Those who cherish Thomas Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure are probably, on seeing this 1996 film adaptation of it, going to wonder who fed the screenwriter the thousand cups of coffee and made him dash through a great big chunk of the book in the first 25 minutes of screen time. Everyone has their own vision of what the book should look like and how it should be presented on screen, and what they end up seeing often simply isn’t it. But when it comes to classic literature, the eyes of the world are eagle-sharp.

It’s not so much a problem with adaptations of modern novels - screenwriters happily hack away entire chapters and even rewrite the entire story on occasion, and nobody complains. That’s the risk that’s taken when the balance is made between being faithful to the text and keeping things moving on the screen. Okay, so we jest a little, but there’s undoubtedly nothing worse than sitting through a misfired literary adaptation waiting for it to engage your interest. Little wonder some big-screen literary adaptations come across as visually sumptuous vacuums where the dialogue has all the passion of a BBC news broadcast from the 1920s and the emotional range of it all is defined by who’s wearing the beige dress today. Not least, the sheer scale of trying to recreate the past convincingly means that a fairly solid budget is required then, to get a distributor and a wide audience, you’re going to need one or two “name” stars, and they’re going to cost money as well. Taking a famous moment in literature and turning it into a feature film has always been part of cinema’s staple diet, and while the truly epic adaptations of really, really big books tend to be found on television, there’s an undeniable appeal in staging classic literature for the cinema screen.

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