Books and Films

Some preliminary thoughts on turning books into movies, after reading Philip Roth's American Pastoral and seeing Ewan McGregor's film version.

1.  The best films are often made from less-than-perfect books, which directors choose because of a few ideas or plot elements that appeal to them.  A good example is John Ford's The Searchers (1956) from a 1954 novel by Alan Le May, good solid prose that Ford turned into cinematic poetry.  Another example is Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), from the French novel D'entre les morts by Boileau-Narcejac.  Hitchcock made significant changes, including revealing what had actually happened well in advance of the ending. Hitchcock was relatively unsuccessful with Joseph Conrad (Sabotage, 1936) as was Ford with Graham Greene (The Fugitive, 1947)

2. Good films are seldom made from artistically successful books, complete in their own way.  Neither Stanley Kubrick's (1962) nor Adrian Lyne's (1997) version of Lolita  is effective:  Nabokov's elegant prose has no cinematic equivalent (at least one has not yet been found), leaving just the dubious "plot." This does not mean, of course, that parts of a novel can not be turned into a successful film, such as King Vidor's War and Peace, 1956, which captured beautifully certain elements of Tolstoy's novel, especially the retreat from Russia;  John Huston's Moby Dick, 1956, focused on Ahab and embodied Huston's theme of failure.

3.  As time goes on the sources of films are forgotten.  Does anyone today read Fannie Hurst, whose novel Imitation of Life was twice made into a good film:  John Stahl in 1934 and Douglas Sirk in 1959?  Reasons that the Western is such an important genre in American films include its appeal to good directors (Ford, Hawks, Mann) and the fact that there are many novels and stories to use without much concern that the resulting films will be compared to the obscure sources.  A favorite film of mine, Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent,1962 -- a great film about American politics --is from Allen Drury's novel, 1959,,seldom read these days.

Where does this leave American Pastoral?  Yes, McGregor's film is very different from Roth's novel but also it is more generally focused on the generation gap of the 60's and less on the religious and social problems of the time that interest Roth.  Andrew Sarris suggested, in response to Ernest Lehman's misbegotten film of Portnoy's Complaint, 1972, that the best way to film a Phillip Roth novel would be to just film Roth reading it. There are those that think a film and its literary source should be thought of as completely separate;  is it possible to compare them while respecting the integrity of each?