Adapting books to film

Film adaptations

Adapting material previously published in another genre is not something that the film industry invented. Classical Greek playwrights adapted myths that had been passed on through an oral tradition. Shakespeare appropriated materials for his plays from various sources. As soon as the makers of cinema recognized that telling a good story in moving pictures required a “good story,” adaptations of novels, plays, and short stories became commonplace.

High culture v low culture

Often, critics of film adaptation assume the aesthetic and cultural superiority of the printed word over the newer genre of film. Even established film critics have a difficult time allowing for film to assume the high cultural status of a play or a novel.  For example, Pauline Kael, a famous film critic for The New Yorker, wrote in 1976, “If some people would rather see the movie than read the book, this may be a fact of life that we must allow for, but let’s not pretend that people get the same things out of both, or that nothing is lost”. Although Kael shows great reverence for the art of film through her reviews, she separates the experience of film watching from book reading, showing a clear cultural preference for the more traditional experience. Similarly, George Bluestone, whose 1957 study, Novels into Film has long been recognized as the basis for much film adaptation study, separates the experience of reading and watching as passive and active endeavours, clearly favouring the active:

A film may be inspired by a novel, but it utilizes different modes and techniques to tell its story.  Films are visual and aural, and they are consumed passively in a collective environment—usually in a theatre with an audience, but also in the home, often in the presence of friends and family. Reading involves an active process of decoding words and creating visual images in the imagination and is mostly a solitary, personal activity. The differences between our process of enjoying each genre, however, does not assume that the active is necessarily better or worse than the passive. They are just different activities, and the products need to be judged by a different set of criteria.

Main differences between books and films

Scale

Since the screenplay for a standard feature film runs between 80 and 110 pages and a novel or non-fiction book normally runs more than 200 pages, when a book is adapted to film the story is necessarily shortened. The screenwriter, director, and producers make decisions to cut scenes, characters, and even major elements of the original piece in order to fit the standard 90-to-120-minute feature film length. When writing an analysis of the adaptation, therefore, the critic should carefully consider the value of these changes: how do they affect the ultimate impact of the work of art?

Authenticity and interpretation

When we read, each reader “sees” or imagines a different vision of the work of literature, so the idea of reality is interpreted by each individual reader. Similarly, when filmmakers interpret a book the final vision reflects not only the ideas of the original author, but also the vision and interpretation of the filmmakers. Adaptations can roughly be divided into two categories: straight or loose.  For example, Jane Austen’s Emma was adapted to film in 1996 in a Miramax production starring Gwyneth Paltrow.  This version retained the original period, setting, and most of the plot and characterization. This production credited Jane Austen and made the most of the Nineteenth Century connection.  In 1994, however, Amy Heckerling wrote and produced Clueless, set in contemporary Beverly Hills.  Most of the plot and themes of Austen’s original were retained, but many of the characters’ names and all of the original setting were updated. In 2020 another version of Emma was made directed by Autumn de Wilde. All these adaptations have value in understanding Austen’s work, and each should be considered as a valid, although different adaptations of the original.

Picture Book Adaptations

For many decades, well-regarded literary picture books in English have been reproduced as animated films. Perhaps the best and longest known of such films are those produced by Weston Woods in the USA. Books such as ‘Rosie’s Walk’ (Hutchins, 1968) soon appeared as an animated movie (Deitch, 1970) as did Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book (1962) ‘Where the Wild Things are’ (Deitch, 1973).

Other classic literary picture books, such as Beatrix Potter’s ‘The Tale of Peter Rabbit’ have been made into animated television series (Jackson, 1992).

More recent years have seen the frequent appearance of movie versions of established literary picture books as box office successes — highly celebrated within broad popular culture — as was the case with the recent movie versions of (i) ‘Where the Wild Things are’ (Jonze, 2009), (ii) ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ (Anderson, 2009) from the picture book by Roald Dahl (1974), (iii) ‘The Polar Express’ (Zemeckis, 2004) from the well-known picture book by Chris Van Allsburg (1985) and (iv) ‘Hugo’ (Scorsese, 2011) from the Caldecott medal winning, illustrated story, ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ by Brian Selznick (2007).

Where the Wild Things Are

Innovative director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved books of all time to the big screen in "Where the Wild Things Are," a classic story about childhood and the places we go to figure out the world we live in. The film tells the story of Max, a rambunctious and sensitive boy who feels misunderstood at home and escapes to where the Wild Things are. Max lands on an island where he meets mysterious and strange creatures whose emotions are as wild and unpredictable as their actions. The Wild Things desperately long for a leader to guide them, just as Max longs for a kingdom to rule. When Max is crowned king, he promises to create a place where everyone will be happy. Max soon finds, though, that ruling his kingdom is not so easy and his relationships there prove to be more complicated than he originally thought.

The Fantastic Mr Fox

From director Wes Anderson comes FANTASTIC MR. FOX, based on the book by Roald Dahl.