Novels into Film

In the movies, there are always excuses for failure and tons of them are being expended on The Great Gatsby and Daisy Miller. They are not just being talked about as lousy movies; their artistic failure is supposed to be related to something “basic” to the film medium, as if, in transporting a great work of literature to film, the filmmakers had violated nature itself. Is it really impossible to make a great film from a great novel?

Let’s look at what we have. Since the beginnings of film, practically every great Western novel since Fielding has been filmed. If movies became great by association, the scene would now be swarming with classics, but it isn’t. The problem with most movie versions of great literature is the same problem that high school English teachers have toward the classics: reverence. Not so much a reverence for the material but a reverence for the idea that one is working with a Great Book.

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In the movies, there are always excuses for failure and tons of them are being expended on The Great Gatsby and Daisy Miller. They are not just being talked about as lousy movies; their artistic failure is supposed to be related to something “basic” to the film medium, as if, in transporting a great work of literature to film, the filmmakers had violated nature itself. Is it really impossible to make a great film from a great novel?

Let’s look at what we have. Since the beginnings of film, practically every great Western novel since Fielding has been filmed. If movies became great by association, the scene would now be swarming with classics, but it isn’t. The problem with most movie versions of great literature is the same problem that high school English teachers have toward the classics: reverence. Not so much a reverence for the material but a reverence for the idea that one is working with a Great Book.