In article , b-bryant@mail.utexas.edu
(Benjamin E Bryant) wrote:
>        Gone With The Wind is a classic film, so are so many of those 
>listed above. Braveheart was last year's best picture.
>
>        See "Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame" like it or not on it's own
merits,
>don't hate it because it "bastardizes Hugo."  It doesn't.
>
>        Disney is hardly the first to "mangle" literature.  It just used
>to be called making a movie from a book.  Take it from me.  You'll miss
>out on a whole bunch if you filter everything through a glass so demanding.
 Not being a dedicated student of movies, I'll skip the comparisons with
the movie adaptations of other novels as being out of my depth; nor do I
know how much they were criticized for the changes they made. But there
are definite reasons for criticizing this particular adaptation.
 Books do have to be changed when made into movies. Most of the material
has to be left out; some things which work in a book just don't work in a
movie. But a movie should be true to that elusive thing we call the
"spirit" of the book -- the feeling it conveys, the kind of characters
that are in it, its philosophy. I've already posted a long review on why
Disney failed to do this, so I won't rehash my arguments here. But the
fact that other producers have had similar failures isn't a reason to
quietly accept the reduction of a novel to a safe, inoffensive level.
-- 
   Gary McGath     gmcgath@mv.mv.com
   http://www.mv.com/users/gmcgath
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