Posts on a recent thread on Hitchcock's film of Daphne du Maurier's novel, 'Rebecca', which, although an Oscar winner, is thought by many inferior to the original novel, raise the question of film adaptations from fiction. Notoriously, they could never leave well alone, but always had to make some alterations to the plot. I could never understand the reason for this, but have always suspected it to be something like a dog pissing to mark "his" territory. Even a film as distinguished as Ford's 'The Grapes Of Wrath' doesn't quite match the power of Steinbeck's original. The only film I can think of which I have thought to equal, or even perhaps to surpass, the original from which it was adapted, was Carol Reed's 1940s film about the Irish troubles, based on a novel by one F L Green [of whom I know nothing else], 'Odd Man Out': and even then, perhaps, only because of Robert Newton's magnificently OTT performance as the mad artist and F J McCormick's wonderful characterisation as his downtrodden flatmate; + a brief but striking cameo by the incomparable Cyril Cusack.

But can anyone think of any film that they genuinely feel improved on the novel on which it was based?

~Michael~


I am only really concerned with novel adaptations. Plays, originally dramatic in form anyhow, tho often opened out to some extent [good, in both senses, examples, being the 30s-40s adaptations of Shaw's Pygmalion & Coward's Blithe Spirit] give rise to different considerations IMO.