This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a movie-themed freebie, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do a post I’d been contemplating ever since Eva did something similar: top ten book-to-movie adaptations. Now, these aren’t necessarily my favorite movies adapted from books, because there’s plenty of movies I love that don’t follow their books exactly; these are the ten I think are the most faithful and accurate adaptations of their source material. For the purposes of this post, I’m counting out miniseries and movies based on plays.
Goodbye, My Lady (1956) – book by James H. Street
This lovely underrated film is literally almost word for word and scene for scene with the novel, and all the characters are just about perfectly cast. I suppose a book with such a small cast of characters and so much of the story conveyed through dialogue lends itself particularly well to adaptation. In any case, it’s excellently done.
Old Yeller (1957) – book by Fred Gipson
While the film script made some judicious tweaks to heighten the drama of a few scenes, again, it’s almost a perfect adaptation. When I first read the book, after seeing the movie, everything I visualized as I read chimed neatly with the way it was portrayed onscreen.
Shane (1953) – book by Jack Schaefer
On the surface various things were changed for the movie—character names, scenes moved around or trimmed out, et cetera—but you don’t really notice that while reading the book (or at least I didn’t), because the movie catches the essentials and does it memorably. If anything I thought the character of Marian was a little more vibrant and less wistful in the book, perhaps more interesting, but the difference isn’t enough to spoil anything.
Sense and Sensibility (1995) – book by Jane Austen
Hands-down, the best job of adapting an Austen novel to fit within a feature-length running time. Unlike the ’05 Pride and Prejudice, where I feel like anyone who hasn’t read the book would really have no idea what’s going on, S&S nails all the most important aspects of the novel, and beyond that is just a beautiful film.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) – book by James Hilton
Aside from the pardonable flight of fancy in moving Mr. Chipping’s walking tour from the hills of England to the mountains of Austria (and I really can’t criticize anything that provides an excuse for a Viennese waltz), this is another one that does just a lovely job translating the book to screen. Being a shorter book, more of a novella than a novel, it’s just the right length to turn into a film without having to chop it down to size.
Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) – book by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The book was a childhood favorite, but I didn’t see the movie until a couple of years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it was done. Mickey Rooney as Dick isn’t quite right, but everybody else is—C. Aubrey Smith is the Earl of Dorincourt come to life, right off the cover of the Dell Yearling Classic paperback edition I grew up with.
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – book by Harper Lee
Of course there’s layers of depth in the book that are impossible to translate to the screen, but this is really a darn good adaptation. The casting is right, the setting is right, the important plot points are all there—and when the novel’s author is actually pleased with the adaptation job, there you have a rare honor.
Rebecca (1940) – book by Daphne du Maurier
It’s been a while since I saw this one, but from what I recall the book-to-screen job was an awfully good one. I’m still impressed by how the screenwriters managed to make a major plot change to satisfy the Production Code simply by tweaking a few lines of dialogue, but left everything else intact.
The Longest Day (1962) – book by Cornelius Ryan
Nonfiction is a little different, but the thing that book and movie have in common is the suspense-building way they trace the intersecting progress of a big cast of characters, keeping you watching or turning the pages just as if you actually didn’t know what was going to happen.
Kidnapped (1960) – book by Robert Louis Stevenson
I wrote a full review of this one for a blogathon earlier this year! Even though the story is trimmed and sped up a bit to fit within the running time, the casting is great and the whole thing captures the spirit of Stevenson’s novel in a way that would be hard to match.
Kelly F. Barr says
Good list! I, too, agree about Old Yeller and To Kill a Mockingbird. I don’t recall seeing any of the others on your list, but I also couldn’t help but notice that most of these are quite old, so I guess Hollywood had a stronger commitment to the stories as written, or to the authors, than they do in recent years. 🙂
I noticed that you are an historical fiction author, and I am working on my first historical romance novel.
You can see my TTT at: https://kellyfbarr.com/2016/11/15/top-ten-tuesday-37/
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Well, I’m not sure…I’ve seen some older movies that made hash of their source material, too! 🙂 But I do think the “golden age” of film produced a lot of fine adaptations to make up for it.
