Click here to see more …For his depiction of Randle, the anti-authoritarian hero of Ken Kesey’s counterculture novel set in a mental institution in Milos Forman’s 1975 adaptation, Jack Nicholson has won an Academy Award. Though Kesey distanced himself famously from the production after having some creative clashes with Forman, the film is widely considered one of the best adaptations for book-to-film. Nicholson nails Randle’s bravado as a convict who falsifies insanity so that he can serve his time in an institution rather than a jail but allows enough vulnerability to come through that we left wondering whether he needs to be in the institution. A famous scene in which the camera lingers halfway through the film on Randle’s face is said to be what put Nicholson’s Oscar in the bag. While Randle is deeply flawed, he is a hero because he ends up sacrificing himself to teach the other prisoners to stand up for themselves. 6.
Rhett Butler Gone With the Wind
David O. Selznick postponed making his 1939 adaptation of the melodramatic novel set during the American Civil War partly because of that popular quest for who would play the leading role of Scarlett O Hara but less notably because Selznick realized that he had to secure Clark Gable for the role of the suave Rhett Butler. Far better to deliver now-iconic lines such as You should be kissed, and often, by someone who knows how. Gable was the ideal actor to play the outlaw bad-boy with a mysterious past that left millions of viewers questioning why Scarlett wasn’t just dissecting Butler’s Ashley loser first. 7. Sherlock Holmes
Basil Rathbone is best known as Dr. Watson for his spot-on depiction of Sherlock Holmes in a series of 14 films made from the short stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle between 1939 and 1946. Because of Rathbone’s full depiction of the character these films are considered the best of the many Sherlock adaptations in no small part. Several film critics have waxed poetic about how Rathbone seems to have been born to play Sherlock something that has culminated in the actor’s greatest legacy but is also typecast because he later struggled to distinguish himself from his long career playing Sherlock. 8.
With Henry Fonda’s spot-on interpretation of the hero Tom Joad, Tom Joad Grapes of Wrath John Ford’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s great American novel has been able to pull through its modified conclusion. Fonda’s delivery of Joad’s final speech is a great moment in movie one that won Tom Joad the No. 12 spot on the American Film Institute’s list of the movies ‘ greatest heroes. So give Ford some credit the conclusion of the novel would be almost impossible to pull off in a 1940 movie so settling on Joad’s big speech vowing to dedicate his life to the cause of Preacher Casey championing social justice was the next best way to end the plot. Everywhere I should be. Wherever you can look wherever there’s a struggle so hungry people can eat I ll be there he tells the Ma Joad family matriarch.
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