Film Adaptations

The relationship between cinema and writing is like body and soul. If a piece of audio/visual is the body, then writing is the soul. Having said that, writing becomes a very crucial part of developing a film. If the writing is good, the screenplay automatically delivers and gives the necessary confidence to the director. When we talk about literature, good, rich literature, could be an excellent source for stories to develop screenplays.
If we look at some of the finest filmmakers, domestically or globally, literature has always been used. Veterans like Satyajit Ray, Bimal Roy, Tapan Sinha, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, and Basu Chatterjee to an extent have always based their films on acclaimed literature.

Different Writers and Poets

Talking about literature, my relationship with literature is through my mother only. So she is a complete literature person. It is because of her I got to know about so many writers, novelists, and poets, the classic ones, the good ones. Whenever I have a conversation with her, she tells me about a new writer or poet, and their work which she got familiar with during her post-graduation in English. Her collection of writers is just exceptional, has some rare novels and books from her mother too. Be it poets and writers like John Keats or W. B. Yeats, short story writers and novelists like O. Henry or Graham Greene, ace novelists like Bronte sisters or Thomas Hardy, critics like I. A. Richards or T. S. Eliot, her collection has works from all these writers. As a matter of fact, she is the one who taught me Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in 10th standard and introduced me to Shakespeare’s most acclaimed works like Julius-Ceaser, and Macbeth. Recently, one day, while talking about psychological complexes, she told me about “Sons and Lovers” by D. H. Lawrence, considered one of the finest works of the millennium. Just yesterday, we were discussing poetry and she told me about Lord Byron the most interesting poet of the romantic movement. Not only she told me about Byron but also shared one of his poems from her Golden treasure (a collection of poems by all the prominent and important writers).

The Relation

My point is, whenever she tells me about a piece of work whether a short story or a novel, I look for its film adaptation, and most of the time find one. Recent examples are “Wuthering Heights” and “Far from the Madding Crowd”. Wuthering Heights is by Emile Bronte of the Bronte sisters and “Far from the Madding Crowd” is by Thomas Hardy. To end my curiosity, mummy asked me to read the novels, and even considered giving me the novels from her shelf. But instead of reading, I looked for their film adaptations, and luckily both these novels have been adapted into films. Like these, there are several classic novels and books from English literature that have been adapted into films. But rarely these days, we can find a film based on any classic literary work and this has also resulted in the quality of the cinema that we see today.

In case you overlooked our earlier post from the Movies Section, here’s the link https://perfectmisenscene.com/?p=1033