Hollywood Film Makers Mining a Literary Tradition

Having become accustomed to high-speed car chases, graphic horror stories and the razzle-dazzle of computer-generated special effects, moviegoers of the 1980s may have forgotten that Hollywood’s roots are buried in a far more literary soil.

It can be hoped that the poetry-based hit, “Dead Poets Society,” which stars Robin Williams as a charismatic English teacher prodding seven lads at a prestigious and stuffy 1959 Vermont private school to make their lives “extraordinary,” will remind us.

But “Dead Poets,” laden with the words of greats such as Shakespeare and Whitman, isn’t the only recent film to borrow from the movie industry’s literary tradition.

In fact, recent months have brought us four film versions of classic British stories alone--the Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit,” a rendition of Daniel Defoe’s most renowned novel in Island Pictures’ “Crusoe,” the rerelease of Samuel Goldwyn’s 1939 version of Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights,” and the Ken Russell-directed version of D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow.”

If these, in addition to “Dead Poets” are any indication, perhaps the movie industry is attempting to once again give adult audiences a wider selection of mature material to choose from. In any case, these films are a good reminder of earlier days of feature film making, in which producers fervently browsed the bookshelves of 18th- and 19th-Century British fiction, digging out such adaptable classics as Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd” and Dickens’ “David Copperfield.”

“From the beginning, Hollywood’s narrative was based on classical fiction,” said Garrett Stewart, a professor of English and film at UC Santa Barbara. “The genres of adventure and romance (presented in these stories) are timeless. This is what Hollywood built itself around.”

Yes, Hollywood grew up with the classics, reworking these 100- and 200-year-old stories in much the same way that school children continue to reread them. And for decades, a fairly steady stream of movie versions of the works of authors such as Dickens, Hardy, Defoe, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George Elliot, Henry Fielding and Henry James, was produced.

Then came the ‘80s, and adaptations of the classics became less common, with the decade’s early years bringing us only Roman Polanski’s controversial “Tess,” adapted from Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and a few interpretations of 20th-Century classical British novelists such as Edward Forster and Lawrence.

(As UC Irvine English professor Robert Newsom pointed out, Forster and Lawrence produced a type of classic story different from 18th- and 19th-Century novels. Because they were written in a time when less attention was paid to the novel, their stories were not those that people “grew up with in their adolescence” as were Dickens’ and the Brontes’ stories.)

While the basic motifs of classic stories-turned-film versions may not be that far removed from contemporary movie themes--the tragic love story of “Wuthering Heights” and the shipwrecked man’s battle to survive and triumph over nature in “Crusoe” could be loosely compared with contemporary love stories or the battle-against-nature in Mel Gibson’s “The River,” for instance), but other elements--such as the settings, complexity of the characters and richness of the dialogue--can differ greatly.

But while they may be set in a 19th-Century debtors prison, involve more characters and plot turns than a contemporary soap opera, or have heroes who engage in professions--such as slave trading--that we find incomprehensible, stories presented by the classic British novelists remain extremely relevant to today’s world, according to UCI’s Newsom.

“There’s a certain organization of culture and society that was inaugurated in the 18th Century that defines the way we are today,” said Newsom, who has written books about Dickens. “It was in the 18th and 19th centuries that people first articulated the problems of the modern world. . . . The world has not changed very much since Dickens wrote.”

(Interestingly, “Dead Poets” film maker Peter Weir, when describing the appeal of that story--written in 1985--has called it “rather like a good Charles Dickens novel that’s full of characters and situations.”)

Newsom called Dickens “the great middle-class novelist,” and said that the author’s appeal “continues largely because we’re still living in a middle-class world.” Dickens wrote about factors that remain common in today’s cities, Newsom said, such as feelings of anonymity and the problems of single-parent families, in addition to child abuse, crime, sex and making money.

James Kincaid, USC’s Aerol Arnold Professor of English, also cited the relevance of works by authors such as Dickens, who Kincaid said “speaks out of a depth of urgency and the recognition that (life) isn’t simple--that it isn’t Archie Bunker. . . .Stories from the past . . . are more honest about the pettiness, details and intricate complexities of existence.”

Kincaid suggested that because adults no longer widely read these novels, movie versions may be “filling the gap” by providing the honesty of the novels on film. “A film like (“Little Dorrit”) might answer needs that aren’t being met in other forms in our culture,” Kincaid said. “(Through the movies) people can get answers to questions they used to find through reading.”

Victoria Myers, who teaches British novel courses at Pepperdine University, ventured that movie adaptations appeal to film makers for the plain-and-simple reason that the classic stories have “great plots.”

“I sense it has something to do with the way in which scripts are chosen,” Myers said, adding that she was surprised to see movie versions of three early British classics playing in theaters during the same year.

“Maybe movie makers are taking a chance (on the classics) again because a paucity of material is available,” Myers said. “They say, ‘These were widely popular in their day, so why not take a chance now?’ . . . Also, it gives them a chance to use period costumes.”

