On some literary adaptations

I. Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (dir. James Whale)

While most Dracula films seem to stick fairly close to their source material, James Whale's Frankenstein films don't, in fact, bear much resemblance to Mrs. Shelley's book at all. Furthermore, Whale's two films, taken as whole films, seem rather creaky to me. They continue, however, to exert an enormous influence on pop culture. Its not hard to see why. Whatever his limitations as director, Whale, much like his disciple Tim Burton, was an extrordinarily talented set and costume designer. He had no real talent as a storyteller, but just try to get, say, the windmill scene out of your head or the bride of Frankenstein's hair or the good doctor cackling "Its alive. Its alive!" It can't be done. Whatever their limitations as narrative, I'm afraid we shall never be done with Whale's films: their archetypal power of the image simply overwhelms any merely aesthetic objections. I would, for one, would not wish to bet against their survival.

As for the book, though there are a couple of narrative lapses, it is quite excellent. The monster (or demon, as Shelley calls him) is a remarkable character. The movie versions have turned the monster into a grunting and clumsy (if still sympathetic) brute, but in the book he is fantastically eloquent. He combines the rage against his creator of Milton's Satan with the social theorizing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and very much like Macbeth makes us sympathize with him even as he murders children. He isn't quite of those characters' eminence, but he is nonetheless a remarkable achievement. Amazing work for an 18 year old girl.

II. Robinson Crusoe (dir. Luis Bunuel)

A surprisingly good adaptation, though not quite a classic in its own right. The material would not seem to be prime Bunuel territory (Defoe’s work doesn't provide much opportunity for a foot fetish scene, alas), but the director here proves up to the task of directing a more conventional film. Bunuel does, of course, take the opportunity to have the savage Friday offer a “naïve” critique Christian doctrine. As Orson Welles once said of Bunuel, “He hated God as only a good Christian could.” I would perhaps modify that to “He hated God as only a true Catholic could.” Defoe, himself the plainest of plain Protestants (except for his love of trickery), was more interested in having his Crusoe get down to work rather than wrestling with fine points of dogma, but the tensions between renegade Catholic director and sober Protestant author do enliven the cinematic experience, at least in my experience.

Any adaptation of Crusoe inevitably suffers from the fact that it is a rather episodic book. Being castaway on a deserted island is of course a sublime situation, but the problem is it only gives you one character. This doesn’t lend itself to any kind of plot, nor is there the possibility of dramatic interactions with other human beings. For example, the thing I remember best about the book is the argument between Crusoe and his father, and this before he even hits the water! (The father, of course, sings the praises of middle class living, eschewing the younger Crusoe’s thirst for adventure.) Much of the book, however, is pure interior monologue, passable in literature, but not necessarily the most cinematic of qualities. The film does manage to get by with Crusoe speaking a narration over the images. However, capturing Defoe’s sublimely restrained prose style, another major attraction of the book, is of course impossible.

III. Three Musketeers (dir. Richard Lester)

A wonderful film, filled with zest. Easily the best of the Musketeers films and a real work of cinema. Of course, it helps that the book, though well written, is a plot driven adventure story. Prose style is unfilmable, but adventure stories are not. Lester’s films (he is most famous for his work with the Beatles) are best at presenting youthful energy, and his and Michael York’s D’Artagnan is much like many other teenage boys, getting in and out of scrapes in the big city. The film revels in movement. Oliver Reed, apparently sober enough to put in a fine performance, makes an excellent Athos. Charlton Heston, playing off his massive, if slightly preposterous, dignity, is a wonderful villain, and Faye Dunaway, machiavellian yet fragile, is wonderful as his accomplice, Lady de Winter. The swordfighting is more energetic than precise, and, in general, the elegant French setting is used more as a foil for the rather boisterous Anglo-Saxon-style performances than as a tone setter for the entire production, but here the combination works quite well. (BTW nothing says boisterous like Raquel Welch and her, uh, assets.) Altogether, a must see.

IV. Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (dir. Rouben Mamoulian)

A superb film. Lurid, expressionistic, sexy: this is the version to see. Harold Bloom once remarked that Stevenson’s great insight was that Dr. Jeckyll was old in good, but Mr. Hyde was young in evil, so that as he grew more beholden to his darker half he began to grow younger as well. This film has the good sense not to fail this insight: March’s performance is the essence of youthful energy. He literally leaps around the screen. His Hyde revels in his misdeeds; he is both reckless and without regret. He leers at women and snaps at other men like the most out of control of out of control teenage boys. His very head bobs back and forth with a kind of testosterone-addled frenzy. In contrast, Spencer Tracy in the 1941 version is good at projecting nobility, but he doesn't have an ounce of youthful energy left in him, if indeed he ever had any, and it shows. His Hyde just doesn’t seem to be having any fun. Miriam Hopkins too is a far sexier Champagne Ivy than Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s quiet sincerity has its own kind of sexiness, but it is totally out of place in this kind of over the top gothica. Hopkins, however, is perfect. She is excellent as the kind of goodtime gal, seemingly without any depth, who only reveals a full range of human emotions when menaced or betrayed. Mamoulian also finds a perfect match for his talents. I am not a fan of either Queen Christina or Love Me Tonight, his two other best known films, but here he is free to indulge his expressionistic style and penchant for lurid imagery. They match the story all too well. All in all, very well worth seeing.

V. The Leopard (dir. Luchino Visconti)

Though wonderful to look at, this film was something of a disappointment. Eminently watchable, no small achievement for a 3 hour film, like many literary adaptations the material is not necessarily well suited for the screen. Indeed, the novel was at first rejected by publishers for being too essayistic, not a good sign as far as the film version goes. The Leopard, unlike, say, any of Dicken’s novels, is not an inherently dramatic work. Much of the Prince’s thoughts are revealed in long interior monologues. In transferring them to spoken dialogue, the results are often stiff and awkward. The result is a kind of Masterpiece Theatre production, albeit lovely, taken to the nth degree.

