Classic Literature and Cinema on Sky Arts - Adventures of a Lifetime

 

Great Adventure Novel Adaptations was the second in the new series and once again narrated by Mariella Frostrop. Again this programme, like the first, is mainly just a list with too much information about the writers for my liking. Homer's Odyssey was the first and the only film version seemed to be Ulysses with Kirk Douglas. But Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has been the source for many and was a sensation when first published. Likewise, The Swiss Family Robinson had many film adaptations including those in 1940 and John Mills in the 1960 release. Even Castaway with Tom Hanks gets a mention. Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe from 1819 gets a film version in 1952. What was interesting (having never read the book) was that it includes Robin of Loxley that became the source for The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938 starring Errol Flynn. And others.

Alexander Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo has been adapted many times including the 1934 film with Robert Donat. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer had a film version in 1938. Jules Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon was so popular he followed it with Around the World in Eighty Days.  The 1956 adaptation with David Niven won the Oscar for best picture, and we see a clip of Journey to the Centre of the Earth from 1959 with James Mason. Robert Louis Stevenson's 1881 book Treasure Island started the pirate mythology and there became so many adaptations on the screen and theatre. The 1950 version with Robert Newton was shown. 

We rush through H Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and it's 1950 version. Only a quick mention of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, and on to Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda with the 1937 Ronald Colman version. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness became Apocalypse Now. Rudyard Kipling gets a mention for 1975's The Man Who Would Be King (the clip that showed Michael Caine and Sean Connery together was brilliant), Captain Courageous that was published in 1896 and won Spencer Tracy the Oscar for the 1937 adaptation and finally Kim published in 1901 and starred Errol Flynn in the 1950 film version. 

The Treasure of the Sierra Nevada by the German author B. Traven published in 1927 became the 1948 film, and James Hamilton's 1933's  Lost Horizon came to cinemas in 1937 courtesy of Frank Capra. After C S Forester wrote the  Hornblower saga, there came the film Captain Hornblower in 1951 with Gregory Peck, then came Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander with Russel Crowe in the 2003 film version. And finally Yan Martell's prizewinning 2001 novel  The Life of Pi became the 2012 Oscar winning movie. As I said, just a list.