on 4/5/02 2:22 pm, Brad DeLong at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> I've just watched _The Count of Monte Cristo_. The movie >> is good _qua_ movie, even thought I have some doubts wrt >> the conversion book -> movie. Namely: >> >> (spoiler space) >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> . >> >> IIRC, in the book Mondego's son is really his son, and the Count >> refrains from going in his revenge through the end, saving the >> boy's life, and becoming a little more heroic than in the movie, >> where he only spares the boy _after_ knowing that he is >> _his_ son. >> >> Alberto Monteiro > > And in the movie Edmond Dantes winds up marrying his TWUE LOVE, his > original fiancee, while in the book he does not. > > The key differences are, I think, that we are a more romantic and > less realistic civilization than nineteenth-century France, and that > we also demand greater "tightness" of plot. > > Brad DeLong > >
Yes, in the book Mondego's son is really his son, and Edmond sails off into the sunset with Haydee while poor Mercedes goes off to a convent or something. But the book is too big (1102 pp with footnotes in the Buss translation), has too many characters, too much plot, and takes place in too many locations over too much time to ever fit into a movie. Even the most recent TV mini-series version hacks up the plot mercilessly , *adds* a completely new character as a love interest whilst relegating Haydee to a minor plot device and puts Edmond and Mercedes back together at the end. But what to do with a story featuring 'a female serial poisoner, two cases of infanticide, a stabbing and three suicides; an extended scene of torture and execution; drug-induced sexual fantasies, illegitimacy, transvestism and lesbianism' ? -- William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk
