This week while plugging away on the treadmill I watched the 1974 film version of Daisy Miller starring Cybill Shepherd. I was pleasantly surprised that, for the most part, the film didn't seem like a 1970s film (I guess part of that would be the costumes and hairstyles). And I was also pleasantly surprised that this film made me like the story more.

You may recall in my last post that I thought the story was a bit melodramatic. Having seen the film version, I realize that what made it seem that way was the narrator. There is no narrator in the film. Every spoken word is lifted straight from the written story, but the narrator's voice has been replaced with the visual elements of film, and the tale is better for it.

Of course, oftentimes film versions of books or short stories are pretty wretched. It seems like a whole slew of them were done in the 1960s and 1970s and they're not all pretty. Perhaps having an ambivalent view of the source material helps one appreciate the movie more because it's going to have to work hard to be a let-down. It's not like seeing a movie version of a book you adore (let's say, Watership Down) and realizing it is really leaps and bounds away from telling the story as well as you did in your head as you read the book.

What novel-based movies have you seen that you think sent the author spinning in his or her grave? Which have you seen that made you like the book more? Which have you seen that absolutely were ten times better than the book?