Every week, we’ll pose a new “five favorites” question. You just list your five favorites that fit in that category (preferably in preference order) and you’re welcome to discuss and debate the selections and see just how much you do or do not have in common with others. If you want to take a look back at our past articles to comment or enjoy, here is a post set aside to track all of our articles.
With the weekend release of the second chapter of The Hunger Games series, what are your favorite films adapted from books?
What are your 5 Favorite Book-to-Film Adaptations?
I’ll restrict myself to books I’ve read as well, but unlike Mike, I will go for the classics, which they did in the golden age of the studio system with the scope and skill with which only TV mini-series seem capable of producing nowadays:
The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
David Copperfield (1935)
Captains Courageous (1937)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)
Those are all great movies. It’s hard to pick a favorite Dickens’ adaptation. Mine would probably be a toss-up between David Leans’s Great Expectations and Brian Desmond Hurst’s A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim. I think when I was younger, I started reading A Tale of Two Cities, but never made it through it all.
Leans Great Expectations is probably the best film made from a Dickens novel, but Cukor”s David Copperfield is for me the best book to film adaptation. It may have left out key scenes and sub-plots that were made clearer in other film versions, but those actors, Freddie Bartholomew, W.C. Fields, Edna May Oliver, Jessie Ralph, Roland Young, Basil Rathbone, Lewis Stone, Made Evans, Maureen O’Sullivan, Elsa Lanchester, Una O’Connor and more, all seemed born to play the roles they were given. Edna May Oliver, in particular, set the standard for her character, Aunt Betsey Trotwood. Such greats as Edith Evans, Maggie Smith and Sally Field have played the part since, but no one has ever come close to her portrayal.
I’m restricting myself to books I have read and films that did justice to or improved upon the source. Since my reading is woefully lacking with the classics, these are mostly films based on pulp thrillers.
The Godfather
Jaws
The Exorcist
The Silence of the Lambs
Rosemary’s Baby
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