Stage-to-film adaptation

Stage-to-film is a term used when describing a

. There have been stage-to-film adaptations since the beginning of motion pictures. Many of them have been nominated for, or have won, awards.

List of stage-to-film adaptations that won the Best Picture award

The following stage-to-film adaptations have won the

.

• Grand Hotel (1932, originally a novel, then a stage play)
• Cavalcade (1933)
• You Can't Take It with You (1938)
• Casablanca (1943), based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's.
• Hamlet (1948)
• Gigi (1958, like Grand Hotel, originally a novel, then a stage play)
• West Side Story (1961)
• My Fair Lady (1964)
• The Sound of Music (1965)
• A Man for All Seasons (1966)
• Oliver! (1968)
• Amadeus (1984)
• Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
• Chicago (2002)
• Moonlight (2016) (based on an unpublished play)

Oscar-winning stage performances onscreen

for re-creating stage roles on film include:

• title role in the sound version of Disraeli
  )
• Laurence Olivier (the title role in the 1948 Hamlet)
• José Ferrer (the title role in the 1950 Cyrano de Bergerac)
• Judy Holliday (Billie Dawn in the original Born Yesterday)
• Vivien Leigh (Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire) (she appeared in the London production, not in the Broadway one)
• Karl Malden (Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire)
• Kim Hunter (Stella Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire)
• Shirley Booth (Lola Delaney in Come Back, Little Sheba)
• Yul Brynner (the King of Siam in the original The King and I)
• Rita Moreno (Maria in West Side Story)
• Anne Bancroft (Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker)
• Patty Duke (Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker)
• Rex Harrison (Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady)
• Paul Scofield (Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons)
• Jack Albertson (John Cleary in The Subject Was Roses)
• Liza Minnelli (Sally Bowles in Cabaret)
• Joel Grey (the Emcee in Cabaret)
• Barbra Streisand (Fanny Brice in Funny Girl)
• Catherine Zeta-Jones (Velma Kelly in Chicago)
• Jennifer Hudson (Effie White in Dreamgirls)
• Les Miserables
  )
• Viola Davis (Rose Maxon in Fences)
• Ariana DeBose (Anita in West Side Story)

Problems with stage-to-film adaptations

Most stage-to-film adaptations must confront the charge of being "stagy". Many successful attempts have been made to "open up" stage plays to show things that could not possibly be done in the theatre (notably in The Sound of Music, in which the

(1944) was based on a play by having the film begin at what was supposed to be Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, then moving into deliberately fake scenery and having the scenery gradually become more and more real until finally the viewing audience is looking at a real location, finally gradually switching back to the Globe Theatre.

On some occasions,

Requiem Mass

to Salieri, while his imagined music is heard on the soundtrack, could only have been done on film. The film also allowed the music to be heard in six-track hi-fi sound, while in the play the audience heard it through tinny loudspeakers.

In other cases, such as

musicals to the screen with fewer changes than had been customary in the past.

In the case of the unsuccessful Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon, new characters and songs were added, and the stage musical's plot was almost completely changed for the 1969 film, in order to bolster the film's chances of success.

References

Internet Movie Database ([1]

)