dickens constructed his books round commercial pressures, of course,


You're right - though I don't know whether he felt this enabled or compromised his work. Writing within such constraints may be like choosing to write only sonnets, or may be like being _told _to write only sonnets.

I've neither seen nor read ATOTC, so I'll look out for a movie version - there's more than one, I presume?

One pair of 'film of the book' that has presumably already been mentioned is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Whilst I think Peter Jackson did a great job with LOTR, the adaptation made some significant sacrifices and in doing so, lost some of the richness of the themes - life as a 'song' or 'story', for example; the rustic charms of the locals in Bree; the need to show The Shire as profoundly changed in order to show the hobbits as changed too; the elaborations on nature and old magic - Tom Bombadil, for example; the Christian analogies (the age of Frodo when he begins his quest).

Someone on a LOTR forum suggested that Jan Svankmajer might have made a better job, as he would have brought an other-wordly quality to the film that was completely set aside by Jackson in his quest to make Middle Earth real. I tend to agree.


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## Ingélou

I imagine that Dickens throve on the conditions. He edited magazines himself, acted in amateur productions (was accounted a fine actor) and did lecture tours of readings from his work, during which scores of young men, as well as women, fainted with emotion.

His doctor warned him not to do one reading, where Bill Sykes clubs Nancy to death, but he just couldn't leave it out, and the over-excitement is believed to have brought his own demise! 

I was brought up on the black & white Dirk Bogarde 'Tale of Two Cities', but the one I showed to my girls was in colour. I can't remember any more. I loved both films, and despite my futile childhood crush on Dirk, preferred the latter.


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## Pyotr

Speaking of Dickens, my all-time favorite Dickens screenplay is the 2005 fifteen-part BBC TV Miniseries, Bleak House, starring Suzanne Burden as Esther Summerson, Denholm Elliott as John Jarndyce, T. P. McKenna as Harold Skimpole, and, my all-time favorite, Charlie Drake as Mr. Smallweed(shake me up). Wife and I have watched all 15 episodes in one sitting the last couple of winters when we had a bad snowstorm and are shut in for the day.


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## brianvds

I should look into good movies based on Dickens. I have tried to read Dickens and found it unreadably boring, so now there is a gaping hole in my cultural education. If I just watch some of the better movies, perhaps they'll enable me to bluff my way into Dickens discussions at dinner parties.


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## drpraetorus

MacLeod said:


> You're right - though I don't know whether he felt this enabled or compromised his work. Writing within such constraints may be like choosing to write only sonnets, or may be like being _told _to write only sonnets.
> 
> I've neither seen nor read ATOTC, so I'll look out for a movie version - there's more than one, I presume?
> 
> One pair of 'film of the book' that has presumably already been mentioned is The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Whilst I think Peter Jackson did a great job with LOTR, the adaptation made some significant sacrifices and in doing so, lost some of the richness of the themes - life as a 'song' or 'story', for example; the rustic charms of the locals in Bree; the need to show The Shire as profoundly changed in order to show the hobbits as changed too; the elaborations on nature and old magic - Tom Bombadil, for example; the Christian analogies (the age of Frodo when he begins his quest).
> 
> Someone on a LOTR forum suggested that Jan Svankmajer might have made a better job, as he would have brought an other-wordly quality to the film that was completely set aside by Jackson in his quest to make Middle Earth real. I tend to agree.


I'm just hoping that someone will make a movie version of "Bored of the Rings". An immensely funny book.


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## drpraetorus

I am surprised that no one has mentioned "A Clockwork Orange". A very good version of a very good book.


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## Guest

Pyotr said:


> Speaking of Dickens, my all-time favorite Dickens screenplay is the 2005 fifteen-part BBC TV Miniseries, Bleak House, starring Suzanne Burden as Esther Summerson, Denholm Elliott as John Jarndyce, T. P. McKenna as Harold Skimpole, and, my all-time favorite, Charlie Drake as Mr. Smallweed(shake me up). Wife and I have watched all 15 episodes in one sitting the last couple of winters when we had a bad snowstorm and are shut in for the day.


Well, that's odd. There was a 15 part miniseries in 2005, but the cast you refer to was in an 8 part series in 1985 - surely it can't have been transmitted in the US so far behind UK transmission?



