Bookcase to Screen: For Pure Pleasure, Ten of My Favorite Adaptations

Multiverses, time-traveling, and fancy editing can’t replace a great story and compelling characters. (Note: This stack is loaded with great film clips. Enjoy!)

When I was a kid it was Cherry Ames (all 27) and Little Women. In high school, The Group (All girls! And wow. One gets fitted for a diaphragm. Another one has trouble breast-feeding. And one is a stylish lesbian!) Goodbye Columbus (Not just Newark, not just Jews, but the author actually went to my high school) Lady Chatterley’s Lover (penis descriptions, and she takes it in her hand!) My first miserable year in college, every existing James Bond. The books I read for pleasure—not for school, not to impress the boys, not for edification.

Pleasure. That was my main criterion in selecting movies for this piece. The second was it had to be based on, adapted from, or inspired by a book (or in one case, a short story.)

I discovered (or had reinforced) some things while putting this collection of recommendations together:

One: Some of the greatest movies were made from fairly crappy but enjoyable novels.

Two: Letting the author of the book write the screenplay is sometimes—but not always—a great idea.

Three: My favorite versions of classics were not always faithful to the original, but for a reason.

Four: I really like movies about women and girls.

Five: Writers Matter.

1 and 2: The Godfather and Jaws

Predictable but unavoidable choices. And with some things in common: Both made from best-sellers with very little (if any) “literary” value. Both made by relatively inexperienced directors who didn’t know what they were getting into. Both ran into a boatload of problems which almost de-railed production; it’s virtually a miracle they each got made.

Jaws (1975)

[Directed bySteven Spielberg, Screenplay byPeter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb. Based onJaws by Peter Benchley. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown. Starring Roy Scheide, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary]

If ever there was a movie that proves writing matters, it’s Jaws. In 1973 producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown read the novel and enlisted author Peter Benchley to write the screenplay. Benchley did 3 drafts, none of which satisfied Stephen Spielberg, because Benchley (no doubt feeling attached to his book) included numerous subplots that detracted from what Spielberg, with his movie-making instincts honed from childhood, wanted to focus on: the shark and the men pursuing it. So next it was given to esteemed Playwright Howard Sackler (Pulitzer Prize for “The Great White Hope” and not related to “those” Sacklers, the weird and corrupt ones currently the subject of Netflix ‘s “Painkiller”) But Sackler’s draft turned out to be too dark for Spielberg and the main characters weren’t relatable or likeable. So Spielberg asked comedy writer and friend Carl Gottlieb to add some playfulness and humor. Gottlieb wound up rewriting the entire script in collaboration with Spielberg. So if you’ve wondered how Jaws managed to be terrifying, funny, and warmly human all at the same time, there you have it.

Trivia that some of you may know: There were huge problems getting the mechanical shark—named Bruce—to work. And Bruce was kind of an essential character. So Spielberg, asking himself “what would Hitchcock do?,” made what was one of the smartest decisions for the movie. Except for a few (gruesome) scenes the shark would be an unseen predator, whose approaching presence would be signaled by the escalating ”dun dun dun dun” of John William’s score. Tell me you weren’t on the edge of your seat when that music of dread alerted you that something horrible was about to happen (or almost happen) to some unsuspecting swimmer.

There’s a lot I could say about the varied pleasures of Jaws, but it would be a post in itself. For me—and lots of others—the most unforgettable scene was the extraordinary Robert Shaw, as Quint the shark hunter (Shaw also made the best Henry VIII I’ve ever seen, in A Man For All Seasons) telling the tale (most of it roughly accurate) of what happened to the men on the USS Indianapolis:

If you’re interested in a great documentary about the making of Jaws:

The Godfather (1972)

[ Directed byFrancis Ford Coppola. Screenplay by Mario Puzo And Francis Ford Coppola. Based onThe Godfatherby Mario Puzo. Produced byAlbert S. Ruddy. Starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino,James Caan, Richard Castellano,Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton]

There’s not much that I can add that hasn’t already been written—except, perhaps, that if you’re going to make a movie about Italians, hire an Italian to do it. Robert Evans, Paramount’s innovative and brilliant studio head, insisted on it—and that’s why if you want to make a great “gravy” for your pasta, you can follow Clemenza’s instructions.

