Classic Literature and Cinema on Sky Arts - War

 

Not my favourite genre. Mariella Frostrop started her narration with telling us we would be seeing "the great battlefields of the past". I have to remember that  it is the adaptation of great novels that is the basis of the following movies. Starting with The Iliad. The Trojan wars were portrayed in 1956's Helen of Troy with that "face that launched a thousand ships". More recent was Troy 2004. I'm not sure why we had Chinese literature, just to see John Woo's Red Cliff from 2004. Shakespeare makes an entrance with Laurence Olivier's Henry V from 1944 and the remake by Kenneth Branagh in 1989.

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper has seen over ten adaptations on film including in 1992 version with Daniel Day-Lewis. And Tolstoy's War and Peace brought the Napoleonic era to the screen with the 1956 movie. Alfred Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade portrayed  the Crimea war with the 1936 movie and Steven Crane's Red Badge of Courage was directed by John Huston in 1951. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was filmed with "unflinching honesty" in 1930 and again in 1979 and 2022. 

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms came to the screen with the 1957 film starring Gary Cooper and his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls came in 1943 with Cooper again. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller was filmed in 1970 following the novels release in 1961. Next The Guns of Navarone by Alastair Maclean became the big blockbuster of 1961 as was Where Eagles Dare in 1968. J G Ballard's Empire of the Sun was adapted by Tom Stoppard for the 1987 movie. 

From Here to Eternity by James Jones was the big movie of 1953 and his The Thin Red Line came in 1998. Richard Hooker's novel MASH about the Viet Nam war became a big hit movie in 1970. Graham Greene's The Quiet American goes to the background of the conflict with the 1958 film version with Audie Murphy. But we also see the 2002 version with Michael Caine. The former had critical success despite the changes to the story, while the latter stayed faithful to the book. I'm not sure why the last film is 1990's The Hunt for Red October from the book by Tom Clancy? Hardly a war film, only the threat.