Ingenue said:


> I was brought up on the black & white Dirk Bogarde 'Tale of Two Cities', but the one I showed to my girls was in colour. I can't remember any more. I loved both films, and despite my futile childhood crush on Dirk, preferred the latter.


Dirk Bogarde was astonishingly handsome wasn't he? I can't say I had a crush on him, futile or otherwise, but with the exception of Death in Venice, I always enjoyed his movies - _The Servant, Victim, Libel, Blackmailed, Ill Met By Moonlight, Doctor in the House_ et al...


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## drpraetorus

There has never been a worse film adaptation than "Mary Shellys Frankenstein". As for Shakespeare, I truly love Oliviers Richard the Third. He is so wonderfully evil and by talking directly to the camera, makes the audience part of the plot. I know it is a bit of an amalgam but still very good (Nice to know they finally found Dick 3 and give him a good burial). Oliviers Lear is probably the best film version. Better than the Ian McKellan version and far better than the Patrick Stewart revision and updating to cowboy Texas. There is a wonderful version of Midsummer Nights Dream with Ian Holm as Puck, Ian Richardson as Oberon, Judy Dench as Titania, Helen Mirren as Hermia and Diana Rigg as Helena. You don't get much better than that. One of the highlights, depending on your tastes is Judy Denchs costume. It consists of a couple strategically placed leaves. S
























he must have been freezing during the filming.


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## Pyotr

MacLeod said:


> Well, that's odd. There was a 15 part miniseries in 2005, but the cast you refer to was in an 8 part series in 1985 - surely it can't have been transmitted in the US so far behind UK transmission?


Thanks for the correction MacLeod. You are correct, that is the 1985 cast which I erroneously listed. I like that production also and own both DVD sets but the 2005 is my favorite. Just to set the record straight:
Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther Summerson
Denis Lawson as John Jarndyce
Nathaniel Parker as Harold Skimpole
Phil Davis as Mr. Smallweed(set me down you poll parrot)


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## Pyotr

brianvds said:


> I should look into good movies based on Dickens. I have tried to read Dickens and found it unreadably boring, so now there is a gaping hole in my cultural education. If I just watch some of the better movies, perhaps they'll enable me to bluff my way into Dickens discussions at dinner parties.


Have you read The Pickwick Papers? My favorite.


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## brianvds

Pyotr said:


> Have you read The Pickwick Papers? My favorite.


Oliver Twist cured me of Dickens, probably permanently.


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## brianvds

Notung said:


> Brannagh's "Hamlet".


Shakespeare is one genre where no movie will do, for the simple reason that if I cannot read the text and think it over, I cannot make any sense of it whatever. I have tried watching Shakespeare movies of plays that I am not familiar with; I could quite literally not make sense of one single sentence in such films. It was like trying to watch a German film without subtitles: I can make out snatches here and there, but no complete sentences. Thus I lose the plot within two minutes.


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## Guest

If we're talking Shakespeare, I'm very fond of _Henry V _(1945). But this is cheating, isn't it? Shakespeare didn't write books!


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## Ingélou

Please feel free to discuss Shakespeare. It's not cheating, if you look at my OP. I chose 'film of the book' as a snappy title - my undoing, but 'film of the literary work' just doesn't have that zing... 

I love the opening of the Olivier 'Henry V' in particular, with its recreation of an Elizabethan theatre. Good call!


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## Andreas

Tarkovsky's Solaris. I had already seen the film before I read the novel by Lem. The novel, though possibly a little clumsily translated, was good. Tarkovsky's film, however, was injected with a whole nother dimension of genius.


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## Ingélou

We just watched 'Clarissa' - a BBC dramatisation of Samuel Richardson's novel. It was featured as 'a movie' on the Scandinavian DVD we bought, which had the choice of Swedish, Danish or Norwegian subtitles. (We opted out!  )

'The movie' of *Clarissa* was excellent - stunning costumes & interiors, and a story that stuns you too. Since it was the longest novel in English, they had to take some liberties with the plot - but I only know that from Wiki. After reading *Pamela*, I decided that life was too short to read another Richardson novel.


