HAVE ANY OF WILLIAM FAULKNER'S BOOKS BEEN FILMED?

Dec 11, 2018 19:03:07 GMT -5 kijii said:

During my 20s and 30s, I read a lot of William Faulkner's works. I think I did this because I thought it was "good for me" rather than that I truly enjoyable reading them. His works do vary in complexity, often with a high degree of literary symbolism, mythology, and stream of consciousness. However, he could weave a good tale from time to time, (ie, The Reivers).

As I go though my Martin Ritt viewing phase, I notice that Ritt has directed two movies based on Faulkner's works: The Long, Hot Summer (1958)--this supposedly is the movie made while Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were falling in love with each other. (Ritt would go on to use the two performers, either together or individually, for a long period of time.)

But, I digress--
Ritt's two Faulkner-based movies were:

1) The Long, Hot Summer (1958), which is based on and The Hamlet and the short story, "Barn Burning." I like this movie very much. It has that deep Southern steamy feeling combined with some great drama and a bit of mythology.

2) Ritt's The Sound and the Fury (1959), on the other hand, fails to capture the complexity of Faulkner's novel.
This is not hard to imagine since the "novel's" structure is a big part of its message: Four totally characters relating one story from four different viewpoints as if the story were a relay from one person's view with another person's view. To even try to translate this complex story, one might try to watch James Franco's TV movie, The Sound and the Fury (2014). But, word of warning--this ain't easy to grasp anymore than Faulkner's book was.

Tony Richardson's Sanctuary (1961) www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMnzFM_Sq8s, based on Faulkner's novels, Sanctuary, and Requiem for a Nun like Stephen Roberts' The Story of Temple Drake (1933) is ok, but not great. But, which movie captures these novels better and why?

Mark Rydell's The Reivers (1969) is just a good old fashion yarn, with character and comedy mixed in--very entertaining.

Douglas Sirk's The Tarnished Angels (1957) presents Faulkner's Pylon.

But, one of my favorite Faulkner-based movies is Clarence Brown's underrated Intruder in the Dust (1949). Here we have Claude Jarman Jr.'s character, Chick Mallison, relating a coming-of-age recollection of a young boy from the Jim Crow South. And, it is also the story abut a proud black man's way of escaping a lynching for something he didn't do. The proud land-owning black man is Lucas Beauchamp played by Juano Hernandez--great stuff.

I do appreciate James Franco's attempts as portraying Faulkner's more complex novels such as, As I Lay Dying (2013) and The Sound and the Fury (2014), but the movies are no easier to understand than the novels were.