Books and films

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.