Posted on 08/31/2014 4:44:38 PM PDT by nickcarraway
‘The Giver’ to ‘The Great Gatsby’: How the movie adaptations stack up to the books that inspired them
During a panel moderated by The Washington Post’s film critic Anne Hornaday — Great Books to Great Movies on Saturday, Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. during the National Book Festival — authors E.L. Doctorow, Alice McDermott, Paul Auster and Lisa See, whose books were made into movies, will discuss and present in a multimedia exhibit clips from films based on their writing.
But what happens when really good books fail to live up to people’s expectations in really bad movie adaptations? Or, the other way around, when not-so-good literature becomes a box office smash? Here you have a few books-turned-movies that our critics reviewed. They shared their thoughts on when the movie adaptation worked and when it didn’t.
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“The Great Gatsby”: Awesome book, not-so-great movie
The plot: “Teens will be surprised at how the excesses of the Jazz Age echo the excesses of today. The international cast may speak in unplaceable accents, but they get the emotions right, amid lavish decor and with a soundtrack that mixes 1920s jazz with new works by Jay-Z and other Billboard-toppers. Narrator Nick Carraway tells the story from a sanitarium where he’s in treatment for alcoholism. Nick rents a cottage in the toniest part of Long Island to spend the summer studying bond trading in hopes of landing a Wall Street job. In the towering mansion next door lives Jay Gatsby, a charming mystery man who throws huge parties. Gatsby befriends Nick because he hopes to reconnect with Nick’s high-born cousin Daisy, a former love who’s now married to Tom Buchanan. The Buchanans live across the bay. Nick arranges a meeting with Daisy,” Horwitz reported.
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(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I have to actually READ it to most of my classes and explain it as we go along. It also gives me a chance to teach the Bible’s importance in literature, and there are many exercises that can make the book come alive (draw the town square, write a journal as Pearl, etc.).
It’s also funny when the girls in the class start calling each other “ignominious malefactress”
In what way/ways did you find the original written story of the Wizard of Oz superior to the ‘39 movie? Please be specific.
It WAS very well written.
Sometimes both the book and the movie are excellent. Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind are two good examples.
I have read that many consider “Great Expectations” to be the best novel ever. The 1950s era movie was really good. I saw one a few years ago which actually had little in common with the book and it was pretty bad.
For starters, my biggest disappointment in the movie is its conclusion. Even when I first saw it on a black-and-white TV at the age of eight, I thought the ending--that the whole thing was a dream--was a cop-out, to use a 1960's expression. In the book, Oz is a real place.
It's been a while since I've read the book, but some of the other things I remember in it which I liked were the critters such as tiger-bears that are not found in the movie and the description of nineteenth-century stage special effects used by the Wizard. I also liked the pearls of wisdom found in the book such as the Wizard's explanation that courage is not the absence of fear but the will to overcome fear.
I also thought the book did a better job in bringing out the story's political overtones. For example, in the book, Dorothy wears silver shoes, a seeming reference to the free silver movement, as contrasted to the Yellow Brick Road (gold standard). The shoes fell off at the end, signifying the waning of the free silver as an issue by 1900. And in the Emerald Palace, she traverses seven passages and climbs three flights of stairs--a reference to the Coinage Act of 1873, or perhaps the Panic of 1873?
However, if I had read the book at the same age as when I first saw the movie, I would probably have liked the movie better.
I read Forrest Gump first and hated the movie. Charlotte’s Web was true to the book. I hated the Divergent movie but loved the book. The Hunger Games movie and book both good.
Your delineation of possible political references in the story was interesting. It did not convince me the story was superior. To me, it was fairly plodding & by-the-numbers. The movie transformed the various, somewhat disjointed/minor storylines into a cohesive epic. I thought it was better than the written story by orders of magnitude.
To give you an example of the weakness I found in the story, consider the following. The dialogue is flat, the action minor & unrelated to either the plot or the outcome, & the characters lack personality; Perhaps you will agree, perhaps not, but fwiw:
‘While the Woodman was making a ladder from wood which he found in the forest Dorothy lay down and slept, for she was tired by the long walk. The Lion also curled himself up to sleep and Toto lay beside him.
The Scarecrow watched the Woodman while he worked, and said to him:
“I cannot think why this wall is here, nor what it is made of.”
“Rest your brains and do not worry about the wall,” replied the Woodman. “When we have climbed over it, we shall know what is on the other side.”
After a time the ladder was finished. It looked clumsy, but the Tin Woodman was sure it was strong and would answer their purpose. The Scarecrow waked Dorothy and the Lion and Toto, and told them that the ladder was ready. The Scarecrow climbed up the ladder first, but he was so awkward that Dorothy had to follow close behind and keep him from falling off. When he got his head over the top of the wall the Scarecrow said, “Oh, my!”
“Go on,” exclaimed Dorothy.
So the Scarecrow climbed farther up and sat down on the top of the wall, and Dorothy put her head over and cried, “Oh, my!” just as the Scarecrow had done.
