From Thomas Mann's controversial novel to a satirical book about Adolf Hitler: DW's KINO team picked its seven favorite film adaptations of German works of literature.
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KINO favorites: 7 German book-to-film adaptations
Films based on literature have been around as long as cinema itself — and some are better than others. Here are the top seven best adaptations from renowned German-language books, according to DW's KINO team.
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7: 'Death in Venice'
In 1971, Italian director Luchino Visconti surprised the world with his film adaptation of German author Thomas Mann's 1912 novella "Death in Venice." Visconti's movie is very close to the narrative tone of the original. The film starring Dirk Bogarde is ponderous, melancholy — and stunningly beautiful.
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6: 'All Quiet on the Western Front'
This film from the early days of sound movies is an excellent example of an arresting movie adaptation of a literary work. US director Lewis Milestone brought the horrors of WWI to the screen in 1930, based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel "All Quiet on the Western Front." The Nazis made sure the movie was rarely shown in Germany.
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5: 'The Reader'
A best-selling book turned into a successful film: that's the exception rather than the rule, in particular if the book touches on a difficult topic. Bernhard Schlink's novel "The Reader" looks at the repercussions of the Nazi era in Germany, and how the country deals with its past. Stephen Daldry's 2008 adaptation was a strong film also thanks to the superb actors, Kate Winslet and David Kross.
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4: 'The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum'
In 1975, two years before leftist Red Army Faction insurgents started making headlines in Germany with kidnappings and murders, Volker Schlöndorff adapted Heinrich Böll's novel The lost Honor of Katharina Blum for the screen. The novel gives a detailed description of the social atmosphere in West Germany at the time. Schlöndorff cut right to the chase and hit the mark.
The movie "In Times of Fading Light" was released in 2017, six years after Eugen Ruge's novel tracing the life of a family in East Germany hit the book stores. Another example of a well-done adaptation of literature, director Matti Geschonneck's satirical movie explores the last days of the East German regime with humor and tragic depth.
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2: 'Look Who's Back'
Timur Vermes' 2012 debut novel "Look Who's Back" was a smash hit in Germany. His satire featured a character Germans tend not to take lightly: Adolf Hitler. The dictator wakes up in a park in Berlin in this millennium — and everyone believes he is an actor. David Wnendt adapted the book into a movie in 2016.
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1: 'Perfume — The Story of a Murderer'
Our absolute favorite is the adaptation of one of the most successful German novels ever. It took 20 years before Patrick Süskind's 1985 bestselling historical fantasy novel "Perfume — The Story of a Murderer" was finally turned into a movie. Director Tom Tykwer carried it off magnificently, with entertaining, sumptuous scenes starring Ben Whishaw and Karoline Herfurth.
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It's fair to say Virginia Woolf hated movies based on books. In her essay "The Cinema," the author of "Mrs Dalloway" even compares films to parasites that exploit and devour literature and deliver results disastrous for both genres.
She writes, for instance, that the silent movie adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" reduces the "charm, passion and despair” of Tolstoy's protagonist to a crude display of "teeth, pearls and velvet."
'An attack on literature'
Tolstoy himself was more benevolent, and while he saw movies as "a direct attack on the old methods of literary art," the great Russian novelist welcomed the assault. "I rather like it," he said in 1908, claiming that movies, then barely a decade old, were "closer to life" than novels.
All writers, he forecast, would have to adapt to the shadowy screen and the cold machine.
The Russia writer was right, of course. Over the course of the 20th century, movies became the dominant medium for storytelling, and filmmakers largely ignored Woolf's remarks on book adaptations. Literature -- from great novels to pulp fiction to comics -- remains the primary source of cinematic inspiration.
To show that not all movies based on books are mediocre at best, DW's movie magazine KINO has dusted off the bookshelves and picked seven great movies adapted from great German novels.
It's a selection of comedy, drama and historical fiction inspired by modern-day classics as well as works by winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
We’ve left out one film in a class of its own: Volker Schlöndorff's Oscar-winning adaptation of "The Tin Drum" from Nobel Prize-winner German author Günter Grass. We’ve already given "The Tin Drum" its due in two other KINO Favorites shows: it made the cut for both our "Best German Directors" and "Best German Dramas".
Some of the movies became blockbusters, while some of them were forgotten or overlooked. Click through the gallery and let us know if you think some of the stories shouldn't have left the pages.
