With the Nobel Prize for Literature just awarded to the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, we review other winning writers whose works have been made into a movie like Ishiguro's.
Ignoring the fact that cinema feeds on literature, it seems that when it adapts those works by the winners of the most prestigious literary award in the world, it still acquires a greater dimension. But have they always been a success or have they remained in correct productions or mere tributes? Let's see some examples with the surnames of Hemingway, Munro, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Cela, Grass, Kipling or García Márquez.
Alice Munro
The Canadian writer won the Nobel Prize in 2013. Considered as «the Chekhov from Canada«, Is a specialist in short stories and stories where he portrays everyday life. Some of his titles are the love of a generous woman (1998)u Hate, friendship, courtship, love. Several of them have been adapted to the cinema and especially to television. And perhaps the best known adaptation is that of actress and director Sarah Polley, who filmed in 2006 Far from hera, starring Julie Christie.
Camilo José Cela
Cela won the Nobel in 1989 and there have been several his works taken to the cinema, such as Pascual Duarte's family Directed by Ricardo Franco, with Jose Luis Gómez and Hector Alterio. OR La Colmena, by Mario Camus, with a choral cast of the best of Spanish cinema. And also The unusual and glorious village of the Archidona vine, by Ramón Fernández when we have the information.
Günter Grass
The controversial German writer won the Nobel Prize in 1999 and his best known work, The tin drum, was made into a film in a former West German co-production with France in 1978. The following year it won a Palme d'Or for best film and an Oscar for best foreign film.
Gabriel García Márquez
Of the Colombian Nobel in 1982 many of his works have been adapted, but with little success for critics and the general public. Perhaps titles such as El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, in its 1999 version starring Salma Hayek and Marisa Paredes among others. A Chronicle of a Death Foretold it was adapted in 1987, with Anthony Delon, Ornella Mutti or Rupert Everett. They also had their images Love and Other Demons o Love in the time of cholera, with Javier Bardem.
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway won the Nobel in 1954 and there are many his novels (more than 15) that also became great and successful film adaptations. They are between them:
- The old man and the sea, from 1958, with Spencer Tracy.
- Goodbye to guns in two versions with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in 1932 and with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones in 1957.
- The snows of Kilimanjaro, 1952, with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner.
- For whom the Bell Tolls, 1943, with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper.
John Steinbeck
Nobel laureate in 1962John Steinbeck narrated like no one else the drama of the American worker during the Great Depression. His best known works adapted to the cinema are Of mice and men, with a first version of 1939 and a second in 1992. And of course there are also the unforgettable The grapes of wrath y East of Eden.
Rudyard Kipling
Kipling was the first english in obtaining the literary Nobel in 1907. His best known classic, The book of the jungle, had a first adaptation made by the director Zoltan korda en 1942, whose special effects and soundtrack were nominated for the Oscars. But without a doubt the one we all remember is the Walt Disney cartoon version what did he do in 1967. Last year the latest version directed by Jon Favreau was released.
George Bernard Shaw
Shaw won the award in 1925 and made a film adaptation of his perhaps best-known play, Pygmalion. The script earned him an Oscar in his category. They starred in it Leslie Howard and Wendy Miller. But the most famous was the following musical version of 1964, which won 8 statuettes, My Fair Lady. Impossible to forget Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn as Professor Higgins and Elisa, the young flower seller who will try to become a lady of high society.
William Faulkner
Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, several years after making the leap to Hollywood as a screenwriter. Many of these scripts were brought to the screen by his friend and great director Howard Hawks. One of the most famous he signed was that of El eternal dream, a masterpiece of film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in 1946.
Faulkner also adapted some of his own works for film, such as We live today (1933), a drama with Joan Crawford y Gary Cooper which Hawks also directed. In 1969 Mark rydell adapted another of his novels, The pickpockets, for which the writer had received a Pullitzer Prize.
Have we seen some of these works in your film adaptations? Did we like them? Surely yes.