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Originally Posted by roddglenn  I thought the film of The Keep utterly sucked in comparison to the book. In addition to what you've already mentioned, the film totally washed over the struggle between the German Army Commander and the SS Commander sent to crush the localised rebellion which they blame for all the mysterious deaths. The film also lost all of the suspense felt by the reader in the first half of the book where German soldiers are getting picked off one by one. I was thoroughly disappointed with it and had been so looking forward to it with being such a fan of the book. |
I have to agree with you, Roddglenn... The film had some very good moments, but overall it was very much a case of style over substance... and rather belabored style, at that....
Not a theatrical film, but nonetheless a very worthy adaptation of a novel: the WGBH/Boston (PBS) production of Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter, with Meg Foster playing Hester Prynne, John Heard as Dimmesdale, and Kevin Conway as Roger Chillingworth. Frankly, I can't stand most adaptations of Hawthorne, and especially of this one -- to my mind, they all miss the boat. But this one... it captures the feel of Hawthorne's writing... that multi-layered feeling of things happening both on the surface and on an otherworldly plane; they weren't afraid to take on the metaphoric and figurative aspects of Hawthorne -- one can see here, for instance, that Chillingworth may well be a "diabolical agent" in the form of Hester's husband, who really did drown at sea... or perhaps not; the ambiguity about such things is kept balanced throughout, leaving the viewer in a state of suspense about how much is simply the view of the time, and how much really is tied to the supernatural.... Also, Meg Foster, I think, makes the best Hester Prynne I've seen... a complex characterization, to say the least. Some flaws, definitely, but an amazingly good adaptation of a writer difficult to adapt to any dramatic medium, nonetheless....
"The Scarlet Letter" (1979) (mini)