Great romantic novel adaptations is narrated by Mariella Frostrop, but this programme is not as good as those presented by Ian Nathan. It is still a 3DD Production but this time we only have a voice over the stills and clips from the chosen films. Mariella starts with "Heaven help anyone to take on a book loved by millions". Well a lot do. we hear that Romeo and Juliet paved the way, although this is a play and not a book? We see the 1936 version from George Cukor (director number 8 on my post of 2nd January 2020) from MGM. Thirty year olds playing teenagers! Franco Zeffirelli got the age about right and so did Baz Lurman. I preferred Some Things I Hate About You. Corny or what.
Onto Jane Austen, so many movies from her books including Clueless would you believe. Of course the Bronte sisters are a great source for movies. All those chosen are a bit predictable, but Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine in Jane Eyre seemed a good choice. Oh Dickens! Is Great Expectations a romance? Maybe only just. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina has been filmed over a dozen times but maybe the 1935 version is still the best?
Then a film I would really like to see. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence directed by Martin Scorsese in 1993 and starring Daniel Day Lewis and Michelle Pfeifer. It must have looked great on the big screen. We are onto more modern movies with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Marilyn Monroe. I didnt know the book by Anita Loos. Is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby a romance? Maybe that love triangle in the films of 1949, 1973 and 2013 (Baz Lurman's version (post of 12th June 2013). I have never been interested in watching gone with the Wind but Daphne de Maurier's Rebecca with Laurence Olivier in the 1940 version gained an Oscar best picture.
Passing over the predictable From Here to Eternity and Doctor Zhivago, the latter's review went on and on and on. But then we have Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffanies that I really want to see. Audrey Hepburn and a cat that looked remarkably like a young Archie. Apparently the book had a darker side to romance that had the ending changed for the movie. One of the only decent bits of information in the whole programme. 1970's Love Story is too melodramatic and then we hear a lot about recent films but these are all glossed over. except for If Beale Street Could Talk. Why?
The programme seemed to be just a list of films and not much more.
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