Care to share some favorite novels and the films made from them?
Asked by
janbb (
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September 19th, 2015
Looking for ideas for a class called “Was the Book Better?: Novels to Films.” I have my first two “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” but I need a third. Let me know some of your favorites. (Looking for works of some literary merit.) Thanks!
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38 Answers
What was the Dickens novel, that starts it was the best of times, it was the worst of times? I’m drawing a blank on the name.
For your convenience, I have some more for you to choose:
– Wuthering Heights (acually there are the 1939 movie version and the 2011 version)
– Price and Prejudice
– Les Miserables
– Black Beauty
@Adirondackwannabe A Tale of Two Cities – That would be a good one but I taught it for another course recently.
@Mimishu1995 Good suggestions. Have been thinking of Pride (not Price) and Prejudic and showing clips for a few versions.
@tinyfaery Not one I’ve thought of. Nice idea.
My mom liked the outlander books and the TV series that came from it.
@talljasperman Thanks, but I’m looking specifically for feature films for this class.
How about Apocolypse Now or We Were Soldiers Once and Young? Last not a novel.
Lord of the flies?
Rebecca?
The Robe.. from the Bible. Also the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane.
The Shining.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
Oh, let us know what you chose and if it went down well.
Day of the Triffids
The Harry Potter series
The Great Gatsby
Fried Green Tomatoes was an excellent book. The movie was OK, but left out the main (and most important) theme of the book, which was the lesbian relationship between the two main female characters.
Wuthering Heights was made into several different movie versions. I haven’t seen any of them yet. Probably the most well known is the 1939 Version with Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven.
Sense and Sensibility The movie version with Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant is excellent. Haven’t seen the PBS version with Dan Stevens (Matthew from Downton Abbey).
The Jungle Book Of course there is the animated Disney version, which bears only a small resemblance to the original book. There is another Disney version which is partly live action and partly CGI, but it’s quite good, but also bears little resemblance to the book. Apparently there is another new version that is coming out soon (Ben Kingsley is one of the actors) that is a live action film that is truer to the book. There’s a much older version made in 1942(1942_film)
The Help Excellent book, pretty good movie, but it left out way too much.
A Christmas Carol Lots of really good movie versions, but I’m partial to the one with Patrick Stewart, but I also really enjoyed (didn’t think I would) the animated version with Jim Carrey.
Interesting choice of TKAM and BAT, considering the friendship the two authors had. What are the objectives of the class?
@Pied_Pfeffer It’s a non-credit course so the main objective is just to critically analyze how the novel was translated to film. I chose those two mainly because they present interesting discussion points but the connection between the two authors is an added pleasure.
Other courses I teach are often more connected thematically.
Funnily enough, I had chosen Catch 22 as my third selection and a blurb from Harper Lee is on the front of the book! But I found it dense and almost interminable this time around so I am looking for something else.
Thanks @janbb. That sounds like an interesting course that I’d enjoy taking.
Two that come to mind that haven’t already been mentioned are Atonement and Slaughterhouse-Five.
Atonement (the book) was read by two male friends who just about made me pinky-swear to read it. To date, I’ve only seen the film, but feel that it would make for an interesting discussion regarding how the war scenes, plot twist and just the story structure differ between the two.
Slaughterhouse-Five is a fairly quick read. Since it is about mental time travel, it would make for an interesting discussion on whether the book or the movie did a better job at painting the picture.
I’ll second Rebecca. Again, another easy read. What would make it worthy of including in this course is that there are a fair amount of people who consider the movie version’s ending better than the book’s. How often does that happen?
The recommendation of The Outsiders by @tinyfaery is worthy of considering. While I have not read nor seen the movie, my sister, a high school English teacher, thought so highly of the book that she added it to her course.
How about The Book Thief?
The Hours by Cunningham.
The book was widely critically praised, but I actually found the movie to be better. The performances were stunning, and the actors (Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, et al) were well able to convey, with their talent, the emotional nuances which I found to be somewhat clumsily rendered by Cunningham.
The film felt much less cluttered to me.
“A Simple Plan” and “Gone Girl,” good novels made into good films.
Absolutely not “50 Shades of Gray,” badly-written books that became a dreadful movie. (Ok, I haven’t seen the film. I read the first book, just to see what I was missing. When I wasn’t laughing at the poor writing, I was bored and skipping pages. Because of that, and because the movie reviews were lame, I skipped it.)
In school we studied Of Mice and Men. I only remember that because I really enjoyed both the book and the movie. It is a rare instance where the movie really does the book justice.