At first, Francis Ford Coppola dismissed Mario Puzo’s bestseller as “pretty cheap stuff.” Which it is. But it provided the basic characters and plot scaffolding for a masterpiece of a (ultimately a three-part) family saga that altered the genre of “gangster movie” forever. There’s no “Sopranos” without The Godfather.

Some real gangsters turned out to be a help, too. Like Bruce the under-performing shark, they began as an obstacle, upset that the film would feed into Italian-American stereotypes. As producer Albert Ruddy tells it, the window of his car was shot out, and a note left on the dashboard that read “Shut down the movie—or else.” But Ruddy reassured them that the movie was going to be about a warm and close Italian family, not a bunch of thugs. And although that had been Coppola’s conception from the start, the fact that the mob was looking over his shoulder undoubtedly reinforced his commitment. (Besides, Coppola was more interested in creating a metaphor for American capitalism than the abuses of the mafia.) The script (a collaboration of Puzo and Coppola, with genius editing by Robert Towne) was purged (at the insistence of Joseph Columbo, head the Italian-American Civil Rights League) of a few references to “mafia” and replaced with other terms and the league gave its support for the script.

My choice of clip is another famous monologue. (I’ve often wondered how he could stand having his jaw pushed out that way—but it was perfect.)

And if you want to see an entertaining, but probably not entirely accurate, fictionalized series on the making of the film, told from Ruddy’s point of view, check out The Offer.

3. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

[Directed byRoman Polanski. Screenplay byRoman Polanski.Based onRosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. Produced byWilliam Castle Starring Mia Farrow,John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy]

Another inspired project of Robert Evans¹, Rosemary’s Baby was written and directed by Roman Polanski, based on Ira Levin's 1967 novel of the same name. Evans became interested even before the book, which was to become a best-seller, was published (low-budget horror-film maker William Castle had given him the galleys) and Pulanski was Evans’ choice (supposedly—as Trufault tells it anyway, after Hitchcock turned it down.)

Pulanski’s genius—which many others have emulated since—was to “evoke menace and sheer terror in familiar routines” and settings. No haunted houses, no grotesque monsters. The coven of witches who engineer the Satanic rape and oversee Rosemary’s pregnancy—“it’s just some fresh herbs and vitamins, dontcha know”—seem just like any pestering old couple who live down the hall. Rosemary and her ambitious husband Guy (who has struck a deal with the devil) hang wall-paper, make fondu, browse NYC bookstores, and have parties just like any ordinary over-privileged yuppie couple. Rosemary has nice girlfriends who cluck over her when she’s getting too thin and pale (even for Mia Farrow in her most waif-like role.) And Charles Grodin (as the young, modern-minded obstetrician whose aid she seeks when she realizes what’s going on) looks like such a nice, pleasant guy that viewers are as shocked as Rosemary when he (unwittingly) hands her over to the coven. Nothing portends evil as in the typical horror movie. The music is a “lalala” lullaby (sung in the soundtrack by Farrow) that only sounds creepy because we know she’s not going to be rocking a darling Gerber baby. Those “health” shakes Minnie Castevet (Ruth Gordon, whose jangling jewelry enters every room before her) are not really “packed with vitamins” and that baby has the strangest eyes:

Trivia: Outside shots of the fictional Upper West Side apartment building—called “The Branford” in the movie—were of The Dakota, where John Lennon lived and near the front door of which he was shot.

4. Sense and Sensibility (1995)

[Directed byAng LeeScreenplay byEmma ThompsonBased onSense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Starring Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant]

Ang Lee’s movies have never disappointed me (The Ice Storm is on my longer list.) But what makes this Sense and Sensibility a repeat watch for me (rivaled perhaps by the BBC Pride and Prejudice with the Colin Firth swimming scene) is Emmas Thompson, both for her performance as Elinor Dashwood, and for her screenplay (which won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.)

It was Thompson’s first screenplay, she spent five years drafting numerous revisions in between various acting jobs, and the studio was really nervous about the fact her name was not associated with script-writing. They hoped Ang Lee as director would compensate with distributors.

Like Greta Gerwig, whose Little Women I’ll discuss shortly, Thompson managed to be both inventive—adding scenes and details not in the original—and faithful to Austen. It’s a kind of alchemy that focuses on personality rather than exact reproduction, and in making the characters more “readable” to a modern audience, brings them to life in a way that, for me at least, is as delicately delicious as reading the novel. My favorite example is a scene that made me gasp the first time I saw it. Elinor doesn’t react in the novel the way Thompson writes and portrays her here (actually, I’d never seen the emotions of any character, in any movie, break through quite like that.) But what Thompson does exquisitely conveys all that Elinor has held back until that moment. It’s a visceral expression of what Austen has conveyed about Elinor throughout the novel, and it’s why the classically comedic ending seems earned rather than hokey.

