Is there a movie better than the book? And name a book that you think defies adaptation?
When I was a young man, I was a film buff. A cinephile. I loved watching movies, especially foreign films and classics. Somewhere along the line I lost my enthusiasm for the seventh art, at least to the extent that I no longer enjoy sitting in movie theater seats that have been sat in by people I don’t know.
Anyway, back when I was a devotee, I used to say that great books rarely made great movies. And not-so-great books often did. Why? Maybe it’s for the same reason a great baseball player doesn’t always make for a great basketball player. Both sports demand athletic talent and hard work, but a good eye and a strong arm in baseball might not translate to dunking and blocking shots on the basketball court. Likewise, while films and books both tell stories, they do it in completely different ways. For starters, books are usually longer than films. And, as such, they tend to be more thorough. At 70,000 words plus, novels have the luxury of time and space to describe, develop, evoke, and expand. They do it with words, leaving the visualization to the reader. Film, on the other hand, employs its own visual lexicon, which, for better or worse—no judgment intended—performs the heavy lifting for the viewer. Film shows us what the landscapes and characters look like. It gives voice and personality to the people on screen. And it provides musical accompaniment to help set the mood or create drama. Book readers have to perform all those tasks themselves. This is why book covers often show a figure—usually a woman from behind—face unseen, fleeing some unknown menace. Publishers know that readers want to paint their own portraits of the characters. But can you imagine a Hollywood studio opting to hide the face of the devastatingly handsome lead actor for the entirety of a film? Not likely. That’s why Lon Chaney—not Rudolph Valentino—played the Phantom of the Opera. Who’d want to hide such a beautiful face?
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| Lon Chaney |
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| Rudolph Valentino |
But what about great books and not-so-great movie adaptations? Or so-so books and superb films?
Take The Grapes of Wrath. I think it’s a masterpiece of literature. And the movie version? Directed by legendary filmmaker John Ford, with a brilliant cast, starring Henry Fonda and featuring a slew of wonderful character actors, including John Carradine and Jane Darwell, the film is often counted among the all-time greats. And yet… The film’s ending is a complete dud when compared to the powerfully moving and less-optimistic close of the novel. I understand that 1939 Hollywood couldn’t possibly show young Rose of Sharon offering her breast to nurse a starving old man, but the feel-good ending of the movie doesn’t do the novel justice. It spoils it for me.
Censorship, or perhaps restrictive standards, accounts for a lot of the shortcomings in films adapted from novels. But not all. For reasons that escape me, Hollywood often makes major changes to storylines when adapting books to film. It’s the old story of “I love this! It’s perfect! Now let’s change it!”
The Talented Mr. Ripley typifies this baffling practice. The most recent film/TV versions (1999 and 2024) changed major and minor details, especially the ending. Some of the changes worked, others not so much. But I wonder why change the details at all? As much as I might have enjoyed parts of the filmed versions, I believe the original novel is superior.
I teach high school French. One of the books we study is The Count of Monte-Cristo (Le comte de Monte-Cristo). In class, to supplement the text, I show portions of the various film versions of the book, the French ones as well as the English-language ones. By the way, there’s a great meta-cinematic wink between two of the films. In the 1961 French version, Louis Jourdan plays the hero, Edmond Dantès, aka the Count of Monte-Cristo. But my sharp-eyed students also recognized Jourdan playing a different role—the evil prosecutor Monsieur de Villefort—in the 1975 American miniseries version starring Richard Chamberlain. In the first film, Jourdan is sent to prison by Villefort, while in the second, Jourdan does the sending and Chamberlain does the time.
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| Louis Jourdan (Edmond Dantès 1961) |
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| Louis Jourdan (M. de Villefort 1975) |
There have been at least thirteen filmed versions of The Count of Monte-Cristo, including recent ones in English in 2002 and 2022 and a French iterations in 1998 and 2024. All of these include MAJOR deviations from the plot. Characters change names and roles, plot details are totally flipped, and even the endings are different. In short, the filmmakers tried to fix a story that readers have eating up since 1845. It’s strange but, alas, typical.
Now, what about books that are pretty good, okay, or even bad? Can they make good films? Sure. There are lots of examples. I’ll cite just a few.
My (subjective) opinions follow:
Great/really good movie, terrible book
Slumdog Millionaire
The Devil Wears Prada
Better movie than book
The Godfather (I and II). This is more a nod to Coppola’s brilliant films than a knock against Puzo’s novel. That said, a book can be a sensation without being great literature…
Great book, okay film
Murder on the Orient Express (1974). A fine film…except for Albert Finney’s performance as Poirot. I love Albert Finney, by the way, but he’s terrible here. Overacting as he shouts his lines in a strangled, nasal accent with no recognizable provenance. The 2017 version with Kenneth Branagh? Meh. David Suchet is the greatest Poirot I’ve seen.
Great book, great film
The Day of the Jackal. I love both versions. Wish I had written the book.
Let’s face it. A great book is usually better than its film version. And a beloved book will always surpass its cinematic adaptation, at least to its adoring readers, just as a great film will always be better than its novelization.
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