It’s been more than 60 years since Hollywood last adapted Gustave Flaubert’s classic, some would consider the ur, novel, Madame Bovary. Now, Mia Wasikowska has signed on to play the tragically imaginative heroine, a woman whose dissatisfaction with her comfortable provincial life (“she has read too many books and it has addled her brain,” as the popular Louisa May Alcott saying, emblazoned on many a modern tote bag, goes) leads to her downfall.
The production helmed by director Sophie Barthes will likely feature another acclaimed turn by Wasikowska, and Paul Giamatti and Rhys Ifans can always be counted on to lend their films a bit or bushel of their personal magnetism. But for many fans of classic novel adaptations, the scenery and especially the costumes are a large part of the appeal. Imagining the contemporary milieu, from Dickens’ dirty cobblestone streets to the Bronte sisters’ foggy ad-infinitum moors to Flaubert’s French farmland, is often half the fun of reading a golden oldie. Their exterior descriptions, so often lacking in comparable expansiveness among modern novels, do more than their bit to help the reader “lose herself” in the story.
When it comes to a cinematic reimagining, an emphasis on production value is necessary and tricky: It can go a long way towards capturing the tone and distracting from the original material both. On those occasions where the director, cinematographer, set and costume designer are all in accord, you get nothing less than the industry ideal: movie magic.
Here, then, are those novel adaptations where content and costume walked hand-in-hand towards film (or at least fan) canonization. Below these, we’ve included a few stinkers, the bad apples that give the whole bunch of “costume dramas” or “period pieces” their pejorative ring. Where will Wasikowska’s Bovary fall?
Best:
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
Apocalypse Now (1979; based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness – army fatigues are costumes, too)
Emma (1996)
Gone With The Wind (1939)
A Little Princess (1995)
Valmont (1989; not as classy as the 1988 Dangerous Liasons, but its campiness gives it an added cult boost)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Godfather: Part II (DeNiro flashbacks)
Worst:
Vanity Fair (2004)
Wuthering Heights (2011)
Anna Karenina (2012)
The Three Musketeers (2011)
Troy (2004)
The Scarlet Letter (1995)
The Great Gatsby (2013)
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