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Scaramouch, staring Stewart Granger, based loosely upon the book by Rafael Sabatini.
The book was long winded at best. The movie was tight, direct, to the point, where action did not interfere with plot. And the final scene added a touch of humor.
I think the concept of a film being better than the book on which it was based - or vise versa - is a flawed premise to begin with. It's like comparing a concerto to a steak dinner, or having a cat as opposed to a telescope. Sure, maybe I enjoyed eating that expertly-prepared medium-rare ribeye with a blue cheese glaze than I did attending a performance of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, but that doesn't tell anyone anything but about my preferences and, perhaps, how hungry I was.
This past weekend of mine was spent at a cabin in the northern woods of Minnesota, reading and writing. The fare included James Dickey's Deliverance. Years ago, I saw the film and enjoyed it very much. I also enjoyed the novel very much. But when the question of which I enjoyed more arises, I again am at a loss to even assess the notion because watching a film and reading a novel are simply two very different endeavors. The film showed us what happened. It showed the albino boy and shared the sounds of the banjos. It portrayed the vivid brutality of rape and displayed the angry river and depicted the desperation and exhaustion of the characters in ways words could never do. And the book let us into Ed's head as he describes his work and career, his ideas about Lewis and the others, about his climb up the cliff to kill, and of his finding himself and assuming the survival role Lewis had long imagined for himself. No film could ever do that.
A film is a visual and aural thing, whereas a novel relies on the imagination to create sight and sound, even where the descriptions are most belabored. And ideally. descriptions are no such thing, because the imagination of the consumer of the product is a more integral element in literature than in film. In a novel, we get inside the heads of characters and share their thoughts. In film, except for brief voice-overs in a minority of them, we have to deduce what everyone is thinking. Back to my point - what's better, a vacuum or a chainsaw? Well, that depends on whether I want a clean carpet or to cut a cord of wood.
I'm trying now to think of some of the books and movies that have most moved me. There's McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, O'Brien's The Things They Carried. And there's Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, Antonioni's The Passenger. They're all brilliant pieces of art to me, but the novels and films do such completely different things that I can't see any of them recreated in the other medium (yes, I know about Simon Birch).
Now, there are some examples of films created from novels where I love both creations - McCarthy and the Coen brothers' versions of No Country For Old Men, King and Kubrick on The Shining, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now. But even in all those pairings, page and celluloid mine a common source material and do very different things with it.
In the end, I just can't assess the merits of one over the other any more than I can offer an opinion on whether '8' or 'blue' is better.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Unsettomati
I think the concept of a film being better than the book on which it was based - or vise versa - is a flawed premise to begin with. It's like comparing a concerto to a steak dinner, or having a cat as opposed to a telescope. Sure, maybe I enjoyed eating that expertly-prepared medium-rare ribeye with a blue cheese glaze than I did attending a performance of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, but that doesn't tell anyone anything but about my preferences and, perhaps, how hungry I was.
This past weekend of mine was spent at a cabin in the northern woods of Minnesota, reading and writing. The fare included James Dickey's Deliverance. Years ago, I saw the film and enjoyed it very much. I also enjoyed the novel very much. But when the question of which I enjoyed more arises, I again am at a loss to even assess the notion because watching a film and reading a novel are simply two very different endeavors. The film showed us what happened. It showed the albino boy and shared the sounds of the banjos. It portrayed the vivid brutality of rape and displayed the angry river and depicted the desperation and exhaustion of the characters in ways words could never do. And the book let us into Ed's head as he describes his work and career, his ideas about Lewis and the others, about his climb up the cliff to kill, and of his finding himself and assuming the survival role Lewis had long imagined for himself. No film could ever do that.
A film is a visual and aural thing, whereas a novel relies on the imagination to create sight and sound, even where the descriptions are most belabored. And ideally. descriptions are no such thing, because the imagination of the consumer of the product is a more integral element in literature than in film. In a novel, we get inside the heads of characters and share their thoughts. In film, except for brief voice-overs in a minority of them, we have to deduce what everyone is thinking. Back to my point - what's better, a vacuum or a chainsaw? Well, that depends on whether I want a clean carpet or to cut a cord of wood.
