6 Of The Best: Literary Adaptations

(Written for HeyUGuys)

If you’re a fan of literary adaptations then no doubt you’ll currently have your head stuck in a copy of Joyce Maynard’s emotional coming-of-age novel Labor Day, Nick Hornby’s heart-warming suicide drama A Long Way Down, or maybe even Veronica Roth’s debut dystopian Divergent. What we’re looking forward to most, however, is Richard Ayoade’s upcoming adaptation of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s dark comedy novella, The Double.

Book v Film: Rebecca (1940)

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.”

Based on Daphne du Maurier‘s 1938 book and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rebecca follows an unnamed protagonist (Joan Fontaine) who, whilst working as the companion to a rich American woman vacationing in Monte Carlo, meets a wealthy widowed Englishman named Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). When he suddenly proposes her hand in marriage, she agrees to accompany him to his mansion, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley, but soon finds that the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, still maintains a grip on her husband and the servants, especially on the housekeeper Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson). Haunted by her memory, a mystery that lives on even after Rebecca’s death begins to unravel.

Daphne Du Maruier’s Rebecca To Return To The Big Screen

(Written for Lost In The Multiplex)

DreamWorks has confirmed this month that they plan to bring Daphne du Maruier‘s 1938 novel Rebecca back to the big screen.

To be re-adapted by Steven Knight, the book tells the story of an unnamed American woman who marries a rich Englishman, Maximilian de Winter. Moving into his estate, though, she finds herself confronted by the echoes of her new husband’s first wife, Rebecca and beings to unravel a mystery that lives on even after Rebecca’s death.