Then Toto came up, and immediately began to bark, but Dorothy made him be still.
The Lion climbed the ladder next, and the Tin Woodman came last; but both of them cried, “Oh, my!” as soon as they looked over the wall. When they were all sitting in a row on the top of the wall, they looked down and saw a strange sight.
Before them was a great stretch of country having a floor as smooth and shining and white as the bottom of a big platter. Scattered around were many houses made entirely of china and painted in the brightest colors. These houses were quite small, the biggest of them reaching only as high as Dorothy’s waist. There were also pretty little barns, with china fences around them; and many cows and sheep and horses and pigs and chickens, all made of china, were standing about in groups.
But the strangest of all were the people who lived in this queer country. There were milkmaids and shepherdesses, with brightly colored bodices and golden spots all over their gowns; and princesses with most gorgeous frocks of silver and gold and purple; and shepherds dressed in knee breeches with pink and yellow and blue stripes down them, and golden buckles on their shoes; and princes with jeweled crowns upon their heads, wearing ermine robes and satin doublets; and funny clowns in ruffled gowns, with round red spots upon their cheeks and tall, pointed caps. And, strangest of all, these people were all made of china, even to their clothes, and were so small that the tallest of them was no higher than Dorothy’s knee.
No one did so much as look at the travelers at first, except one little purple china dog with an extra-large head, which came to the wall and barked at them in a tiny voice, afterwards running away again.
“How shall we get down?” asked Dorothy.
They found the ladder so heavy they could not pull it up, so the Scarecrow fell off the wall and the others jumped down upon him so that the hard floor would not hurt their feet. Of course they took pains not to light on his head and get the pins in their feet. When all were safely down they picked up the Scarecrow, whose body was quite flattened out, and patted his straw into shape again.
“We must cross this strange place in order to get to the other side,” said Dorothy, “for it would be unwise for us to go any other way except due South.”
They began walking through the country of the china people, and the first thing they came to was a china milkmaid milking a china cow. As they drew near, the cow suddenly gave a kick and kicked over the stool, the pail, and even the milkmaid herself, and all fell on the china ground with a great clatter.
Dorothy was shocked to see that the cow had broken her leg off, and that the pail was lying in several small pieces, while the poor milkmaid had a nick in her left elbow.
“There!” cried the milkmaid angrily. “See what you have done! My cow has broken her leg, and I must take her to the mender’s shop and have it glued on again. What do you mean by coming here and frightening my cow?”
“I’m very sorry,” returned Dorothy. “Please forgive us.”
But the pretty milkmaid was much too vexed to make any answer. She picked up the leg sulkily and led her cow away, the poor animal limping on three legs. As she left them the milkmaid cast many reproachful glances over her shoulder at the clumsy strangers, holding her nicked elbow close to her side.
Dorothy was quite grieved at this mishap.
“We must be very careful here,” said the kind-hearted Woodman, “or we may hurt these pretty little people so they will never get over it.”’
http://www.literature.org/authors/baum-l-frank/the-wonderful-wizard-of-oz/chapter-20.html
That is funny! Wish you were my daughter’s teacher!
Interesting. I have never read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. My dad was a huge movie fan and was read to and read many books as a child. I never brought up The Wizard of Oz as a book with him, but as a child (when they played the movie once a year on TV and we’d all watch it) my dad would always get his “I hate this movie” into the conversation. I never will know why. To me at the time it was a harmless children’s movie.
Of course my dad’s two favorite movies of all time: The African Queen and Smokey and The Bandit! Favorite book: I think Treasure Island. I don’t know what that all means!
I like the 1925 movie better than the 1939 version.
In the 1925 movie, Oz is ruled by an evil junta, but the Wizard is actually a good guy. The crown princess has been smuggled to a Kansas farm, where she is raised as Dorothy. She is actually Crown Princess Dorothea of Oz. When the junta learns where she is being raised, they send agents by airplane to kidnap her. The plot fails, but a storm blows Dorothy, her cousins, and everyone else to Oz, where they must resort to hi-jinks to outwit the junta.
After reading “Catch 22”, there was no way I would even attempt to watch the movie.
Don’t know if it is still around but I can’t see how they could adapt that book into a movie.....
MAYBE a TV series, spread out but too much was ‘going on’ to properly present it in a 2 hr movie...
Naturally, just my opinion.....
Thanks for that description. The ‘25 Oz sounds like an excellent plot and a really good movie. I notice it’s on Youtube. I’m planning to watch it as time permits. I’m looking forward to it!
Don't bother. I saw the movie when it came out, and at the time, I thought it was just about the worst I had ever seen.
I agree with you and also point ot that movie and story as a great example of a book to movie transition.
But I also point to the fact that it is a short story. that is about the right length for a movie. If you try to make a 600 page book into a movie there is just too much content for a 2 hour movie.
concur once you get beyond about 75 pages it becomes more difficult to translate to the screen without losing something.
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