by Lopa Banerjee

Created on: July 24, 2008

The journey of some of the best fiction writing into Hollywood films...

The journey of some faithfully filmed movie adaptations of best-selling novels in Hollywood started as early as the 1940's, with Victor Fleming's classic adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's best seller "Gone with the Wind". An Academy Award-winner, the film went on to set the stage for movie adaptations that went on to become the most beloved, enduring and popular films of all times. In the following years, Hollywood has been bombarded with some of the most successful movie adaptations of all times. They included the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather (1972), viewed as a touchstone of cinema and one of the best American films ever made, "A Room With A View", faithfully adapted from E.M. Forster's novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, (who won the Oscar), to the exquisite direction of James Ivory, "A Passage To India", another adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel by David Lean, set in colonial India in 1924.

The 1990's was another decade replete with some huge screen successes of best-selling novels, including the "Silence of the Lambs", one of the most gripping and horrifying thrillers on celluloid ever, that introduced moviegoers to the screen's most blood-curdling antihero Hannibal Lecter - a psychotic killer and confirmed cannibal. The other remarkable classic adaptations of the 1990's included "The Shawshank Redemption", an engrossing adaptation of Stephen King's novella that impressed moviegoers with its painstaking perfection, stylish direction, and memorable performances; "Forrest Gump", an enduring human story of faith and humility, featuring the Academy Award winning portrayal of the eponymous protagonist Forrest Gump, a dull-witted member of the baby-boom generation. It was even the most perfectionist directors of all times like Stephen Spielberg who had the urge to portray the written words into celluloid; and that he did with two most notable films in Hollywood: "Jaws", the terrorizing tale of a fin in the water adapted from Peter Benchley's bestseller that horrified a generation of filmgoers, and "Schindler's List",asearing drama about a Nazi industrialist who saved more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps during World War II.

Starting at the 1990's, the tradition of filming some literary romance classics has continued till the present times, with two of the most successful and faithful adaptations being "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice". Both

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