Myers added that the publishing conditions that prevailed in the 19th Century, in which books were produced in serial form, with each installment having a suspenseful climax, also contributed to the novels’ appeal to today’s film makers. “The novels are constructed so as to keep you coming back,” she said.

UC Riverside English professor Ruth apRoberts agreed that classic novels provide film makers with ready-to-use scripts.

“In a way it doesn’t surprise me (that movie versions of classic novels are again playing in the theaters)--British 19th-Century novels make the most marvelous movies. They’re terribly good, and (film makers) are glad to have wonderful dialogue and plot lines already made for them,” apRoberts said.

An underlying factor, said UC Santa Barbara’s Stewart, is that classic novels provide a “prestige value” for film makers: “Every couple of years Hollywood finds a great novel to remake, a classic to do. . . . The film (version of a classic) has a stamp of high art on it before Hollywood even gets its hand on it. They’re proud of not being so market-oriented . . . Hollywood congratulates itself about being literary,” he said.

So, what do the scholars think of Hollywood’s handling of the classics?

“I have never enjoyed adaptations,” said UC Berkeley’s D. A. Miller. “What I love most, or what gives me the most pleasure, simply can’t be transferred to the screen.”

Classic novels, Miller said, “have a certain linguistic order” that signifies much more than can be acted out on film. For instance, a written phrase such as “He made a gesture that summed up all the despair in the human race” simply cannot be demonstrated on film, Miller said. “I can write it and you can understand what I mean, but you can’t possibly make a gesture signifying that.”

Stewart agreed: “Almost always, a great novel borrowed for the screen suffers greatly . . . in the whole mode and tone and tension,” he said. Stewart said that a lot of politics were bled out of “Little Dorrit” that makes the novel seem much more conservative than it was, and said social and psychological complexities of “Wuthering Heights” were sacrificed in the making of what turned out to be a basic Hollywood melodrama.

Of recent adaptations, Stewart said Polanski’s version of “Tess” probably came out best.

Stewart also said that in most adaptations, film makers are failing to differentiate between timelessness and timeliness.

“In the Crusoe film, there’s an attempt to make it timely and it backfires,” he said. “The attempt (is) to make it more relevant and topical. But it loses the mythic power. They gave up timelessness to be timely.”

Some of the academicians had more respect for film adaptations of the classics than did others. UC Irvine’s Newsom said classic stories are durable and capable of “taking a little cutting without losing their effect,” and USC’s Kincaid said he doesn’t think of adaptations as translations of novels, but as separate artistic visions.

“Some (of my colleagues) complain that movies are not faithful to the original,” Kincaid said. “I don’t know what that would mean, being faithful to it. No two people can agree as to what a novel means, so it would be impossible to be faithful (to the author’s original intent).”

Kincaid added that it doesn’t bother him “in the slightest” when classic stories are drastically cut in their film form.

While most of his colleagues said that film versions provided the benefits of exposure to the classics, UC Berkeley’s Miller attacked the notion.

“It’s not wonderful that they’re being exposed to a Hollywood version,” Miller said. “I resent the implication that (the adaptations give us) access to a higher culture, when in fact what we’re seeing is a Hollywood movie. . . . That film should pretend that it values the culture it replaces is . . . ironic. Film pretends to pay homage to these things even as it’s eroding the very things it claims to value.”

Whatever offenses Hollywood may be committing in adapting classic novels, there is a positive result: Book sales go up.

“There’s no question that with any movie tie-in, you end up selling more books as a part of it,” said Maureen Donnelly, associate director of publicity for Penguin Books, a leading publisher of paperback copies of the classics. Donnelly said that Penguin normally sells about 1,500 copies a year of “Little Dorrit.” With the release of the film, they printed 10,000 copies, each bearing a sticker that read “Now an extraordinary motion picture.”

Likewise, Donnelly said Penguin shipped 20,000 copies of “The Rainbow” to coincide with the movie’s opening. The book’s cover is a reproduction of the movie’s publicity posters, Donnelly said.

“The old joke,” said UC Santa Barbara’s Stewart, “is ‘You’ve seen the movie, now read the book.’ ”

But none of the professors contacted for this story thought the closely timed releases of “Little Dorrit,” “Crusoe” and “Wuthering Heights” and “The Rainbow” signaled a stampede of Hollywood producers to the library.

“I don’t think new producers will be willing to invest the time, money and energy,” Stewart said. “More likely, we will have more revivals, rather than new versions of the classics. . . . Instinct tells me that (having three adaptations playing in theaters) is . . . a desire to look back. At the very point where film is giving in to a video mentality, Hollywood is remembering it’s heyday and is reviving movies which are showpieces from their past.”

For UCI’s Newsom, however, the films merely attest to the durability of 18th- and 19th-Century novels and the world they portray: “I don’t see that there has been a resurgence. The novel has done well since the (Hollywood’s) beginning and continues to do well. To me, that’s a testimony that our world hasn’t changed.”