From page to screen or screen to page

     I rarely talk about films as I'm not a great watcher of them, and as such I'm hoping those who are will comment here! What I want to look at is the two-way street that takes 'consumers', for want of a better word,  from page to screen or from screen to page.

     So, have you come to a book through a film adaptation (and let's stretch a point and include television, too), or do you have a much-loved book which you have then seen successfully dramatised? The Janeites will no doubt have both favourites and those they deplore among the screen versions of the Austen novels, but there will be many who were inspired to pick up the books for the first time by Colin Firth, Jennifer Ehle, and their ilk. 

    The two media must make for somewhat incompatible bedfellows, the one requiring from the consumer more imaginative engagement than the other - which is why many filmed interpretations can feel 'wrong' - but the measure is so subjective that it's not hard to see why that should be. The other side of the coin is the writer's reaction to their work in screen form; any liberties taken with the original material must be painful for them to witness! Going the other way, there are bound to be books which disappoint those who have first encountered them in a form far removed from black type on white paper.

    Being specific rather than general for a moment, the film version of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road has just been released; have you read the book and/or seen the film? And talking about going from page to screen and back again, here's The Road issue of the film magazine Little White Lies, which rather brings us full circle! 

Comments

[Dark Puss]

I thought for a second you were leaving as an open question as to whether books or films required "more imaginative engagement". I think you come down on the side of books, but I will disagree. Good video requires as much engagement as a good novel in my opinion.

You asked for some examples:
Books read and enjoyed following films - Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye by R Chandler, King Lear by W Shakespear after seeing Kurosawa's Ran (I know it isn't a direct adaption, but it is quite heavily influenced by it.)

Films/TV seen and enjoyed after reading the book - The Chamomile Lawn M Wesley, Lord of the Rings trilogy J R R Tolkein.

I have enjoyed a number of adaptions of novels by Charles Dickens, most recently the Andrew Davies adaption of Bleak House on the BBC but I cannot read this author at all (I have read three of his books and I'm not going to read any more).

Finally a film I absolutely hated of a book I like (but don't adore), the 1958 film version of Colette's novel Gigi Ugghhh!

[adele geras]

We saw The Road the other day and as my husband Tweeted at the time, it's very good but if you've read the book it doesn't add anything and may even subtract! I agree with that. Things are always much more vivid in one's imagination...and the language is for the most part missing in the adaptation. I think it's slightly second-rate books that can make first rate or even masterpiece movies and the case in point is PSYCHO, which is a movie like no other from source material which is okay but not brilliant. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN I thought also was an excellent adaptation of a novel, though even there, some stuff from the book was changed and if you're a stickler for such things, it may irritate you. I also loved THE HOURS but the book is again, better. I think I'd always prefer to see the movie AFTER I had my own idea of the book firmly in my head. All the Austen versions then become versions, and not the real thing. Likewise, Bronte. The recent Wuthering Heights was not my cup of Heathcliff tea at all...I thought he looked like Michael Portillo...and so on. But I'm quite sure that many people are led to books from movies or tv. The only book I've actually bought after seeing a movie is a thriller called THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY and I bought it after loving the movie. I preferred the movie. Very good that we can have both!

[Claire]

I thought Ian McEwan's Atonement was a very good book very well adapted for film. But I think, after reading a book, one is almost destined for disappointment in an adaptation.

[Sian]

As a cinephile and a bibliophile, I am in general wary of such film adaptations. I tend not to want to see film adaptations of books which I have read. I think novels and cinema are fundamentally different ways of telling stories which are hard to reconcile (at least without taking tremdenous liberties with the novel, which misses the point of the adaptation). To me, the only thing worse than an average book adaptation is the film of a play, cinematic creativity just flys out of the window then and the actors suddenly start doing all that theatrical over-acting to the back of the theatre, which is just terrifying when you see it in a close-up!

Cinema is a visual medium, it is the art of showing the non-verbal parts of our lives. Even with dialogue, we are not inside the character's head and as such is often more objective than the novel (much like real life, when one often wonders about the disparity between the words spoken to you and the thoughts behind those words..). Novels are verbal, they are often written as somebody's internal thoughts, or they have beautiful descriptive passages conjuring up a situation or a philosophical idea, both of which cannot be put elegantly on the screen (Voice-overs are, 90% of the time, the sign of a bad film for me, as they fail to tell the story visually which is the point of cinema). Cinema shows the minute movements of the human face which novels cannot show. And there are fundamental differences with pace and structure; the short story is more to cinema (than novels or plays) because you read a short story in one sitting and don't tend to have more than one or two strands of plot-there simply isn't time for the plot complexities of, say, Middlemarch, in 90 minutes of film.

I think the preponderance of book-to-film adaptations shows a lack of respect for cinema as its own form by many people. Few cinematic masterpieces were adaptations of classic novels. I think one of the reasons book adaptations are popular are that critics tend to review them well-but often that success is not earned by the cinematic value of the film but instead given for its literary quality. Hitchcock (who was looked down on by the critics until the New Wave championed him), got his best reviews for his adaptation of 'Juno and the Paycock' but he actually felt ashamed because he thought 'it had nothing to do with cinema'-he knew he had not shot it in a creative way.