(Thompson does something similar, although her tears aren’t happy, in Love Actually, when, having discovered that the Christmas present she thought was a necklace for her turns out to be a Joni Mitchell album and the necklace meant for someone else. She’s a genius at eruptions of the heart.)

And for all of you who are irritated with me for choosing Sense and Sensibility over Pride and Prejudice (1995) here’s “that” scene:

5. The Age of Innocence (1993)

[Director: Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks. Adapted from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, Starring Michelle Feiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder.]

After Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas (all of which I’ve seen many times) I wasn’t expecting a romantic drama from Martin Scorsese. It turns out, though, that he’d been wanting to do one. And in Scorsese on Scorsese he describes why his friend (and co-screenwriter) Jay Cocks thought Edith Wharton’s novel would be the one for him to adapt, as it “deals with a period of New York history that has been neglected….code and ritual, and love that's not unrequited but unconsummated—which pretty much covers all the themes I usually deal with."

This isn’t a movie that turns up on many “best films” lists, but it’s one I love. And I couldn’t do better than Tyler Aquilina’s blurb, so I won’t try:

“Edith Wharton's Pulitzer-winning novel sings on the page, the author's deliciously wry prose painting the world of late-1800s, upper-class New York in vivid detail. In Martin Scorsese's hands, the remarkably faithful 1993 adaptation sings on screen as well, with those vivid details coming to life through sumptuous production design, costumes, and cinematography. Oh, and there's the story, of course: high-society lawyer Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) finds himself irresistibly drawn to his fiancée's cousin Ellen (Michelle Pfeiffer), a free-spirited opposite to Archer's bride-to-be (Winona Ryder). Their forbidden, simmering romance anchors an enveloping portrait of a bygone era and a caste as vicious, in its own way, as any of the Mafia clans in Scorsese's crime movies.”

Personally, the tentative stroking of a gloved hand (especially if it’s Daniel Day-Lewis doing the stroking) gets me hotter than writhing naked bodies. So I was tempted to post one of the scenes in which Archer and Ellen get closer…and closer…and closer….but then…oh God, he’s going to leave the carriage! Or in her ‘receiving’ room: His mouth is on her neck, then her foot, and he kisses her. But now she’s breaking away from him, reminded of his engagement. Which the society strangling them is also constantly reminding them of—subtly, politely, but unmistakably—which this scene captures (narrator is Joanne Woodward.)

6. Gone Girl (2014)

[Director: David Fincher. Screenplay by David Fincher and Gillian Flynn, Adapted from: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Starring, Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, Carrie Coons, Neil Patrick Harris]

At one point many years ago, I took a writing course from an author who’d had a recent best-seller. I was thinking about writing a novel, loosely based on a period in my own life and alternating between the viewpoints of three characters. My teacher praised my writing but advised me to adopt one viewpoint. Not unique to her, that advice was given in every writing handbook she assigned—and they were “state of the art.”

If that ever really was the “rule”—my writing friends nowadays are astonished to hear it—Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl did away with that.Told in alternating points of view, the novel chronicles the relationship between Amy and Nick Dunne, whose relationship begins in strong mutual appreciation and attraction, but begins to deteriorate after Nick loses his job and they relocate from New York to Missouri. Then, one day, Amy disappears. Up until roughly halfway through the book, Nick’s search for Amy, interspersed with reflections on their marriage, his resentments, and his eventual affair comprise his section, while Amy’s is a diary that shows her to have been giddily in love with a husband who neglects her when she isn’t the cool girl he’s expecting her to be. Then, halfway through the book, Flynn employs what has since become known as the “Gone Girl twist.” It’s revealed that Amy has concocted the diary, staged her own disappearance and faked her death, with the goal of framing Nick for it.

It’s a spellbinding, mind-twisting, tremendously entertaining read, and I’ve only given away so much because I’m pretty sure you’ve read it. Everyone has, haven’t they? Certainly almost every writer of thrillers since then has tried to imitate it in one way or another. And then there’s the movie, directed by David Fincher and starring Rosamund Pike as gone girl and Ben Affleck as her husband Nick.