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## Blancrocher

Andreas said:


> Tarkovsky's Solaris. I had already seen the film before I read the novel by Lem. The novel, though possibly a little clumsily translated, was good. Tarkovsky's film, however, was injected with a whole nother dimension of genius.


I came here specifically to recommend that one--the movie is amazing. Lem, unfortunately, did not agree: he unfairly dismissed it as a "love story" (if you can believe it) and said it complete missed the point of the book. Lem seems to have been hard on people as a rule, I'm afraid.

A little note about the weird 10-minute-or-so scene in which Kris drives into town: I'd assumed it was supposed to be a slow and uneventful scene where Tarkovsky wanted me to drift in and out of the film and take stock of my own thoughts. It turns out that we're supposed to be impressed with the big-budget cityscape outside the window! Apparently he didn't realize how futuristic western cities already were by comparison with Russia--or with his idea of the future!

Another book on my list is Roadside Picnic, the source for Stalker. I hear it's good.

p.s. I also like the cheesy Hollywood remake of Solaris with George Clooney, which really is a love story.


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## Art Rock

This will offend a lot of Tolkien fans, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Love it.


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## Ingélou

It doesn't offend us, Art Rock. Taggart is a dyed-in-the-wool Tolkien fan, but we still regularly watch the film trilogy & enjoy it. I'm more a 'hanger on' but I do enjoy the books too. 

When Taggart was in hospital, very ill, ten plus years ago now, he didn't want to read anything but I sneaked in his 'Lord of the Rings' books and he soon got hooked up to life again...


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## Taggart

Art Rock said:


> This will offend a lot of Tolkien fans, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Love it.





Ingenue said:


> When Taggart was in hospital, very ill, ten plus years ago now, he didn't want to read anything but I sneaked in his 'Lord of the Rings' books and he soon got hooked up to life again...


Given what else they had me hooked up to, it was nice to have something interesting to read. Lovely set of films. Seems crazy that Jackson can make three movies of three books leaving out vast chunks and then stretch the Hobbit to three films. I think the ring's got to him. 

Seriously, the whole point of being a hard core Tolkien fan is to note carefully all the things Jackson missed out of the films that are *essential* to the plot and then admit that despite that he's made a reasonable fist of it. It's a bit like the way that hobbits are totally engrossed with genealogy - it's important, but it can get in the way of the story.


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## Blancrocher

Taggart said:


> Seriously, the whole point of being a hard core Tolkien fan is to note carefully all the things Jackson missed out of the films that are *essential* to the plot and then admit that despite that he's made a reasonable fist of it. It's a bit like the way that hobbits are totally engrossed with genealogy - it's important, but it can get in the way of the story.


My favorite of the trilogy is the first, in the extended cut for dvd--it manages to capture some of the slowness of the travel time where Frodo & co. can stop and smell the roses and marvel at the magical world they're getting out to see for the first time.

Of course, don't get me started on the omission of Tom Bombadil.


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## Taggart

Blancrocher said:


> Of course, don't get me started on the omission of Tom Bombadil.


It's not so much Bombadil as the barrow wight and the knives found in the tomb that get me and that in turn requires Bombadil . Bombadil is always a little difficult to fit into the whole Silmarillion story and the development of men and dwarves - not to mention hobbits and Ents.


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## Vesteralen

Perhaps the most faithful and complete adaptation of a novel ever, von Stroheim's eight-hour masterpiece "Greed", with the underappreciated actress ZaSu Pitts in a role that shows the pure genius of the director.

Even better, in my opinion - "The Wind", with Lillian Gish.

"National Velvet" with Elizabeth Taylor

"October Sky" from the Homer Hickham autobiographical novel "The Rocket Boys"

and, let me add two comedies to the list -

"Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy

and

"Father of the Bride" with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor


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## Cheyenne

_The Outlaw Josey Wales_, _White Hunter, Black Heart_ and _The Bridges of Madison Country_; if by best you mean far better than the book it's based on. Clint Eastwood did with lesser books what many composers did with lesser poetry. As for adaptations of quality literature, I'll go with John Huston's adaptation of _The Dead_. If actual _books_ are required, _A Clockwork Orange_. For a bonus, _Capote_ (2005) is my favourite film dealing with an author: Hoffman's performance is eerily good.