What can work quite successfully is when a good director takes a forgettable novel, reads it once, then gets a screenplay written in the cinematic form with the basic plot idea, culminating in a cinematic masterpiece (eg. Vertigo-who's read D'entre les morts?). Even when Hitchcock made The Birds he said in an interview that 'today I would be unable to tell you the story of Daphne du Maurier's The Birds'. So yes, it is possible to steal an idea and turn it into your own creation.

Ingmar Bergman said 'I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence'. I would no sooner wish to read a book adaptation of 'The seventh seal' or 'Masculin Feminin' or 'Stalker' or 'Aguirre, Wrath of God' or 'The conformist', than I would see a film adaptation of 'Crime and Punishment' or 'Possession' or 'The Fountain overflows' or 'Steppenwolf' 'Middlemarch' or 'The Diary of a provincial lady'.

[GeraniumCat]

I love the Merchant Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster's Room With a View, I think it's my favourite film and it catches the mood of the book perfectly. I have watched it several times, and each time enjoy it more.

[Linda Gillard]

I love films and watch a lot on DVD but I think the only time I haven't been disappointed in a film adaptation of a novel was THE PRESTIGE which was so brilliant in its own way, it stood alongside Christopher Priest's equally brilliant novel as an excellent "compare and contrast" resource. I recommend experiencing both versions as they are mutually enriching.

[CLM]

Often movies fail because too rushed and inevitably leave out important plot elements. I think that is why my favorite adaptations are miniseries. The original Forsyte Saga was brilliant, also Poldark. Another I loved but maybe it was based on the producer's family and not on a book at all was By the Sword Divided, perhaps my all time favorite series. Sadly, that is not available in the right format for the US.

[Jill Davies]

After seeing the wonderful 2009 film DISGRACE I read the J.M. Coetzee book and thought them both wonderful, thought-provoking versions of the same story. The film was a compliment, and complement, to Coetzee's heart-rending narrative and exquisitely spare prose. Can the 1981 Granada adaption of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED be considered anything but a masterful adaption of a richly nuanced book? Surprisingly I even quite enjoyed the recent film version, despite it being relatively short compared to the 13 episodes of the mini-series. The TV version of I, CLAUDIUS sent me to read the Robert Graves books and confirmed a lifelong love of all stories Roman. And, incidentally,if you share this passion you might enjoy the 2006 HBO series ROME, the Robert Harris Roman novels - POMPEII, IMPERIUM, (released as LUSTRUM in the US) and to be followed by a third volume in 2011. Movie producers, on the whole, seem to be evolving as more respectful to the printed source; one can only hope!

[Simon T]

I saw The Hours before I'd read either the book or anything by Virginia Woolf - and it sent me off to read Mrs. Dalloway (and the rest is history...) Most of my favourite films are adaptations of novels, even though I think in more or less every case I prefer the novel - simply because plotting and character seems to get a lot less attention in an original screenplay, in my experience.

[Erika]

I saw the film of "Tipping the Velvet" before I read any of Sarah Waters' books and discovered her through this. I am still impressed by the cinematic version, which I watched for a second time recently, and was equally so by the film of "Fingersmith". But mostly films from books are a horrid experience.

[Ros]

I wonder if it's a personal thing whether books or films require more active imagination. My brain just doesn't engage in films in the same way. One way I test this is how long the film lives on in my mind. Even for the films I love best, it's rare that a scene is still stuck in my mind more than 24 hours later. Whereas books live with me for weeks and months and years later. But I know this isn't the same for everyone.

[Ros]

Oh, I agree. I thought it was an incredibly different book to transfer to film because so much of it is about writing, but they did it brilliantly.

[Ros]

I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall after seeing the Tara Fitzgerald adaptation. I loved the TV version and the book has become one of my favourites ever. I have had quite a lot of success moving from film/TV to reading. I find it much more difficult going the other way. It's not just that it doesn't match the pictures in my head, it's mainly the lack of detail. Almost always an adaptation has to involve some kind of simplification of secondary plots, or omission of favourite parts of dialogue, or even missing out secondary characters. And then they almost always have to add in other bits, and I end up fuming!

[Dark Puss]

Yes I am sure you are correct that people differ widely in this repect. I can't remember people's names all that well, but I can remember some wines I drunk more that 30 years ago!

[Julie Fredericksen]

John Steinbeck's book "Of Mice and Men" was brilliantly adapted in the movie of the same name with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Much credit due to Sinise, who also directed.

And believe it or not, the Hallmark Hall of Fame did a wonderful version of "The Magic of Ordinary Days" by Ann Howard. This is a wonderful book that British readers may not have heard of.

[Julie Fredericksen]

Oops, sorry, I mean Ann Howard Creel.