History of Film Adaptation

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    Historic Film Adaptations

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    Most Popular Film Adaptation of Literature

    These are some of the most famous and memorable film adaptations and some are the best films of any century. Film adaptations of literature really took of in the early 1900s which is why I chose to start my timeline at the start of the 1900s.
  • Alice in Wonderland

    Alice in Wonderland
    Appeared just 37 years after the book came out. It is directed and adapted by Cecil Hepworth in Great Britian. This silent film lastes 10 minutes and it's a 16 scene picture. Hepworth used the special-effects of the camera to make Alice shrink, grow, and dissolve into nothengness. It is one the fist film adaptations of the twentyth century. Although originally running just 12 minutes, Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time
  • The Birth of a Nation

    A revloution film directed by D.W. Griffith. The story about black-south and the glorfied actions of the Klan.
  • Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens

    Film directed by F.W. Murnau, adapted by Henrik Galeen. It was a silent film that used revolutionary camera movements and color. The film is based on Abraham Stoker's novel Count Dracula.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front

    All Quiet on the Western Front
    The novel was written by Erich Maria Remarque and came out in 1929. it was a partially autobiographical novel which was portrait of the dehunaizing effects of military conflict. For the film the book was rewritten chronologically from the loosely composed scenes of the book. The Director of the film Lewis Milestone chose to make a logical narrative of the book. Milstone managed to avoid war film cliches and romanticized pictures of solidering which made the film a great antiwar film.
  • Gone with the Wind

    Gone with the Wind
    Novel by Margrat Mitchell based on family sotries of the Civil war and the fall of the south. Film Directed by David Selznick .
  • The Body Snatcher

    The Body Snatcher
    The novel written by Robert Lousi Stevenson based on real-life incidents in Edinburgh of 1829. Two grave robbers, Burke, and Hare, supplied a Dr.Knox with suspiciously fresh corpses. They murdered 18 people. The adaptation by MacDonald and Lewton enlarges the original story to make a feature-length film.
  • Breakfast at Tiffany's

    Breakfast at Tiffany's
    Novel by Capote and the narrator in the novel is generally considered to represent Capote. The novel is constructed as a memeory of a writter who returns to the New York neighborhood where he lived and he reacalls his acquaintance with Holly Golightly who had been his neighbor. The film made some major changes to give the story more flavor. The one way the film was faithfull of the novel is it's representation of Holly.
  • The Exorcist

    The Exorcist
    Novel by William Peter Blatty, film directed by William Friedkin and adapted by William Petter Blatty. Film generated a great deal of controversy. Friedkin retained many of the novel's most hideous images. But critics fealt the film was visceral but had no psychological impact.
  • Carrie

    Carrie
    Stephen King's 1974 novel abou a young White girl who is terrified by menstrual onset and the teasing she get from her class mates. She retaliates by using telekinetic pwers and she is punished by her radical relgious mother. Director Palma emphasizes the story's telling through self-conscious, expressionist techniques and heightens ironic religious iconography.
  • Lady Chatterly's Lover

    Lady Chatterly's Lover
    Novel by D.H. Lawrence written in 1928. Film adapted in 11981 by Just Jaeckin. The expicit langauge and subject matter caused English and American publisher to avoid handling the mauscript.
  • The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King

    The novel was written in 1954 by J.R.R. Token in 1954 the film adapted and directed by Peter Jackson.