Adaptations

[FirelightSpirit]

I know we have a number of threads discussing different adaptations of classic novels, but I decided to start this thread to discuss adaptations in general.

I enjoy watching adaptations and I have a particular vested interest in them as I'm preparing to start a PhD on the topic of adaptations of nineteenth century novels, so I've been watching quite a few recently and have a pile still to watch. I enjoy seeing what the adaptation does that's different from the book and exploring why it's different, and I like comparing different adaptations to each other and thinking about why they do what they do with the source material. I've given up saying that the book is better than the film and now argue only that it is different.

I wonder what other people think about adaptations. Do you watch them or avoid them? Do you have favourites? Are there any that you really didn't like? What do you like/dislike about them? Do they have to follow the book exactly or do you like when they do something a little different?

I realise that there are a lot of questions there, but I just wanted to put some ideas out there. Looking forward to reading what people think. :)

[jfp]

Very interesting subject, FLS, and look forward to hearing your thoughts on various specific examples. I'm currently reading Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, after doing something I never usually do, viz. seeing the film first. I'm enjoying the book immensely and will probably see the movie again when I've finished it.
I've given up saying that the book is better than the film and now argue only that it is different. I think that's a very sensible approach; saying one is better than the other is, to trot out the old analogy, like saying oranges are better than bananas.

[MisterHobgoblin]

What an interesting subject.

I will think harder later, but one of the most interesting and terrifying pairs of novel/adaptation I remember seeing was Uncle Silas, filmed for TV starring Peter O'Toole (released on DVD as The Dark Angel). I saw the TV adaptation first and read the book later and thought that although they both played to the same script, the TV one drew more terror from the fleeting, half shown images descending into opium trip induced stupor (easy to do on camera) whilst the novel had to be more lucid and let the horror of the situation carry the day.

It's a shame you are confined to 19th century stuff as IMO, there is a great contrast to be made in the adaptation of The Commitments (film eclipses the book) whereas for The Van, the book reigns supreme. Then again, I saw The Commitments before I read it, whilst I read The Van before I saw it. Maybe people prefer what they come across first.

on edit - jfp posted whilst I was drafting - we both independently opened with "interesting subject"!

[jfp]

Maybe people prefer what they come across first.Interesting point. (Sorry, interesting is such a boring word...)

Thinking a bit more about it, what a vast subject, given that there are also stage adaptations of novels, and film adaptations of stage adapations... (wasn't the Frears film of Les liaisons dangereuses based more on the stage adaptation than on the novel?)
Plus the cases where, as with Les liaisons dangereuses, there's more than one adaptation, of course (Frears, Forman, plus various transpositions to different periods and milieux milieus in English??]).

Not to mention the thousands of musical settings of poems...

Etc.

Anyway FLS, hope you fare better at narrowing things down than I did when I was vainly attempting - and gloriously failing :o - to do a PhD...

[MisterHobgoblin]

In January, I saw a film adaptation of a novel I had read - Q&A by Vikras Swarup. Q&A was an enjoyable novel but not one that need have troubled the archivists. A well written and non-linear tale of an eventful life in India. Fortunes seemed to be easy to come by and easy to lose. The story was told through the medium of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire - with the Indian edition offering the biggest prize in global TV history. The story was complex, parcelled up into chunks and shuffled so the ordering was not chronological. It suffered from each chunk being the same length and a bit too neat.

The film version (Slumdog Millionaire) was astonishing. It had simplified the story - some of the questions and scenarios had been removed and the order had been made chronological. But the impact of actually being able to see the real India in front of you was breathtaking. I visited Delhi for new year and no words can describe what you will see. ravel to other (developing) countries will not prepare you. Q&A certainly didn't prepare me. But Slumdog Millionaire - even though it was stylized and arty - had the real India on show. I have never seen anything like it before. This was a clear example of taking something ordinary and using a change of medium to turn it into a jewel. Often it was the other way around, but this worked.

Sorry it's outwith the scope of the PhD.

[FirelightSpirit]

It's a shame you are confined to 19th century stuffI love the nineteenth century adaptations, though! Comparing the novel with the adaptation is really interesting in terms of what happens to the characters. My work is specifically focused on gender, so it's particularly interesting to look at 19C stuff in this regard, and there's so much of it too. I did part of my masters thesis on adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and that threw up some really interesting stuff about the characters, particularly when I compared the 1995 film with the 2008 television series. I'm planning on expanding that in my PhD.

Anyway FLS, hope you fare better at narrowing things down than I did when I was vainly attempting - and gloriously failing - to do a PhD...I hope the above answers that!

