No, you don't...

[selenak]

Every time someone makes "best of" lists, one is bound to be content only with some of them and grumble about other choices. In this case, it's the Guardian, who picked the Ten Best Screen Adaptions. Now I'm all for Il Gattopardo and Great Expectations (David Lean version), and I was delighted to find Stand By Me there, but Oliver!?!? No way. If you pick a Carol Reed directed film, you don't go for the Dickens by way of Lionel Bart (and btw, the fact that Bart's musical makes significant changes means that the film counts only as an adaption of the musical, not the novel, anyway), you go for The Third Man. Especially since one of the categories is "possibly even surpassing the book". Sorry, Graham Greene, but this particular film is better. Your book doesn't have the awesome camera angles, Orson's improvised cuckoo clock speech or the merciless ending.

Speaking of Orson Welles, I note none of the films directed by him made the cut. Now there isn't a Shakespeare adaption there anyway, and maybe they figured filmed plays are another category (in which case, what is Oliver! doinng in this list?), so leaving aside Othello and Chimes at Midnight, that still means the indefensible slight of Touch of Evil. Which is based on a very forgettable novella and is just awesome.

Also: let's move to none English speaking countries, for more than Visconti, shall we? I would like to submit for your consideration: Der Untertan (directed by Wolfgang Staude, based on a novel by Heinrich Mann, biting and funny and savage; also, it says something about 50s West Germany that the film wasn't allowed to be shown there until Staude moved from East to West), Wir Wunderkinder (more about it here, and it is based on a novel, which as opposed to the Heinrich Mann one nobody reads anymore today, whereas the film is a much beloved classic; if someone tells you German films that explore national identity can only do that in a gloomy boring fashion instead of doing it with wit, humanity and yes, sexiness, too, that's the one to go to); oh, and then there's one even non Germans might have heard of, The Blue Angel, based on Heinrich Mann's novella Professor Unrat, directed by Josef von Sternberg and making the career of one Marlene Dietrich.

As snubbed as Orson Welles by the Guardian: anything sci fi. Which is the only explanation as to why Blade Runner is not on that list. Which, yes, is based on a book (by Philip K. Dick), and is one my best ten films of all times list, so it's definitely good enough for ten best literary adaptions.

The Guardian's list has the recent version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in it which I think is a bit, err, premature. Let's look back on it when it wasn't last year's hit, and in the meantime, as far as John Le Carré adaptions for the big screen are concerned, there's always The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. But okay, more recent films. I don't think you can consider Jackson's three LotR films separately, so I'm staying away from them; otoh, how about The English Patient?

In conclusion: I'm entirely predictable when it comes to anyone's best ten of anything lists. :)

Comments

[thirdblindmouse]

I'm embarrassed to say I haven't seen most of these (Oliver! and Cabaret on their list, The Third Man and the Lord of the Rings on yours), and those I've seen I've only experienced as movies, except for LotR.

I don't think the LotR movies would deserve a place on the list even if they weren't a trilogy, but I agree that choosing Oliver! over The Third Man does not make sense in any universe. If I had to make my own list, The Third Man would definitely be on it, as would Nosferatu, Fantastic Planet, Hunger Games, and A koppányi aga testamentuma. Oh dear, I think my tastes are showing, as is my inability to remember which movies were adapted from books. If my list were limited to movie adaptations of books I've read, it either wouldn't reach 10 or it would include movies I didn't much like.

Now I have to decide whether to watch The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. It can only be less numbingly depressing than the book ...right?

ETA: For more non-English-language films and further evidence of my tastes, Night Watch.

[selenak]

Night Watch caused me problems because I had read the books (if we're talking about the Russian novels & film), and I was a bit dissappointed, to put it mildly, that a) suddenly there was a father-son story where there was none in the books between the narrator and the boy from the first novel, and b) a very morally ambiguous character was now a simplified good guy. Also the female characters felt short changed. I hear you about Nosferatu, though.

Spy: does this answer your question?

ETA: and I forgot again that you can't embed on dreamwith. Anyway, have a link to the key scene:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNrjAMV0HJk

[thirdblindmouse]

I can see how that would have been disappointing. I'm kinda glad I hadn't read the books first, then. Which morally ambiguous character was simplified?

[selenak]

Geser. Here's my review of the trilogy of books after I'd torn through them:

http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/417541.html

[andraste]

I'm bemused that Oliver! would make a list that leaves out The Third Man, Blade Runner and, for that matter, The Godfather. Not that it's a bad film, but better than The Third Man and The Godfather?

I guess one could argue that Blade Runner is not great as a adaptation, given how many characters are cut, how much the basic plot is changed and how many elements of Dick's setting are left out. (Including the electric sheep itself!) It's a fascinating example of an adaptation approaching the themes of the original from a very different angle.

[selenak]

Oh my god, yes, The Godfather! Not only a splendid film but definitely a case where the adaptio surpasses the source material.

Point taken re: Blade Runner.