Filling the Void

Bluestone's Novels into Film, the seminal work in the field, is heavy going for most undergraduates and has three drawbacks: it is outdated; it is restricted in scope to the novel; and it limits the teacher to the six films Bluestone dicusses in detail. The second half of the book, which is devoted to "treatments" of twenty-five feature-length films, offers the teacher a more than adequate range of films; in fact, the films, which are regularly taught film classics, range from adaptations like The Grapes of Wrath and Rashomon (there are also three plays, including Shakespeare's Henry V and Hamlet) to literary films such as Wild Strawberries and 8½.