Maybe people prefer what they come across first.That is interesting. I think people get rather emotionally attached to books and films, even to songs, so that when they come across another version, they see it as inferior because it's not 'their' version or the 'right' version. Having studied adaptation theory, I've learned to appreciate different 'versions' for what they are and recognise that they are all valid. While I may 'like' one more than another, I still like to look at them all objectively.

Having said that, I'm still kind of hung up on the idea of reading the book and then watching the adaptation. Similarly, jfp's admitted to usually reading the book first. We all obviously privilege the book over the film version in some way. Why do you think that is?

MisterHg, please feel free to discuss any film you want, I don't want to limit the discussion here to adaptations of 19C literature. I'm interested in anything to do with adaptation, old and new. :)

[MisterHobgoblin]

MisterHg, please feel free to discuss any film you want, I don't want to limit the discussion here to adaptations of 19C literature. I'm interested in anything to do with adaptation, old and new. :)
Happy to oblige. I think Slumdog Millionaire is one of the few instances where the second viewed/read version has held its own (and some).

This will make me sound facile, but one of the most off-putting things about BBC adaptations of 19th century novels is the way they are all in black and white. OK, the hills might be green, but the costumes are always black and white, the sky is always grey and the houses are always so spartan inside. When I read 19th (and earlier) literature, I am always struck by how colourful the scenes seem.

[FirelightSpirit]

This will make me sound facile, but one of the most off-putting things about BBC adaptations of 19th century novels is the way they are all in black and white. OK, the hills might be green, but the costumes are always black and white, the sky is always grey and the houses are always so spartan inside. When I read 19th (and earlier) literature, I am always struck by how colourful the scenes seem.I think that's certainly true of a number of the older BBC adaptations, which can be quite staid in terms of costume and bleak in terms of setting. Many of these adaptations also suffer from not having the kind of technology we have today. They did all the interior shots on a soundstage, for example, whereas now they are done on location because the technology is better. I like the look of the modern ones better. Compare the recent version of Jane Eyre with Toby Stephens as Rochester to the 1983 version with Timothy Dalton, for instance - I'd rather watch the newer one because it looks so much more natural.

The older adaptations stick to the book a lot also, while the newer ones play around a bit more with the story. I know some people may consider it sacrilege, but I like when adaptations play with the story! I love that Emma Thompson made Sense and Sensibility more feminist!

Isn't it amazing how film can present literature visually? I was thinking of that while reading MisterHobgoblin's post about Slumdog Millionaire. Surely that's one of the wonderful things about film.

[Calliope]

We all obviously privilege the book over the film version in some way. Why do you think that is? I think it's to do with privileging the original. Have you read Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction*? I think perhaps in Benjamin's sense it is the aura attached to the book that you are talking about here.


*(Marxists.org has a translated version of the essay available online here (http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm) - it's only likely to be of interest to litcrit types)

[FirelightSpirit]

Thanks Kim, I'll check that out.

All the stuff I've read about film and its relation to literature argues that a number of the pioneers of cinema used novels as their inspiration for films, which gave the sense that cinema is in some way derived from literature. Of course, they're two very different media, but the association still persists and people still believe that the book takes priority or is intrinsically more valid than the film. Modern adaptation studies is trying to dispel that idea.

[Grammath]

I'm not really a big one for costume dramas, FLS, so I don't think I have much to say that would have a direct bearing on your thesis, but I can ramble on this subject for a bit if that would help.

It is right to think of them as different, complimentary forms, I think. A two hour film is never going to capture all the subtleties of a 300 page novel. The visual medium has to contort itself to produce one of my favourite literary devices, the unreliable narrator.

One thing that happens occasionally in the modern world that does concern me is that one sometimes hears of authors selling the film rights to their novels are still in manuscript - apparently John Grisham used to do it quite regularly. Now, regardless of Grisham's literary merits (my take: Scott Turow's legal thrillers are much superior), I wonder if he then comes under pressure to write something that will more obviously work on screen than he might otherwise have done. In other words, in the modern world can authors be compromised in their vision if they have half an eye on film or TV rights?

Also, whilst many novels adapted for the screen can make great films or TV series,, novelizations of films (do those still get written and published?) are rarely if ever considered to be quality literature - hackwork is the usual assessment. I see Doctor Who, X-Files and Star Trek books on the sci-fi shelves but, whilst I like those TV shows, I'd never dream of reading a book based on any of them. The traffic's all one way. Why is that? Is it purely commercial?

