Book and The Film
27 06 2006
I enjoy watching a movie as much as the next person, perhaps more sometimes, but I also think that watching the film is rarely a substitute for reading the book. I can think of examples of instances where the film might be a better story than the book, The Hunt for Red October leaps to mind, but even then you get more from the book even if the story isn’t as good in my opinion.
However now and then you’ll find a film that is so faithful to the book that there’s not a whole lot of point in reading the book once you’ve seen the film (other than to notice how similar they are to each other). I had this experience recently when I watched the 1967 classic The Graduate and then read the much acclaimed novel which was published in 1964. There were differences of course but generally speaking I didn’t gain much from both watching and reading.
Despite the few exceptions like this I think it’s well worth reading classics even if you learn the story first by watching the movie.