I'm trying now to think of some of the books and movies that have most moved me. There's McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, O'Brien's The Things They Carried. And there's Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, Antonioni's The Passenger. They're all brilliant pieces of art to me, but the novels and films do such completely different things that I can't see any of them recreated in the other medium (yes, I know about Simon Birch).
Now, there are some examples of films created from novels where I love both creations - McCarthy and the Coen brothers' versions of No Country For Old Men, King and Kubrick on The Shining, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now. But even in all those pairings, page and celluloid mine a common source material and do very different things with it.
In the end, I just can't assess the merits of one over the other any more than I can offer an opinion on whether '8' or 'blue' is better.
Just my two cents.
These are such good points.
Also, "blue" is better than "8" but it's not better than "11" (my favorite number).
I think the concept of a film being better than the book on which it was based - or vise versa - is a flawed premise to begin with. It's like comparing a concerto to a steak dinner, or having a cat as opposed to a telescope. Sure, maybe I enjoyed eating that expertly-prepared medium-rare ribeye with a blue cheese glaze than I did attending a performance of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto, but that doesn't tell anyone anything but about my preferences and, perhaps, how hungry I was.
This past weekend of mine was spent at a cabin in the northern woods of Minnesota, reading and writing. The fare included James Dickey's Deliverance. Years ago, I saw the film and enjoyed it very much. I also enjoyed the novel very much. But when the question of which I enjoyed more arises, I again am at a loss to even assess the notion because watching a film and reading a novel are simply two very different endeavors. The film showed us what happened. It showed the albino boy and shared the sounds of the banjos. It portrayed the vivid brutality of rape and displayed the angry river and depicted the desperation and exhaustion of the characters in ways words could never do. And the book let us into Ed's head as he describes his work and career, his ideas about Lewis and the others, about his climb up the cliff to kill, and of his finding himself and assuming the survival role Lewis had long imagined for himself. No film could ever do that.
A film is a visual and aural thing, whereas a novel relies on the imagination to create sight and sound, even where the descriptions are most belabored. And ideally. descriptions are no such thing, because the imagination of the consumer of the product is a more integral element in literature than in film. In a novel, we get inside the heads of characters and share their thoughts. In film, except for brief voice-overs in a minority of them, we have to deduce what everyone is thinking. Back to my point - what's better, a vacuum or a chainsaw? Well, that depends on whether I want a clean carpet or to cut a cord of wood.
I'm trying now to think of some of the books and movies that have most moved me. There's McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, O'Brien's The Things They Carried. And there's Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, Antonioni's The Passenger. They're all brilliant pieces of art to me, but the novels and films do such completely different things that I can't see any of them recreated in the other medium (yes, I know about Simon Birch).
Now, there are some examples of films created from novels where I love both creations - McCarthy and the Coen brothers' versions of No Country For Old Men, King and Kubrick on The Shining, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Coppola's Apocalypse Now. But even in all those pairings, page and celluloid mine a common source material and do very different things with it.
In the end, I just can't assess the merits of one over the other any more than I can offer an opinion on whether '8' or 'blue' is better.
Just my two cents.
I think you can actually compare the two concepts without it being a discussion that is better served in a college literature course or film course. It's a matter of the same story, just different formats for delivering the story. Do you prefer someone else's version put on film or do you prefer the story you have created in your own imagination. Not that extreme, IMO. Just my two cents.
The Count of Monte Cristo. Sorry Dumas, but I loved the movie much better.
As blasphemous as it sounds... The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (and the Hobbit trilogy as well). I am a total fan of Tolkien - I read both books and the Silmarillion once a year, every year - but the movies were just so much more... more.
Les Miserables (including both stage musical and movie)... not sure this one counts. The book was enjoyable, but a might tedious.
My general take on it is that it's unlikely for a movie to be as good as a good book, but it is probably not unusual for a mediocre book to be made into a good movie.
I'm having trouble coming up with an example of the movie surpassing the book at the moment, but of course there are tons of examples of the movie not being nearly as good as the book.
I can think of two examples of great books being made into good or great movies: Moby-Dick and Catch-22.
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