Literary
see all genres ›Novels, short stories, plays and poems gain second, third, perhaps nine or more lives when adapted to the screen. Literary and theatrical adaptations have been a staple of film’s first century. Adaptations of comic books and remakes of earlier movies are staples of film’s second.
Discover Literary Films
Genres / Adaptation / Literary
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Accattone
The first of Pier Paolo Pasolini's highly acclaimed films and the winner of numerous film festival prizes, ACCATTONE uses a talented cast to present a vivid picture of the Roman slums. Based on one of the filmmaker/poet's novels, this story of a pimp, his friends, his enemies and his girls is realism at its earthiness. It is...Start your free trial to watch -
Aladin, or the Wonderful Lamp
An extravaganza of early special effects, the Pathé ALADIN (lacking the more common double "d") delights in the story’s magical transformations. Trick shots and striking color tinting accent the elastic reality that comes with the wonderful lamp. The fantasia only lasts a single reel but that's time enough...Start your free trial to watch -
Alila
For the apartment dwellers of ALILA, every action creates a ripple unknowingly felt by all. Gorgeous libertine Gabi's (Yael Abecassis, KADOSH) loud, violent trysts with her physically dominant, emotionally unavailable lover Hezi (Amos Lavie) bring down the wrath of their disgusted neighbors. Mali (Hanna Laslo), Gabi's sole...Start your free trial to watch
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Ambush
AMBUSH takes place in the first days of World War II in Russian Karelia by the Finnish border. A young lieutenant is sent on a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines, leaving his beautiful fiancee behind. During his mission he receives the tragic news that she has been killed by the Russians. Now the war is personal and...Start your free trial to watch -
And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him
Brilliantly adapted from Tomás Rivera’s acclaimed novel Y NO SE LO TRAGO LA TIERRA, this is a haunting and powerful film about a young Mexican-American boy’s coming of age amid the poverty and adversity he and his family face as migrant farm workers in the 1950s. Twelve-year-old Marcos hides under a house,...Start your free trial to watch -
And Then There Were None
Ten people, strangers to each other, are invited to a lavish estate on an island. Through a recording, their mysterious host accuses each of his "guests" of murder and proceeds to exact ''justice." The tension mounts as, one by one, the number of people are reduced through the ingenious plotting of the...Start your free trial to watch
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The Angelic Conversation
Derek Jarman's lyrical celebration of gay love set within the context of a series of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. Ethereal Super-8 images slowed to a magical, meditative pace follow the love affair between two men as Dame Judi Dench provides a soothing presence with her narration of the fourteen sonnets....Start your free trial to watch -
The Avenging Conscience
D.W. Griffith indulged his lifelong fascination with Edgar Allan Poe in this ambitious amalgam of the writer’s poetry and prose: “Annabel Lee” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” flavored with shades of “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Conqueror Worm." Poe’s tales are interwoven in one...Start your free trial to watch
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Behind Convent Walls
BEHIND CONVENT WALLS is an erotic arthouse film by cult director Walerian Borowzcyk (THE BEAST), set in a convent, where a Mother Superior tries to maintain order to prevent the nuns from temptation. But when things get out of control, the church inflicts cruel punishment to the nuns for their sins. One of...Start your free trial to watch -
Black Like Me
Based on the landmark memoir by John Howard Griffin, BLACK LIKE ME stars James Whitmore as Griffin, who medically altered his pigment and, with the help of a sunlamp, reinvented himself as an itinerant black writer navigating his way through Mississippi and Alabama. Along the way he experienced firsthand both crushing racism...Start your free trial to watch -
The Black Oud
"THE BLACK OUD represents a subtle new direction in documentary. I have used the term 'bio-documentary' to describe this slight, though essential, difference between my film and the majority of personal or experimental documentaries made in the last decade. The prefix 'bio,' of course, means 'life.' But what I refer to...Start your free trial to watch
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Blind Revenge
A famous eccentric author, blinded in a horrific accident, hires a female assistant to help him write his final opus, only to discover she has another agenda. As the story unfolds, her secret is revealed and both of their pasts could cost them their future.Start your free trial to watch -
Blind Shaft
BLIND SHAFT tells the story of two itinerant miners (Song Jinming and Tang Chaoyang) who risk their lives under dangerous working conditions and develop questionable morals in order to survive. In the dark caves of one of the many illegal Chinese coal mines, Song and Tang murder a co-worker whom they have convinced to pose as...Start your free trial to watch -
Blood and Sand
An immortal icon of brooding sexuality, Rudolph Valentino became one of silent cinema's most enigmatic and entrancing performers. In BLOOD AND SAND he stars as Juan Gallardo, a young Spaniard who achieves his boyhood ambition to become a celebrated toreador. But with fame comes temptation and treachery and the triumphant Juan...Start your free trial to watch
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Boccaccio '70
Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe's biggest stars in BOCCACCIO '70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET), Federico Fellini (LA DOLCE VITA), Luchino Visconti (THE LEOPARD) and Vittorio De Sica (BICYCLE THIEVES) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through...Start your free trial to watch -
Brave New West
An off-the-wall odyssey that tells the story of how one man's passion for the natural world fueled the creation of an extraordinary and unlikely institution in the American West. It also shows how the passion of youth is tempered and ripens with age into a balanced view of a natural world. Jim Stiles arrived in Utah in 1975,...Start your free trial to watch -
Bubù
A nasty tale of sexual corruption (and infection) wrapped in the gauziest soft-focus aesthetic, this adaptation of the racy French novel "Bubù di Montparnasse" by Charles Louis Philippe was an early salvo in Italian cinema's very sexy 1970s. Beautiful Bertha (Ottavia Piccolo) is the poor laundress lured into the world's...Start your free trial to watch




