Adapting Books to Film

As we all know many movies are made from books, but what makes film adaptations of books a success? For me it is important that the film portray the feeling of the book, and to a great degree it does need to follow the plot of the book otherwise it may only be “inspired” by the book and not an adaptation. This is what I found to be the great difference between the two versions of Little Women we have watched so far: The Hepburn version does the best job of following the spirit of the book, and the June Allyson version does not. The main difference between the two for me is that the earlier version has the same energy as Alcott’s prose due to the direction of George Cukor, while the second seems satisfied by simply playing out the scenes in color, and not using the symbolic power of color and mise en scene. Overall it just feels stale. But this is merely my opinion, and along those lines I would like to propose what I think is the greatest adaptation of a book to film: The Godfather. To be completely true to the book I would have to include The Godfather II because the back story of Don Corleone stems from the book. The beauty of these movies is that while they portray the book accurately and faithfully, they capture the spirit of the book and more importantly the times. Movies truly succeed when they honor their source material, but at the same time become their own piece of artwork. I would be interested to hear about other great adaptations of books.