From Somerset Maugham to Bill Murray: more adaptations

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" isn't the only big-time literary adaptation due out before the Oscars. The 1961 Richard Yates novel "Revolutionary Road" has also got book people excited -- it, with "Catch-22," lost the 1962 National Book Award to Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer."  "Revolutionary Road" will reunite Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, who last performed together in a little film called "Titantic." This coupling inspired Robert Birnbaum to post a (long) list of favorite author/star pairings on the Morning News.

One author who appears twice on his list is Graham Greene, with actors Alec Guinness and Michael Caine. But others have portrayed his Englishmen too -- Greene's highly adaptable work has been brought to the screen (big and TV) 56 times. 

Even more adaptable is W. Somerset Maugham (pictured), whose book "The Razor's Edge" was made into the 1984 movie starring Bill Murray (there was also a 1946 version). Birnbaum calls it a "pretty good film," which I think is overly generous, but he's right in that Murray's performance was good, better than people said at the time. In addition to Murray, stars who've done Maugham include Laurence Olivier, Bette Davis, Sean Penn, Peter Cushing, Rita Hayworth, Tyrone Power, Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Fred MacMurray, Edward Norton, Veronica Lake and even Ethel Barrymore. There have been a whopping 108 filmic representations of Maugham's work, in German and Russian as well as English. The very first Maugham adaptation was written in 1915; the most recent was the 2006's "The Painted Veil." Chances are it won't be the last.

The debate about what makes a good literary adaptation is probably endless, but having a star who can embody the spirit of the work sure helps. Me, I think of Colin Firth as Darcy, and Sean Connery as Ian Fleming's Bond.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Comments

[Barry Menikoff]

What makes Maugham and Greene so adaptable to film is that their fiction always depended upon plot and narrative suspense. They were both "moderns," serious artists who absorbed the Modernism that was identified with late James, Joyce et al.. But both writers were intent upon being professionals, that is, earning their living by means of their writing, and following the "high art" of the great moderns was a dead end. Also, Maugham was influenced by the French, particularly Maupassant, and his stories always began with an incident that led to suspense and eventually resolution, often tragic and/or ironic. This was completely opposed to the Joycean/Chekhovian model of the story. Thus "Rain" (to take one of Maugham's exceptional stories) could be made over by Hollywood at least twice (once with Joan Crawford and a second time with Rita Hayworth -- there may have even been a silent version). So it went with much of Maugham's fiction. As for Greene, once he realized that copying Conrad--as he did in his first two novels-- wasn't going to get him anywhere, he started writing "thrillers" and had his first hit with "Stamboul Train," published as "Orient Express" in the US. Greene himself was an inveterate movie reviewer, and his stories were often ready made for film adaptation. After he published "Brighton Rock" he stopped dividing his books between "Novels" and "Entertainments," probably his vestigial connection to the "ideals" of the high moderns, and simply called all his books "Novels." It is revealing that both writers trace their literary lineage to Robert Louis Stevenson, someone who was a familiar to Hollywood adapters.