Book to Film

John Sutherland, writing in The Times this week, had a headline "Can the film version ever outclass the book?" He seemed to think not. Of course his article linked to the film made and distributed this week called "One Day" based on the popular novel of the same title. The film didn't live up to the book (both sound pretty awful to me, a bit like "Love Story" maybe to which handkerchiefs galore were taken - I took one to stifle my laughter). He suggested that they hardly ever do though he did draw a comparision of this film with the quite recent film "An Eduaction" which was a more successful adaptation, though that was taken from a memoire rather than a novel.
Hitchcock felt that it worked best if the book was not a good one; he made the great horror film "Psycho" which was based on a quite ordinary novel. On Desert Island Discs some time back he said he was about to make "a gentle little horror film". Gentle, my foot. The book is gentle but the film is anything but.
There have been some good films made from some good books: "Shane" for one. The character of Shane in the film, played by Alan Ladd, is much different from the one in the book who is a harder guy altogether. But both versions pass the test of watchability/readability.
I think the film of "Gone with the Wind" is rather better than the book though, I have to say, I don't want to see it again. Nor do I wish to trudge through that long book again neither. "Double Indemnity" is a superb film and an excellent read. I was surprised that a lot of the dialogue in the film is not Chandler's but comes straight out of the novel by James M. Cain.
A few of his books became films and most were good: "The Postman always rings Twice" and "Mildred Pierce" in which Joan Crawford won an oscar were the most famous.
Sutherland mentions the two versions of "Brideshead Revisited": the ghastly one made in 2006 and the TV version of 1981. He says: "The main reason it didn't work was because 113 minutes wasn't enough time to wrap itself around the novel." I think the John Mortimor adaptation was the chief factor in that it used a great deal of the original novel's narrative by that great writer and ghastly human being, Evelyn Waugh. Maybe he'd have enjoyed the ghastly version!