As I pointed out on the World
Book and Copyright Day, the link between books and films is so close that we
can´t help thinking about books when we discuss films as there is a high number
of films whose existence relies on the story of a novel, a play or any literary
work. Both books and films are created out of our urge to tell stories and to
be told stories and from this point of view, we feel moved by those stories in
a similar way regardless of whether the images created in our minds come from
the words written in a book or from the moving pictures on a screen.
It cannot be denied that the relationship
between films and books has always been a fruitful one despite the frequent
controversy that arises when a film based on a book is released. Very often, films
are based on well-known books which have become very successful and therefore
it´s difficult for them to live up to our expectations. As a result, a great deal of viewers who have read the book
will feel disappointed by the film but at other times, there are also reviews
that emphasise the fact that the story on the screen manages to make the
original story look even better thanks to the cast of actors, to the way
the director
was able to envision the story or maybe, thanks to an inexplicable factor that
is difficult to describe, that is, the translation from the written page into
the screen is not always easy or straightforward and there is not a magic trick
to achieve it, otherwise, everybody would make use of it.
Over the last months, we´ve had the opportunity
of watching several films whose story has been borrowed from the literary work
of famous writers: Anna Karenina by
Leo Tolstoy and Great Expectations by
Charles Dickens.
Neither of them was the first adaptation of the
novel: Anna Karenina had already been
made into a film thirteen times and Great
Expectations is the seventh film adaptation of the novel by Dickens.
Anna Karenina got quite a lot of hype
because it starred Keira Knightley, Jude Law and a promising young actor Aaron
Johnson (he played the role of John Lennon in Nowhere Boy, a 2009 biopic about the British musician.)
Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter played
the parts of Magwitch and Miss Havisham respectively in Great Expectations but perhaps the rest of the cast wasn´t so
well-known beyond the British screen and as a result, this film has gone
unnoticed by the audience in countries where the plot of a literary work – even
it is a classic
of British literature – doesn´t turn out to be such an interesting perk.
In short, both stories have previously been
made into films but the fact that these literary works are regarded as classics
make directors, producers and screenwriters continue to resort to them as
sources of inspiration to create new films.
What do you
think about the fact that the industry of film-making resorts to literary works
so often? What conclusions can you reach about the close tie that exists
between books and films?
These days a new film based on another
important literary work is about to be released The Great Gatsby. The Great
Gatsby (1925) was written by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald and is a wonderful depiction of an era that
the writer dubbed “the Jazz Age”: an era full of glitter which seemed to
disguise the moral emptiness and hypocrisy of the “Roaring Twenties”.
The novel had been made into a film four times
but perhaps, the most memorable adaptation was the one that starred Robert
Redford as Jay Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan in 1974. Baz Luhrmann is
responsible for the fifth adaptation of the novel; he has already shown us his
ability to translate famous written stories – Romeo and Juliet – and impressive productions – Moulin Rouge – into screen versions so there
is reason to believe that we should wait for the new film with an air of
expectancy.
I heard on the grapevine which – these days –
means that I read on the social network sites that the following song is
inspired by the story of The Great Gatsby
and I think that it really reminds you of the story depicted in this outstanding
novel.
In case you don´t know what the novel is about,
here you can see the trailer of the new version of The Great Gatsby. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the part of Gatsby and
Carey Mulligan plays the part of Daisy Buchanan.