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## Ingélou

We just watched Rebecca, having read Daphne Du Maurier's novel earlier this year. 

I think it is a good adaptation. Joan Fontaine is a great piece of casting for the nameless heroine because she looks so nervous and also so young and appealing. Laurence Olivier is good as Maxim De Winter - handsome but obviously short-tempered. I was looking forward to seeing Judith Anderson who plays Mrs Danvers and was nominated for an award for Best Supporting Actress for the part. She was fine, but in places a bit wooden, in my opinion, and not as menacing as I'd have liked. 

It was quite a long film but still had to conflate events. For example, the fancy dress ball leads directly to the discovery of Rebecca's yacht and we don't see how the second wife pulls herself together and acts as hostess, and the estrangement between Maxim and her. 

The biggest change made to the book was that in the film Maxim doesn't shoot Rebecca, but she falls and hits her head instead, and he then gets rid of her body. I understand why the change was made but I think it destroyed the point that Rebecca was so fiendish she accomplished 'suicide by husband-wielding-gun' and that the second Mrs De Winter understood that and was still totally supportive of Maxim. 

But we very much enjoyed seeing it and will watch it again.


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## TxllxT

Recently we read the novel (the WW I part) behind the 'Upstairs, Downstairs' ITV series. Wonderful and very good in rendering the tense wartime atmosphere! The only thing we don't understand is, who are actually the authors? Mollie & Michael Hardwick or Jean Marsh & Eileen Atkins? Perhaps someone is able to enlighten us.


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## Strange Magic

Three come to mind:

_Outcast of the Islands_, a 1951 film version of the Joseph Conrad novel An outcast of the Islands. All-star cast with Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson, Wendy Hiller, Robert Morley. As good as the novel was, the film was even better.

_The Maltese Falcon_, the classic Bogart movie of the Dashiell Hammett book, an almost perfect realization of the book.

_Lonesome Dove_, the superb 1989 4-part TV miniseries with Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. Again, a near-perfect rendering of Larry McMurtry's 1985 novel.

So many more.......


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## jegreenwood

_Tom Jones_ seemed to capture the 800 page novel in two hours. A miracle. I remember seeing it on a double bill with _Women in Love_. A very satisfying four hours.

I recently watched _The Go-Between_. I read the novel when the film first was released and was pleased with the adaptation back then. The recent viewing was also fine. To my knowledge, Harold Pinter never wrote an original full length screenplay. Some other good ones there.

Finally novel to stage - nothing comes close to the Royal Shakespeare Company's _Nicholas Niclkleby_.


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## Ingélou

Tonight we watched the film of another novel by Daphne Du Maurier, 'My Cousin Rachel', starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. We enjoyed it, though we found the melodramatic music rather intrusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Cousin_Rachel_(1952_film)

Richard Burton was okay but seemed a bit abrupt - not much sense of his inner workings. And Olivia de Havilland was charming but not compelling and mysterious as she should have been. Part of the problem was the necessary compression to the novel to make it into a normal-length film. We don't, for example, see much of Rachel's extravagance.

I don't think a film can ever do this novel justice, though. It's told by Philip Ashley himself and readers share his uncertainty and his fevered passion and his ultimate doubt as to whether Rachel murdered Ambrose and plotted to gain the estate. The film might have worked a little better with the occasional reflective voice-over - but watching it unfold as an observer is so much less intimate than reading and sharing Philip's consciousness.


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## jegreenwood

_The Birds_ was based on a Du Maurier story. You could try that next.


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## HenryPenfold

Two faves

1 To Kill A Mockingbird 



2 Great Expectations (black and white one with John Mills)


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## jegreenwood

Couchie said:


> There should be more films based on Joyce and Faulkner. And why hasn't Paradise Lost been made into the film epic to end all film epics yet?


Of course there's the greatest screen adaptation of all time (according to at least one critic) - Pinter's _The Proust Screenplay_. Not just a section of _Remembrance_, but the whole seven volume novel. While it was never filmed it was adapted for the stage by Pinter and Di Travis for The National Theatre. Both the screenplay and the stage adaptation have been published.


