The Maltese Falcon:[ul]Everything about the movie simply reeks of the original content of the book. Lorre’s portrayal of Joe Cairo is so spot on as to be miraculous. The overall tenor is accurate and the scenery is intensely true to the story and location. There are so few gaps or deviations from the book’s plot that it seems like not much of the shooting landed on the cutting room floor.[/ul]
A Town Like Alice:[ul]However lengthy the film is for the viewer, it is utterly faithful to Neville Shute’s original story. I find this completely forgivable in light of the excellent acting and beautiful scenery. This film deftly captures the underlying tension as its female protagonist grapples with the parochialism and ubiquitous Australian chauvinism that she must overcome. Bryan Brown strikes me as a modern day Humphrey Bogart with his taciturn delivery and constrained emoting.
While researching this post, I’ve noted that what I saw may have been a PBS miniseries adaptation. I’m including this nonetheless because of the fantastic quality of work demonstrated by the producers.[/ul]
Did the almost impossible job of adapting a long, dense great non-fiction book into a kick-ass movie. The few times it strayed from the book were pretty forgiveable.
Actually, the movie of The Godfather was even better then the book, IMHO. The book lost points because of the seemingly pointless section about Johnny Fontaine and his buddy in Hollywoodland.
That and the movie did an excellant job with the Baptism sequence, which wasn’t as neatly juxtaposited in the book(but the movie left out the death of the bodyguard from Sicily.)
A Clockwork Orange. I was a big fan of the book (the American edition) years before I got to see the film version, which remains one of my all-time favorite movies. It wasn’t until some time after that that I got my hands on an English edition of the book with the ending that Burgess intended.
Hannibal. Now hear me out. True, the movie is far inferior to Silence of the Lambs, but it is WAY better than the book by Thomas Harris, I think. Although they should have left in the Margot plotline.
I think I went into Hannibal with such a distaste for the book that I could never have liked the movie.
I’m surprised noone has mentioned Lord of the Rings yet, seeing as how recent and popular they have been. In fact, IMO, the fight scenes in The Two Towers were much more exciting than in the book.
Also, most of Alfred Hitchcock’s films were based on books, but he took great liberties with most of them. Of course, most of the time they came out far superior. In fact, when he hit his popularity, people would write books in his genre hoping he would make a movie out of them.
I’m going to say Adaptation. The scenes where it tries a traditional adaptation of the book work well enough, and then it goes a step further, saying not only, “This is what the book says,” but “This is how the book made me feel.”
The only new one I can think of off the top of my head is High Fidelity. The film stayed very close to the book, and I love the way Rob Gordon addresses the audience, which helped, I think, make the cross over from first-person novel to film even smoother. The characters were almost identical to how I’d pictured them in reading, especially Jack Black’s role.
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas was an excellent adaptation. When I first heard of a movie being made of it, I couldn’t conceive what it would be like, but once I saw it, it felt just like the book.
I thought they did a good job with “Holes”. I teach 5th grade and I must say, I’ve read that book aloud to my students several times. I felt the movie was effective at showing the themes of the book. As I watched the film, I kept thinking to myself, “yep, that happened in the book.”
Also, one of my favorite books is “Lonesome Dove”. I know it was done as a mini-series, but it was very good. Sometimes with a long book, a TV mini-series is the best way to go, because there is so much in the book.
It seems to me that nowadays, more and more authors are writing books that will adapt well to film. Novels have become more visual… I’m in a book group and most of the time, I think, while I’m reading, “a film will be made of this book”. The most recent being, “The Secret Life of Bees”.
They did a good job with Black Hawk Down. Although they weren’t able to get into the characters more, you went away feeling for what those guys went through.