[beppe]

Originally Posted by cearbhallain

I am so looking forward to that. Crichton does kind of epitomize this topic. He's had books that were better than the movies, books that weren't as good, books that posed interesting questions, and books that said nothing at all.

I know, I promised to post about Michel Chrichton. Just before I started to organize my work, a thought hit me: yes it is books and films, but they are in the realm of the Entertainment Industry, both the words and the pretty pictures. Nothing wrong with that, but there are posts in this thread that go a little higher ...

Little of substance here

Spoiler:

Before dealing with Mr Crichton, whose production is quite controversial and that can rise some dangerous signs of impatiance (dangerous because the reactions of a sorcerer, benign as she may be, are to us simple souls unpredictable), I said to myself, look at something of higher level, at literature for instance, at art. Yes I said the word. Art. Then why not aim at the highest.

For the last century, I choose three writers. Hemingway, Joyce and Mann. There are other as great as those, may be even greater. Good, but it is those three I choose. Wait. I changed my mind. I will chose also the great Albert Camus. My story gets tighter, because of adding the French Nobel Prize. So we have an American, an Irish, a German and a French, among the writers. We will see among the film makers. Camus is not in the league of the other three, literarly, but culturarly (philosophically) he overcames them by at least ... what you choose.

Hemigway created a new language, a language of facts and in it he chanted the struggle of man agaist adverse destiny, in front of peril and death. In to Have and Not to Have the description of the sunken cruise liner is wonderful, as it is Robert Jordan's fatigue climbing the slopes in the beginning of For Whom the Bell Tolls. Just to mention two examples of great literary beauty.

Joyce was also a language men. On the opposite extreme, light and music, and poetry. Mann explored the mind and the soul, genially and beautifully. Among the three, two nobel Prizes and eternal fame, great influence on the present culture.

Hemingway.

Spoiler:

The cinematographic rendition of Hemingaway's work is immense. with the help of IMdB I count 54 of them and none of them above the standards of the great Entertainment Industry. impressive productions, great stars, famous directors. But nothing at the level of art. I like to remember an exellent movie by Don Siegel, with
Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, and the great John Cassavetes. The Killers (1964).

Things are a little better for Joyce.

Spoiler:

The Dead (1987). "John Huston's last film is a labor of love at several levels: an adaptation of perhaps one of the greatest pieces of English-language literature by one of Huston's favorite authors, James Joyce; a love letter to the land of his ancestors and the country where his children grew up; and the chance to work with his screenwriter son Tony and his actress daughter Anjelica. The film is delicate and unhurried, detailing a Christmas dinner at the house of two spinster musician sisters and their niece in turn-of-the-century Ireland, attended by friends and family. Among the visiting attendees are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Gretta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway. Her recounting of this tragic love to Gabriel brings him to an epiphany: he learns the difference between mere existence and living. The all-Irish cast and careful period detail give the piece richness and gravity, and Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston are unforgettable as the Conroys." And that's it. not art yet, but very honorable omage, by the director of great movies. Among which The Man Who Would Be King (1975) from Rudyard Kipling. Moby Dick from Melville, The African Queen from C.S. Forester (Hornblower's father), The Maltese Falcon by our beloved Dashiell Hammett.

We finally match quality of the story with the quality of the movie with Mann.

Spoiler:

Death in Venice (1971). A novel made into a movie by the Italian master Luchino Visconti. A great interpretation by the great Dirk Bogarde. "Gustav Von Aschenbach, a composer utterly absorbed in his work, arrives in Venice as a result of a youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed. His pitiful pursuit of the object of his overpowering affection and its inevitable and tragic consequences is told here in Visconti's luminous work of of art." Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912). Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old Polish boy. Some years ago I stayed for a week at the Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice. It was emotionally rewarding. Nothing else of relevance for Mann.

Camus. one of his masterpieces, the Stranger, is turned in a masterpiece by Luchino Visconti again, directing a memorable Marcello Mastroianni.

Four among the greatest writers, many literary masterpieces between them. Many good films, only 2.5 works of art among them, two by an Italian. Pure chauvinism by my part. I have a reason, I am promoting Italian membership. (see signature below)