Greatest stage to Screen Adaptations

Michael Ortiz68 said:Dogville isn't actually a film adaptation of stage plays

Laura Palmer25 said:When you say stage to Screen Adaptations, are you talking about plays that hit the stage first before being moved to the big screen? Any play can be turned into a movie, provided there's a solid screenwriter who knows how to translate the script into cinematic language. Plays are dialogue-heavy; you have to trim all that excess chatter and monologue and figure out how to weave it together with visual storytelling. If they mess that up, I can usually tell a movie was based on a play just by how much it talks. They end up feeling too literary, too grand, and just not very cinematic. Here are a few of my favorites:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089816/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048563/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051534/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053318/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056196/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039636/

Honestly, most of the adaptations from Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill turned out to be absolute masterpieces. If anyone actually wants the list, feel free to grab it and watch.

Laura Palmer25 said:When you say stage to Screen Adaptations, are you talking about plays that hit the stage first before being moved to the big screen? Any play can be turned into a movie, provided there's a solid screenwriter who knows how to translate the script into cinematic language. Plays are dialogue-heavy; you have to trim all that excess chatter and monologue and figure out how to weave it together with visual storytelling. If they mess that up, I can usually tell a movie was based on a play just by how much it talks. They end up feeling too literary, too grand, and just not very cinematic. Here are a few of my favorites:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089816/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048563/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051534/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053318/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056196/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039636/

Honestly, most of the adaptations from Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill turned out to be absolute masterpieces. If anyone actually wants the list, feel free to grab it and watch.

Rachel Young3 said:So, we're talking about film adaptations of William Shakespeare's dramas?? 🤔

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lm_adaptations

electriccanyon26 said:That’s all of them. Which ones have you actually watched? Any particular favorites you'd recommend?

Karen Smith9 said:The title of this thread is slightly off, which has led to some confusion in the posts. Films based on the works of William Shakespeare or Tennessee Williams are actually adaptations of dramatic texts—not specifically adaptations of theatrical productions. A stage production itself is merely a director's interpretation of a single written work of art. Based on how the topic is titled, those movies would essentially be an interpretation of an interpretation, which simply isn't the case.

Christian Taylor3 said:Honestly, nothing is mislabeled here; the title is actually spot on—Movies based on stage plays/film adaptation of stage plays. Or, to put it simply, stage to Screen Adaptations. 🙂 Some of my personal favorites (shame on you all for not mentioning Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross 😁), which can be found on the '20 Greatest stage to Screen Adaptations' list. Of course, like any other list, it’s missing a ton of stuff: Wilder's Irma la Douce; Capri's You Can't Take It with You; Curtiz's Casablanca; the one I absolutely love, Frost/Nixon by Ron Howard; A Few Good Men, based on that same play by Aaron Sorkin; Lloyd's Cavalcade; that grumpy little old lady Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy; and the whole gallery of broken characters from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest...

Laura Palmer25 said:Actually, the title is a bit off. These are movies based on plays, meaning they stem from a literary source that likely predates any actual stage production. It’s not usually a play that exists first just to be turned into a movie; rather, both the play and the film originate from the written script.

Your simplification of "stage to Screen" assumes the reader already knows exactly what we're talking about.

The connections between theater and cinema might seem obvious at first glance, but they’re actually pretty deceptive. In reality, turning a stage Play into a movie is a much steeper uphill battle than adapting a novel. Eisenstein wrote in his essay, “Charles Dickens, D.W. Griffith, and the film today,” that novels actually possess their own literary versions of fades, dissolves, close-ups, and various compositional or editing tricks. The real headache when dealing with stage to Screen Adaptations comes from the fact that while the two mediums can look similar on the surface, their core concepts and physical temperaments are fundamentally irreconcilable. Some academics argue that stage Plays are an easy win for the big screen because they share traditional narrative structures, rely on actors to drive the drama, and lean heavily on spoken dialogue, but that simplicity is mostly just an illusion.

Christian Taylor3 said:Terry Scott34

You know what, you're probably right—I guess I owe Ken Kesey an apology.

