Being both a movie maven and a lit guy, I’ve often bemoaned the dearth of great movies adapted from great books – a thought prompted once again by the imminent release of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” The reasons for this scarcity are legion.
A great novel or short story is great in large part not because of its plot but because of the ways in which the author has framed his or her very personal way of seeing, of feeling. The language employed is indistinguishable from the author’s vision. When William Faulkner, for example, describes a rising moon as a “wan hemorrhage,” it won’t do for a filmmaker to express the beauty of this phrase by simply photographing a moon, no matter how artfully composed.
The deep degree of psychological insight in a great novel is also difficult for a movie to measure up to. A writer can plumb the inner lives of characters in ways often inaccessible in film except by the finest of actors, and through very different means. It is no accident that many of my favorite literary adaptations showcase great performances. Great actors bring inner lives outward.
Why We Wrote This
Classic stories like “The Odyssey” don’t often make great movies. But it is no accident that many great literary adaptations showcase great performances. Great actors bring inner lives outward.
I once asked Norman Mailer if there could ever be a movie as great as, say, Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” He answered that it was possible, but it wouldn’t be a movie of “Crime and Punishment.” Movies hit us in different ways than novels. One thing novels can’t match, obviously, is the sheer physicality, the sheer sensuousness, of the visual and theatrical experience. The movie “Jaws” is infinitely better than the novel. The same is true of “The Godfather.”
It’s worth pointing out that, in these two instances, the source material was far from a masterpiece. It’s a truism that second-rate novels often make for far better movies than first-rate ones. Great novels are great because of the web and texture of the writer’s vision. They are too intimidating for most filmmakers to tackle, though the many who have tried should not be disparaged. Their attempt, after all, is often inspired by a love of the book.
There are, however, exceptions to this truism, which brings me to my brief personal list of best movie adaptations of great literature. Most can be streamed. To make the cut, they had to be close in quality to the book. So, although I’ve enjoyed, for instance, some of the Jane Austen adaptations over the years, especially “Pride & Prejudice” with Keira Knightley, and Emma Thompson in “Sense and Sensibility,” I wouldn’t place these films at the top. Some of my picks may be unfamiliar to you. All the better: I envy what you have to look forward to. One caveat: Please read the book before you see the movie if at all possible. Reading it afterward saps its strength.
“The Grapes of Wrath” – This 1940 John Ford adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel about Dust Bowl migrants in California is almost as renowned as the book, and rightly so. It captures the faces of the dispossessed with a fierce authenticity that matches Steinbeck’s prose and recalls the photographs of Dorothea Lange. As Tom Joad, Henry Fonda, who played Lincoln for Ford the year before, is at his most iconic.
“Great Expectations” – David Lean’s 1946 version of the Charles Dickens novel is, for many, the pinnacle of all great book adaptations. Writers often don’t like the movies made from their books (though they like the paychecks), but I believe Dickens himself would have been pleased. Two years later, Lean made an excellent “Oliver Twist” and, for his last film, a highly creditable “A Passage to India,” from the E. M. Forster novel. And while we’re on the subject of Dickens, the Alastair Sim “A Christmas Carol,” not directed by Lean, is impeccable.
“The Heiress” – William Wyler’s 1949 movie, adapted from a stage play based on Henry James’ “Washington Square,” is ferociously powerful. Olivia de Havilland, at her peak, plays the jilted heiress and Montgomery Clift is the gold-digging suitor. It also boasts a terrific score by Aaron Copland. Another marvelous James adaptation is “The Innocents” (1961), derived from his chilling otherworldly novella “The Turn of the Screw,” with a career-best performance from Deborah Kerr as the imperious governess.
“The Leopard” – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s famous novel, set in 1860s Italy during the insurgent Risorgimento movement, was transformed by Luchino Visconti in the 1963 film into one of the most sweepingly operatic movies ever made. As the noble Don Fabrizio Corbera, prince of Salina, who recognizes his time has passed, Burt Lancaster is beyond praise.
“The Scarlet Letter” – Lillian Gish gives one of the greatest of all movie performances in this superlative 1926 silent adaption of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. Gish personally chose its director, the Swedish Victor Sjöström, because she felt, rightly, that his Scandinavian sensibility was attuned to Hawthorne’s.
“The Member of the Wedding” – Adapted from the play and novel by Carson McCullers about a lonely tomboy in the Deep South, superlatively played by Julie Harris, the 1952 dramatization is one of the most moving films ever made about race relations and the hazards of growing up. Ethel Waters’ performance as the housekeeper is legendary.
“The Dead” – John Huston was perhaps the finest of all directors of great literature. “The Dead,” his final film, an adaptation of the peerless James Joyce story, is among his very best, as rich and lived-in as anything he ever did. Also high on the Huston scale is his 1951 movie of Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage,” even though MGM severely trimmed the release version, and his 1975 Rudyard Kipling movie, “The Man Who Would Be King,” starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine as the hapless adventurers Danny and Peachy. And his 1956 “Moby Dick” has occasional passages that match Herman Melville’s prose. Speaking of Melville, there is much to commend in Peter Ustinov’s 1962 “Billy Budd,” with a young Terence Stamp as the angelic sailor Billy and Robert Ryan as his nemesis Claggart.
“Intruder in the Dust” – The movies have mostly not been kind to William Faulkner but this 1949 adaptation, filmed in his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, is the exception. Juano Hernandez, one of the finest of all American actors, plays a proudly defiant Black man falsely accused of murder.
“Carrie” – No, not the Sissy Spacek shocker, but William Wyler’s deeply affecting and little known 1952 adaption of Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie.” As the wealthy married man whom Carrie, the small-town girl played by Jennifer Jones, falls for, Laurence Olivier gives perhaps his best unheralded performance. Olivier always credited Wyler, who starred him as Heathcliff in “Wuthering Heights” years before, with teaching him how to act for the screen.
“The Lady With the Dog” – Anton Chekhov’s short story is one of my favorites and so is this 1960 Russian movie. It’s about an affair between a married woman and a married banker vacationing in Yalta. It honors the writer while possessing a full life of its own.
The same is also true of the other films discussed here. You can’t ask for more.