@Mimishu1995 “Wuthering Heights (acually there are the 1939 movie version and the 2011 version)”
I’m not fond of the 1939 version. It changed a brutal novel, about vengeance and the harm it causes, into a sappy romance. Also, the film ends half-way through the novel, at its climax and long before the story’s denouement and conclusion.
I enjoyed the more recent version, with Juliette Binoche playing both Catherines. It was very true to the novel. Ralph Fiennes made a fabulous Heathcliffe; unlike some lesser actors, he played the role in a subdued and believable manner.
@Love_my_doggie I thought the recent Jane Eyre was very well done too although it’s not a novel I love.
I was not crazy about the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice though; I think the BBC with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth is the gold standard there.
If you’re willing to use TV mini-series, as opposed to just theatrical movie releases, the Masterpiece Theater version of Bleak House from 2007, with Carey Mulligan in the title role was an excellent adaptation of the Dickens book.
Little Dorrit(TV_series) from 2008 was just OK, but I loved the performance by Tom Courtenay as the father (he also played a very funny, extremely different character on the British TV series The Vicar of Dibley several years before that).
There’s a 2009 mini-series of Wuthering Heights with Tom Hardy as Heathcliff. I found the 2 main characters unbelievable. Tom Hardy was pretty good looking, but Heathcliff is described as rather wild and hideous in the book. The female lead was too “modern” looking. I didn’t care for this version and it didn’t seem disgusting enough, as I thought the book to be. Not sure where the idea of this book being romantic came from. I thought the 2 main characters were horrifying and gross. I did like the book in regard’s to the housekeeper’s telling of the story (she was a classic gossip).
There’s another new version of Wuthering Heights that I have not seen. Looks to be promising and a bit more daring than some of the others.
I second @Mimishu1995‘s mention of Les Miserables. It has definite literary merit (I consider it to be one of the best novels ever written, in any language) beyond the fact that it was written by a major 19th century French writer. While there are several movie adaptations of it dating back to the 1930’s, I found the 2012 version to be the best in terms of following the plot of the book.
@sahID Good idea but too long for this course as are the Dickens novels – although I love him.
Maybe one of these will work.
The Little Prince
A Little Princess. I loved the 1939 version with Shirley Temple and the 1995 version with Liesl Matthews.
Heidi. I loved the 1937 version with Shirley Temple, and the 1995 mini-series version with Noley Thornton.
Little House on the Prairie Before the TV series aired in 1974, the first “episode” was a full length made for TV movie that encompasses two of the Laura Ingall’s Wilder’s books, Little House in the Big Woods, and Little House on the Prairie. There was another really good TV mini-series, also called Little House on the Prairie, made in 2005 with Kyle Chavarria as Laura. Both movies are very true to the books. The TV series had a lot of real references, but also added a lot of things, and took liberties.
Anne of Green Gables(1985_film). I was reading this book series at the same time this made for TV series came out and it’s very true to the books.
@Kardamom Well, this is for adults and while I do sometimes assign kiddie lit, not really looking for that for this course.
(Although I do love The Secret Garden.)
The Little Prince IS awesome. We also studied that in school. (as well as Les Misérables)
I like many of the suggestions above, but here are a few personal favourites:
My Sister’s Keeper Tear-jerker, but nicely done. It’s about a girl who gets born with the job of curing her older sister’s cancer.
A Friend named Henry Discusses the way autism is seen in society, deals with the impact it has on the family, and presents an interesting view on how animals can worm their way into people’s lives.
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Nazi Germany, as seen by a child.
I see you are not looking for children’s books…otherwise, I would have added Ballett Shoes.
Gone with the Wind, Dodsworth, Silence of the Lambs, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Mildred Pierce, From Russia With Love…
Catch 22, wonderful book but forgettable movie. M.A.S.H. was a great movie and television show as well, but I never read the book, so I can’t make a comparison.
@LostInParadise “Catch 22, wonderful book but forgettable movie.”
The only thing memorable about the film is Art Garfunkel.
Did you know that the Simon & Garfunkel song, “The Only Living Boy in New York,” is about Garfunkel (“Tom,” when they performed as Tom & Jerry) leaving the country to film “Catch 22:? I only know this because I saw them in concert a few years ago; before they performed song, Paul Simon explained its meaning.
@Love_my_doggie @LostInParadise And I found the book impossible to get through this time which is why I’m switching it out. Once you’ve gotten the humor and the blackness, it just goes on and on and on…....
@David_Achilles Good ones! And the movie doesn’t have to be better; we are doing a comparison and discussion.
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