As others have mentioned, if you've read the book, you are always going to bring that baggage to the film version. Nevertheless, some casting directors don't help themselves. Who really thought Bruce Willis was the ideal actor to play a drunken British journalist, or Tom Hanks a shifty Wall Street broker, in the film version of Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities"?

I have to hand it to people like David Cronenberg ("Naked Lunch"/"Crash") and Terry Gilliam ("Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas") for producing watchable versions of apparently unfilmable books. Ultimately, though, I suspect most serious bibliophiles are only really going to be happy if the source material isn't tinkered with overmuch, which is why I was quite satisfied with Sam Mendes' treatment of "Revolutionary Road."

[FirelightSpirit]

Thanks, Gram, those are some interesting comments.

On the point of novelisation, I remember reading that Emma Thompson was mortified at the idea of having a novelisation of her screenplay of Sense and Sensibility, understandably so! Apparently the studio really wanted to do it, but I suppose publishing her screenplay and diaries was a compromise. I always think novelisations are done more for kids films these days, but I could be wrong.

I suppose writers are more aware of the film industry these days. Films are such a big part of our culture that many writers (including me) write in scenes or pictures. I don't know if that's deliberate or not,or if they do it with an eye to selling the movie rights. It does seem a bit calculated to sell film rights when you're still on the manuscript stage, though. Surely you would have to take account of what the studio wants in a case like that. Grisham has a very specific and well-known style, though, so the studio might just say that as long as he sticks to that everything will be fine.

[Star]

I have an online friend who once had Andrew Davies as a lecturer. I'm not sure what in. It was a very long time ago, before he started writing scripts. She was a teacher and I think he was something to do with Drama or English...but I'm guessing here.

The thing I remember her saying was that she wasn't surprised at his adaptations of Jane Austen being more sexual than perhaps they were in the books - Colin Firth wandering around in his wet shirt for example (Oh, Mr Darcy!) - because she said he had a fascination with boobs - hence the character name Wally Bazoom in 'Game On' too, which he also co-wrote.

I used to like watching costume dramas, but the latest ones I've seen have put me off a bit. It's all been a bit too hammed up for me, a bit of an excuse for some over-acting - I cite 'Larkrise to Candleford' and 'Little Dorrit' - well any Dickens really - here. Or else it's been crammed into such a short time that it's been a bit confusing - an adaptation of 'The Moonstone' springs to mind.

The last one I enjoyed was the BBC's version of 'Sense and Sensibility' (another Andrew Davies one as it happens), although I have to admit to not taking it too seriously and cracking jokes about 'going up to see his etchings' and 'they were so poor, even the butler was poor'. I think I might have 'costume drama overload'. It seems to be the same stories that get adapted time and time again.

[FirelightSpirit]

I agree, Star, it does seem to be the same stories that get adapted over and over again. ITV are doing Wuthering Heights again some time this year and the BBC are doing another version of Emma. I suppose it's the popular books that people want to see on screen, but I'd like to see some others. Though, to be fair, it's been a long time since either WH or Emma was adapted (the mid nineties), so perhaps new adaptations could say something new at this point in time. I'll watch them either way!

I would have thought Andrew Davies had more of an obsession with men in wet shirts! I remember seeing an interview with him where he said he'd managed to have another wet shirt scene in Sense and Sensibility. He sounded quite pleased at the fact!

I haven't seen very much of Larkrise to Candleford and I haven't yet watched Little Dorrit, so I can't comment on the hamminess of the acting. I'll be watching LD soon, so I'll let you know.

[Star]

LOL! Yes, I take the point about Andrew Davies!

I remember really enjoying the Dickens adaptations in the eighties/nineties. I particularly remember 'Dombey & Son' and 'A Tale of Two Cities'. And then there was a good one of 'Vanity Fair' and some George Eliot with 'The Mill on the Floss', 'Middlemarch' and 'Silas Marner'.

Thinking about it, it can't just be that it's the same stories done over and over again. I got bored with 'Cranford' when that was done fairly recently and 'Larkrise...' has never really appealed. Maybe it's the subject matter, or that I just don't like the story anyway. I wouldn't mind seeing George Eliot's novels done again, and I'm quite looking forward to 'Wuthering Heights' as all the adaptations I've seen of it have been ancient.

Also, isn't it funny to watch costume dramas made a while ago and think to yourself 'this looks dated', which I do sometimes. Then I think, hang on, the original story was written over a hundred years ago.

[megustaleer]

The soap opera that the TV version of Lark Rise To Candleford has become is such a long way from Flora Thompson's semi-autobiographical trilogy that it can hardly be called an adaptation.