From Print to Pictures, the Art of Film Adaptation: More Turning Points

In six films and the works from which they are adapted, we will examine critical choices that determine lives. The award-winning films we will discuss include: David Mamet directs Terrence Rattigan's suspenseful British drama, The Winslow Boy, about a youth expelled from school whose father challenges the case; in Bjorn Runge's film of Meg Wolitzer's novel, The Wife, an apprehensive Glenn Close accompanies her wayward husband, Jonathan Pryce, on a trip to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize; Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid, from Bruce Friedman's bittersweet story, stars Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd in a collapsing marriage; Frank Perry's adaptation of John Cheever's story, The Swimmer, stars Burt Lancaster who tries to swim his way home from pool to pool; Mike Nichols' Postcards From the Edge is a take on Carrie Fisher's novel of a fraught mother-daughter show business relationship, with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine; Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart, from Thomas Cobb's novel, features Jeff Bridges in an Academy-Award performance as an aging country singer making a comeback. Coordinators will provide texts in this 12-week study group, alternating three hours for film viewing, then two hours the next week for evaluating the adaptation.