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## Strange Magic

brianvds said:


> Shakespeare is one genre where no movie will do, for the simple reason that if I cannot read the text and think it over, I cannot make any sense of it whatever. I have tried watching Shakespeare movies of plays that I am not familiar with; I could quite literally not make sense of one single sentence in such films. It was like trying to watch a German film without subtitles: I can make out snatches here and there, but no complete sentences. Thus I lose the plot within two minutes.


Try the Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, James Mason, Louis Calhern, and a host of other fine actors' version of _Julius Caesar_. itself one of The Bard's best and clearest plays.


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## science

IMHO there has never been and probably never will or could be a film version of _The Last of The Mohicans_ that is not better than the book.

_No Country for Old Men_ has probably been mentioned. Both a very good book and a very good film.

_Fight Club_ is much better than the book, primarily because the book didn't have Helena Bonham Carter in it.


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## Strange Magic

Some would regard the film version of Mika Waltari's novel _The Egyptian_ as a bit cheesy, released in 1954 during an era full of sword and sandal and quasi-biblical productions--same good, some bad. Rome, ancient Egypt, Samson and Delilah, Ben Hur, etc. But I have a weakness for some of these old chestnuts--the galley scene in Ben Hur is classic, as Jack Hawkins tells Charlton Heston to row the boat a little faster.

But I loved the book and thought Hollywood did, for the time, a decent job of getting it onto the screen. The story itself is golden, with bits of ancient Egyptian history--the years of the Amarna cult of Aten-worship linked to an actual surviving tale of a real character--Sinuhe the Egyptian (look him up on Wikipedia). Good cast for the time--Victor Mature, Jean Simmons, Peter Ustinov, Gene Tierney, Michael Wilding, Bella Darvi, and Edmund Purdom as Sinuhe. My only real complaint is that somebody should have demonstrated to Victor Mature how to hold his small staffs of office next to his chest--with wrists crossed instead of just the staffs crossed. King Tut knew how to hold them and he was only a boy.


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## Merl

Usually I'd avoid Stephen King adaptations like the plague as they're often poor at best (The Dark Half) and diabolical at worst (do you remember that horrendous butchering of Needful Things starring a hopelessly miscast Max Von Sydow?). However apart from leaving out the motor-mower incident the film version of Misery was as close to finally getting a King story over the line as anything that went before it. The one that did finally surpass the book version was Shawshank Redemption but I wish theyd used a poster of Rita Hayworth as it was in the original title of the short story. Otherwise it outstrips the book on all fronts. Gerald's Game was a decent effort too as the book does tend to waffle a bit (like all King books).


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## senza sordino

In the book Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle, people from Earth visit another planet only to discover it's run by a race of apes. Sure there's a twist at the end of the story, but nothing like the twist at the end of the movie. In the movie they don't leave Earth at all, they just travel through time into a post-nuclear future. "Damn you, damn you all to hell! You blew it up, you idiots!" A better ending to the movie than the book in my opinion.


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## vespertine

Merl said:


> Usually I'd avoid Stephen King adaptations like the plague as they're often poor at best (The Dark Half) and diabolical at worst (do you remember that horrendous butchering of Needful Things starring a hopelessly miscast Max Von Sydow?). However apart from leaving out the motor-mower incident the film version of Misery was as close to finally getting a King story over the line as anything that went before it. The one that did finally surpass the book version was Shawshank Redemption but I wish theyd used a poster of Rita Hayworth as it was in the original title of the short story. Otherwise it outstrips the book on all fronts. Gerald's Game was a decent effort too as the book does tend to waffle a bit (like all King books).


I'd recommend _The Mist _if you've not seen it - the film from 2007, not the recent series on (I believe) Netflix. I agree that _Misery_ is fantastic - Kathy Bates really brings it.


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## PeterKC

Tune in Tomorrow, an almost perfect adaptation of the Comic novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwiter by Mario Vargas Llosa. Absolutely hilarious! Peter Faulk, Barbara Hershey 
Keanu, John Laroquett and a host of brilliant character actors.


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## JessieJim

The Lord of Rings, it's very close to book and I like the atmosphere.


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