Fielding on Film

I have thought for some time that it is just not possible to transfer such panoramic classics as War and Peace or Vanity Fair to the screen and retain any of the depth of the originals. Perhaps if Lessing were alive today he could explain this in an addendum to the Laocoön. For the two art forms do not have interchangeable techniques. That is why it is easier to make a reasonably good picture out of a worthless book —Peyton Place comes to mind—than out of a good one. The producer is freer to operate on his own when he lacks respect for the author. The only adequate translation of a book of literary value into serious film terms that I have seen in recent years was An Outcast of the Islands. Unfortunately it did not do very well —a double irony, since the book itself is part of the trilogy that is Conrad’s neglected masterpiece..

All of which brings me by the detour of a paragraph to that latest film version of a classic, Tom Jones. With a great beating of gongs, like the one that used to summon Mr. J. Arthur Rank to breakfast, Tom Jones is now being proclaimed the picture of the year. It may be so, for that matter. After all, this is leap year.

FR

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Francis Russell

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I have thought for some time that it is just not possible to transfer such panoramic classics as War and Peace or Vanity Fair to the screen and retain any of the depth of the originals. Perhaps if Lessing were alive today he could explain this in an addendum to the Laocoön. For the two art forms do not have interchangeable techniques. That is why it is easier to make a reasonably good picture out of a worthless book —Peyton Place comes to mind—than out of a good one. The producer is freer to operate on his own when he lacks respect for the author. The only adequate translation of a book of literary value into serious film terms that I have seen in recent years was An Outcast of the Islands. Unfortunately it did not do very well —a double irony, since the book itself is part of the trilogy that is Conrad’s neglected masterpiece..

All of which brings me by the detour of a paragraph to that latest film version of a classic, Tom Jones. With a great beating of gongs, like the one that used to summon Mr. J. Arthur Rank to breakfast, Tom Jones is now being proclaimed the picture of the year. It may be so, for that matter. After all, this is leap year.