Whatever its limits however, the film has undoubtedly been immensely influential. It looks gorgeous and its photographic style has had a palpable effect on Coppola’s Godfather movies. Burt Lancaster’s performance is excellent, some of Lampedusa’s literary effect comes across in the script and the battle scenes are often quite interesting. The film is also a superb showcase for Claudia Cardinale at her freshest and most beautiful. (So much so that I have added the film to this list.) Above all, the film ends with a wonderfully staged ball (it prominently features Ms. Cardinale), which almost saves the film. If the rest of the movie lived up to those final 20 minutes, The Leopard would be an undeniable masterpiece.

Lampedusa’s novel itself is, to my mind, the greatest piece of Italian fiction this past century, surpassing anything by the likes of Calvino or Moravia. It is also an unabashed throwback to the traditional novel. It is driven by character and story, and is quite without the least pretension to difficulty or experimentalism. Though this caused much controversy on its publication in Italy and has perhaps led to the book’s neglect among the literati here, the book is all the better for it. I have to ask; for all the experimentalism of modernism and post-modernism in fiction, where are the results? The best novels of the late 20th century were still written in more or less traditional forms. The Leopard, Fifth Business, Blood Meridian, Love in the Time of Cholera, Sabbath’s Theatre: none of them are particularly experimental. Even with such modernist masters as Joyce and Woolf, their best work may turn out to be their most conventional. I myself prefer Portrait of the Artist to Ulysses, and To the Lighthouse, Woolf’s best book, is by far her least experimental. All too often, it seems to me, a desire to be different for its own sake has only alienated the novelist's potential audience and pushed the artist himself to the edge of absurdity.

VI. Tristram Shandy (dir. Michael Winterbottom)

Despite fine performances all around, this film adaptation only succeeds in proving that the most unfilmable of novels is indeed unfilmable. Tristram Shandy is the most deliberately literary of fictions, and, sadly, when seeing many of the funniest scenes in the book up on the screen, I found myself barely managing a chuckle. Furthermore, while the book has many vivid characters, it doesn’t have any plot. It is literally about Tristram Shandy’s total inability to tell a story, his own or anyone else’s. Lots of hemming and hawing and lots of odd digressions ensue. Wonderful stuff on the page, but not what films are made of.

Of course, all this is in good fun. In contrast to the modernists, Sterne did not break with novelistic tradition in order to prove a point about “art.” There is none of this nonsense about fragmented times requiring fragmented forms, or about how breakdown of the modern self requires a breakdown of fictional conventions. Its all just a bit of a lark, presided over by a thoroughly benign author. I think that is what separates Sterne from his declared inheritors: he actually cares about people, and puts them in his books. Uncle Toby is, as Hazlitt declared, one of the finest tributes to humanity in fiction. Despite all the literary craziness, in the end we do end up with well drawn portraits of those that Tristram has loved and lived with.

VII. My Brilliant Career (dir. Gillian Armstrong)

I have not actually read the novel on which this film is based, but it is highly regarded. (Harold Bloom, for instance, includes it in his canon.) The story concerns a plain, but talented girl from a struggling family who is first sent off to visit her well off grandmother and then is sent to work as a governess for a crude farm family in order to help her father pay off his debts. Directed by Gillian Armstrong, one of the few indisputably great female directors out there, the film is, in any event, a fine piece of cinema, no mere adaptation. The photography is wonderful and the performances are excellent. The film’s star is the famously difficult Judy Davis, who sadly doesn’t get much work these days, so it is good to be reminded of just how good an actress she really is. Here she is still very young (she still has her baby fat, and yes, Judy Davis once had baby fat!), but already she is a fully formed artist. She literally carries the film on her 23 year old shoulders. Its rare to see an actor’s performance literally blow everything else off the screen, but this is one of those occasions. It is a must see. Bonuses include the lovely Australian setting.

NOTE: Like Mrs. Shelley, Miles (Stella) Franklin was still in her teens when she wrote My Brilliant Career.

VIII. Gunga Din (dir. George Stevens)

I’m not sure whether this really qualifies as an adaptation. Kipling’s original poem is actually quite short, and Din’s act of heroism there is not the same as the one portrayed in the film. In fact, though that final act of heroism is his, the film doesn’t actually pay much attention to the title character, being concerned more with the comic exploits of the British soldiers played by Grant, McLaughlin and Fairbanks. It is a rousing adventure film, featuring lots of British pomp and pageantry, many well-staged stunts, and hordes of brainwashed baddies crawling over the walls after our three (or is it four) heroes. Despite being filmed in 1939, those action sequences hold up well against anything put out in these days of computer generated effects. I’d put this film up against Lord of the Rings any day.

Director George Stevens’ career is probably the best argument against the auteur theory out there. (I blog about this question here.) Other examples put forward to disprove the theory, such as William Wyler, actually tend to reinforce it, their films being really rather bad. Though, in addition to Gunga Din, Stevens directed several other excellent films, from dramas like A Place in the Sun and Giant to musicals and comedies like Swing Time and Damsel in Distress, there doesn’t really seem to be much of a common thread running through them all, at least not that I can see. He appears mostly to have been a very skilled craftsman, a very talented gun for hire, who mostly directed whatever the studios gave him to do, good, bad, or indifferent. In any event, whoever deserves the credit, this particular film has proved to be quite influential. Gunga Din has had an obvious impact on John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King and on Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones movies, whose Temple of Doom straightforwardly rips off its villain and his Kali worshipping cult from this film. It’s as good as any of those later films though, and deserves to be seen on its own.