To Terry Scott34, who spent all that time insisting dragons weren't real, only to end up leading me straight to their dens. 😍

That was a beautifully explained point by electriccanyon26. Well, here we go. Time to get this show on the road. I haven't seen an article posted here yet, so if you were trying to share something, it looks like it didn't quite make it through. Feel free to drop the link or the text whenever you're ready.

The connections between theater and cinema might seem obvious at first glance, but they’re actually pretty deceptive. In reality, turning a stage Play into a movie is a much steeper uphill battle than adapting a novel. Eisenstein wrote in his essay, “Charles Dickens, D.W. Griffith, and the film today,” that novels actually possess their own literary versions of fades, dissolves, close-ups, and various compositional or editing tricks. The real headache when dealing with stage to Screen Adaptations comes from the fact that while the two mediums can look similar on the surface, their core concepts and physical temperaments are fundamentally irreconcilable. Some academics argue that stage Plays are an easy win for the big screen because they share traditional narrative structures, rely on actors to drive the drama, and lean heavily on spoken dialogue, but that simplicity is mostly just an illusion.

Honestly, the inspiration for those films didn't come from any literary source material at all; it came exclusively from stage productions. Whether it was a chicken or an egg situation before that happens is pretty much irrelevant to me.

Christian Taylor3 said:Terry Scott34

You know what, you're probably right—I guess I owe Ken Kesey an apology.

To Terry Scott34, who spent all that time insisting dragons weren't real, only to end up leading me straight to their dens. 😍

That was a beautifully explained point by electriccanyon26. Well, here we go. Time to get this show on the road. I haven't seen an article posted here yet, so if you were trying to share something, it looks like it didn't quite make it through. Feel free to drop the link or the text whenever you're ready.

The connections between theater and cinema might seem obvious at first glance, but they’re actually pretty deceptive. In reality, turning a stage Play into a movie is a much steeper uphill battle than adapting a novel. Eisenstein wrote in his essay, “Charles Dickens, D.W. Griffith, and the film today,” that novels actually possess their own literary versions of fades, dissolves, close-ups, and various compositional or editing tricks. The real headache when dealing with stage to Screen Adaptations comes from the fact that while the two mediums can look similar on the surface, their core concepts and physical temperaments are fundamentally irreconcilable. Some academics argue that stage Plays are an easy win for the big screen because they share traditional narrative structures, rely on actors to drive the drama, and lean heavily on spoken dialogue, but that simplicity is mostly just an illusion.

Honestly, the inspiration for those films didn't come from any literary source material at all; it came exclusively from stage productions. Whether it was a chicken or an egg situation before that happens is pretty much irrelevant to me.

Christian Taylor3 said:Honestly, nothing is mislabeled here; the title is actually spot on—Movies based on stage plays/film adaptation of stage plays. Or, to put it simply, stage to Screen Adaptations. 🙂 Some of my personal favorites (shame on you all for not mentioning Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross 😁), which can be found on the '20 Greatest stage to Screen Adaptations' list. Of course, like any other list, it’s missing a ton of stuff: Wilder's Irma la Douce; Capri's You Can't Take It with You; Curtiz's Casablanca; the one I absolutely love, Frost/Nixon by Ron Howard; A Few Good Men, based on that same play by Aaron Sorkin; Lloyd's Cavalcade; that grumpy little old lady Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy; and the whole gallery of broken characters from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest...

Karen Smith9 said:That list of 20 films is honestly hilarious. Not because the movies themselves are bad—on the contrary, there are some great ones in there—but because it is almost entirely Anglo-American. Then, out of nowhere, Kurosawa pops up at the top (which, objectively speaking, makes him the best one on the list). But what about the Frenchmen, the Germans, or the Russians? Are Americans and the English really the only ones who do adaptations well?
Besides, another Kurosawa masterpiece, "Ran"—basically King Lear done Japanese style—is better than half the films mentioned here.
I'm sticking to my guns: the thread title is wrong. A film might be inspired by a play, or perhaps a specific production by a certain theater director, and then those elements carry over to the screen. But the foundation of the screenplay—the only actual basis for a script—must be the dramatic text itself.
It feels like the OP just stumbled upon a catchy article, thought, "Hey, this would make a great topic," without actually digging into the deeper implications of what they were posting.