Great/Good Adaptations

[SeoulMan]

I know there's a thread on Adaptations of Classic books into movies:

http://www.bookandreader.com/forums/film-tv/15113-classic-books-into-good-movies.html

However, I wanted to open this up to something broader. Great or very good adaptations of any book into a movie or TV series.

"Remains of the Day" is very faithful to the Ishiguro novel. Remarkably so.

"Atonement" loses some of the detail, but I was surprised how faithful it turned out to be. I was wondering how they would show the twist at the end and I thought they did a good job.

"House of Mirth" was very good, but I thought it suffered from some serious miscasting of Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart and Eric Stoltz as that guy, I forgot his name.

Needless to say, the BBC "Pride and Prejudice" was excellent. Jennifer Ehle was how I pictured Elizabeth Bennett. I can't picture Keira Knightley (and her tubularly-altered lips) as Elizabeth Bennett. I'm sorry, but I can't. Never.

 

[Champagne]

I think Madame Sousatzka was greatly improved in the transition from book to movie.

I loved the TV adaptation of Mapp and Lucia.

So far I must say I haven't seen an adaptation of Rebecca that does justice to the book.

 

[a lost weekend]

Wonder Boys. Best adaptation I've ever seen.

 

[Sybarite]

Not really a "classic" novel, but the film adaptation of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs was very good indeed.

The 1946 version of The Big Sleep is a classic in its own right.

I'd agree about Remains of the Day.

The film version of EM Forster's A Room With a View is excellent (I cannot hear Kiri Te Kanawa singing O Caro Mio Bambino without thinking of it).

Visconti's film of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is an extraordinary achievement – it makes some subtle alterations (turning the main character from a writer to a composer, for instance), but captures something of Mann's incredibly complex novella. And the use of the Adagietto from Mahler's fifth symphony was inspired.

 

[Fantasy Moon]

I love the adaptations of the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell. I'd rather watch them than read the books, I think.