Rachel says
I don’t think I’ve seen any of these except Sense & Sensibility (which I love). I definitely need to watch To Kill a Mockingbird though, since I really enjoyed the book!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
I’ve been wanting to see To Kill a Mockingbird again too, since it’s been a while. My guess is you’ll probably enjoy it!
Suzannah says
Looks like a great list! I totally agree with you about SENSE & SENSIBILITY – it’s not absolutely the most faithful adaptation, but within the limitations of the project (fitting a full length novel into a film) it’s brilliant.
My personal favourite book to film adaptation is William Goldman’s THE PRINCESS BRIDE. The books author wrote the movie script, and I think the script is actually an improvement on the book.
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Now I have the impulse to run through my list of films seen and count how many times the author worked on the screenplay…that doesn’t happen too often, does it? The one example that comes to mind is Graham Greene’s The Third Man, though that’s a bit of an unusual one, since he wrote the novella with the specific purpose of turning it into a screenplay.
Annie says
What a fun list! I’ve always thought that Old Yeller is the most accurate book-to-film adaption of all the films I’ve seen.
In watching a behind-the-scenes video about the production I found out that Fred Gibson was very involved with Walt Disney for the film. If I remember correctly, it said that he was there tweaking the script, and was also on set during production.
Shane would be the one adaption on your list I would differ with you on. 🙂 I never was satisfied with the film version of Shane. At all.
I think the book was deeper, more meaningful, cheerful, and also more poignant in so many ways that the film totally missed (despite the excellent acting and actors). I thought the characters were far superior in the book as well. Joe seems to have lost all his greatness in the transfer to film.
Nonetheless, I do like the film! It just isn’t as grand as the book, in my opinion.
I have yet to see Kidnapped, but I’m sure hoping to soon! Great post!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Aha, unofficial author help! That works too.
I may look on the film version of Shane more favorably because I saw it before reading the book. I almost think watching an adaptation of a book you love is bound to disappoint in some degree, unless it’s absolutely letter-perfect—there’s always something they missed! I actually wrote a whole blog post on that notion a while back.
Hamlette says
I’ve seen 8 of these, and both Shane and Kidnapped almost made my list of favorites. SO GOOD.
I like the new blog look, btw!
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
Thank you!
It’s funny to think now that I used to consider Kidnapped “just okay.” Now my whole family can quote lines from it (Scottish accents and all) off the cuff to suit the occasion. 🙂
Sarah - Sew Characteristically You says
I have only watched three movies on this list, and have only read one of the books. 😉 My family usually pulls out “The Longest Day” near the anniversary of the operation. It is certainly a very good movie overall, although my historian brother could probably tell you all of the inaccuracies. 🙂 The 1995 “Sense and Sensibility” is the only version I have ever seen, although I have at least read the book once upon a time. Do you have an opinion on the 2009 version? And then I have seen “Old Yeller” but I have never read the book, so I really can’t judge as to its accuracy!
Personally, I have about four categories for book to movie adaptations:
1. A fairly good adaptation that follows the book and that I enjoy
2. A more loose adaptation, but all in all fairly decent and I still like it.
3. Adaptations that take a lot of poetic licence so that the original story is barely there, but a decent movie if one does not try to associate it with the book it was supposed to be based off of.
4. Then there are those movies that are just awful adaptations, and the movies are so bad, they aren’t worth considering a new story separate from the book.
Sarah
Elisabeth Grace Foley says
That’s a good way to break it down! I’ve probably seen adaptations that fall into all of those categories. National Velvet, for example, is a movie I love even though it’s very different from the (also good) book. And I’m fond of the 1949 Little Women even though it by no means does full justice to the book…there’s just something about it.
I did see the 2009 Sense and Sensibility just once, but it didn’t make too much of an impression on me. Certainly not enough to compete with the ’95 version, anyway! 🙂
Katie/ Girl About Library says
Wow! I haven’t seen hardly any of these- just To Kill A Mockingbird. Goodbye, lady is at the top of the list for movies to watch- I am always intrigued by adaptations that stick that closely to the material.