What a novel loses when turned into a movie

[shaya]

I hate reading novels, but at the same time, I feel guilt or rather regret for ignoring great novels like: Les Miserables, Ulysses,.. etc.

On the other hand, I watched them turned into movies.

I know that I missed a lot. My question: what is that missed and is it a necessary component?

Thanks

[Bill Wiltrack]

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A movie adds a new dimensions to a written work.

Moving images are able to convey meaning in areas where the literal message alone cannot.

Sound is also a component to movies. Thus music can be used.


Because well-made movies capture and embrace ALL senses at the same time a good movie can suspend an individual and encase their attention in a way literal words cannot.






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This was a GREAT topic.


In short, the novel looses the phoney opulence that it once enjoyed before it was turned into a movie.







Thank you for adding a GREAT topic to the forum - right out of the box!



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[The Voice of Time]

Damn, not seen so many sentences from you before Bill!

The component you loose the most is your own imagination, because your imagination knows how to entertain you and therefore it neatly conjures a fitting world in your head where everything is tailored especially for you with the content of the book merely as the tools and resources you use to make that imagination.

When you watch a movie, you're being taught how your imagination should be like, in a book, you teach yourself, in that sense, it feels a hell lot more rewarding. Those rare cases of movies being better than books, are probably the rare cases where the movie director knows something about his audience the audience itself does not. Or he just have a hell lot of luck

[shaya]

.


A movie adds a new dimensions to a written work.

Moving images are able to convey meaning in areas where the literal message alone cannot.

Sound is also a component to movies. Thus music can be used.


Because well-made movies capture and embrace ALL senses at the same time a good movie can suspend an individual and encase their attention in a way literal words cannot.






...................................................................................




This was a GREAT topic.


In short, the novel looses the phoney opulence that it once enjoyed before it was turned into a movie.







Thank you for adding a GREAT topic to the forum - right out of the box!



.

Thanks Bill,

I find myself obliged to prefer movies over novels, maybe due to my laziness:) also my feeling that I am wasting my time when reading novels.
This my own opinion, for I restrict myslef to philosophy and theories of literature and art.. I was reared on them not on vonels.

greetings

[shaya]

Damn, not seen so many sentences from you before Bill!

The component you loose the most is your own imagination, because your imagination knows how to entertain you and therefore it neatly conjures a fitting world in your head where everything is tailored especially for you with the content of the book merely as the tools and resources you use to make that imagination.

When you watch a movie, you're being taught how your imagination should be like, in a book, you teach yourself, in that sense, it feels a hell lot more rewarding. Those rare cases of movies being better than books, are probably the rare cases where the movie director knows something about his audience the audience itself does not. Or he just have a hell lot of luck

of course.. imagination would be lost or suspended. Also lost the capacity of literary writing and of precise discrption of things, realtions, acts, and more inmportant; subtle emotions .
But, there are arenas for kindling imagination such as poetry, philosophy ... etc.

Nicholas Mirzoeff in his " An Introduction to Visual Culture" says: "literature is bourgeois and image is democratic". But, when it comes to the freeing of imagination, then the opposite of that phrase will be right:)

[Skip]

This varies greatly, the most important variants being the size and complexity of the novel, the skill of the script-writer and vision of the director.
Decisions always have to be made about the use of time: Whether to lose characters, sub-plots, incidents, dialogue; how much text can be represented by visual images, etc. For example, Tailor of Panama lost much of LeCarre's wonderful language, but the story and its meaning remained intact.

Done well, a good novel can turn into an equally satisfying film.
Of course, it's very often done badly, by a director who doesn't respect the original work, or wants to turn into something else. For example, Simon Birch, while a nice enough movie, is emphatically not A Prayer for Owen Meany.

A film may be an entirely accurate interpretation of a novel, or quite misleading. If you haven't read it, you can't tell which. So, when discussing it with people who have read the book, you risk sounding like an ass.

[Pluto]

What can happen these days is that a book is chosen, then a film is made (from it) and whatever crap is hip at the time - vampires, sex, revenge, torture, etc - is put in there. So that it appears contemporary to an audience who know what to look for. The book PERFUME by Suskind, is deep, but the film is cheapo, sex party, porky's style.

[Skip]

Nicholas Mirzoeff in his " An Introduction to Visual Culture" says: "literature is bourgeois and image is democratic". But, when it comes to the freeing of imagination, then the opposite of that phrase will be right:)

Moving pictures are also capable of a great deal more, and far more subtle, manipulation of perception and emotion than are printed words. Reading takes time and effort: you have to think about it; can't just plug the author's idea - of what something looks like, what something feels like, whether a situation presents a threat or a reward, whether someone is good or bad - directly into your cerebral cortex. That's what visual images do, especially when accompanied by a suggestive sound-track. It's true that the passive reception of images requires no previous knowledge and no selection - but neither has the audience any choice in what to retain.
If knowledge, thought and critical judgment are bourgeois, i can live with the label. But i'm with McLuhan in that movies are not so much democratic as homogenizing.

Why does imagination need other people's stories to get free? What's imprisoned it?

[Bill Wiltrack]

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[Skip]

Ah, the infinite improbability drive! I'll just sit here and wait for the couch and petunias, shall i?

[thedoc]

And then there are novels that are much better when made into a movie, of course this is most likely when the novel is rather poor, but with an interesting concept. There are 2 war movies that I have seen that I have finally read the books and in these cases the movies are much better. In both books "The Enemy Below" and "The Bedford Incident" the characters were shallow and some even one dimensional, more like cartoons than real people. In the movie the main characters were portrayed as real human beings with a great deal of depth and the supporting actors were developed as human beings and not just sterotypes.

[thedoc]

Plays are another form that can benefit or suffer from being made into a movie. "Outward Bound" was a play that was faithfully translated into a movie and the result was quite good. "Equus" was a play that was translated into a movie but the movie was shot on locations rather than on a stage, so the results were not faithful to the play, though the dialogue was faithful, the transition to real locations was not satisfactory.

[Skip]

Oddly enough, older movie formats were better at re-staging a play on the screen: directors nowadays tend to get high on special effects. That sometimes helps a novel, but often detracts from the dialogue and character development of a play. The Admirable Crichton made a very good film on location, and so did Cats, on a stage, and Sleuth in a studio set.

I'm curious to see Atlas Shrugged - though I'm not sure I can commit the time - I hear it's enourmous! (One early review also reports it as awful.)