Flynn was hired to write the screenplay, something that had her feeling “at sea a lot of times,” Then a first-time screenwriter, Flynn later admitted that she was “kind of finding my way through,” but—although it was virtually unprecedented for an author to continue on after the first draft—Fincher worked with Flynn for all the re-drafting: "... he [Fincher] responded to the first draft and we have kind of similar sensibilities. We liked the same things about the book, and we wanted the same thing out of the movie." I’m convinced that keeping Flynn as co-writer throughout the production contributed to the success of the movie, which was mentioned many times when I asked my Facebook friends for their favorite film adapted from a book. (I’ll post the whole list in my next piece.)

When asked why the book was so successful (and so widely imitated, encouraging a whole raft of female characters venting their rage), Flynn has said: “I certainly think that the acknowledgment of female anger as a viable emotion, as something that should be dealt with and acknowledged and appreciated and women feeling that way was one of the reasons that so many people connected to Gone Girl.” Especially true of the iconic “cool girl” speech, truncated for the movie but still pretty damned effective:

7. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Judy Blume. The film stars Abby Ryder Fortson as the title character, along with Rachel McAdams, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, and Kathy Bates.

Believe it or not, I had never heard of “Are You there God? It’s Me Margaret” until recently. In 1970, when the book was published—with a recommended age level of 9-12–I was 23 years old and my life was more like that of author Judy Blume’s herself, stuck in a first marriage that wasn’t working out. When I was Margaret’s age in the book—for me, that would be the very end of the fifties—we were a little more experimental and a lot less wholesome than Margaret and her friends. And there was no Judy Blume to read. In fact, there was no such thing as “young adult” fiction.

After I saw the movie of “Are You There, God?” (Adapted and directed by Kelly Friedman Craig) I read the book for the first time, and to be honest, liked the movie a lot more. The book was ground-breaking for decades but now seems stale (sorry, I know that will horrify Blume fans who see it as a “sacred text”.) Written from Margaret’s point of view as a child living her life—not looking back—in the 1970’s, it logically doesn’t have much in the way of period detail. Blume didn’t paint a picture of what the girls were wearing (other than no socks under loafers), what the furniture in their living room looked like, or what kind of dances they did in the basement. The movie does that, And paradoxically, putting Margaret’s (Abby Ryder Fortson) life more squarely in its time and place is what refreshes it. Contemporary girls of Margaret’s age can laugh at the relics of “sanitary pads” and training bras while being reassured that secret anxieties—theirs even more tormenting than Margaret’s, because they aren’t supposed to have them—have always been a feature of growing up female. And those of us who did live through a less knowing time can have the pleasure of more precise recognition.

8. “Mean Girls” (2004)

Directed by Mark Waters, written by Tina Fey, and starring Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried (in her film acting debut), Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, Amy Poehler and Fey. The supporting cast includes Lizzy Caplan, Jonathan Bennett, Daniel Franzese and Neil Flynn. The screenplayis based in part on Rosalind Wiseman's 2002 book Queen Bees and Wannabes.

In 2002, a Newsweek cover article was called: “In Defense of Teen Girls.” “They’re not all ‘mean girls’ and ‘Ophelias’” was the subtitle. “Ophelia” referred to Mary Pipher’s thesis, which had such an impact on young Greta Gerwig. “Mean Girls” referred to a then-popular backlash against Pipher, protesting what was seen as “victim feminism.” Girls were not meek and mopey, persecuted and repressed Ophelias, sweet little souls with no defenses against a culture bent on domesticating them. No, they were as aggressive as boys, just in a different way. Girl-aggression, a spate of books argued, was “relational aggression.” With a greater value on intimacy, girls were experts at friendship. But because they knew so much about each other, they had viciously potent ammunition when they turned against each other. Which, as the new crop of books emphasized, they often do, through gossip, exclusions, and forming cliques.

“Margaret” illustrates this when boss-girl Nancy dictates the “no socks” rule for the “exclusive” club she invites Margaret to join, and encourages her three supplicants to gossip about Laura Danker, who is branded the class slut because her body is more sexually developed. (In fact, Laura is a good Catholic girl who goes to confession regularly.) But the no-socks rule is pretty benign compared to the behavior Rosalind Weisman chronicles in her 2002 book, Queen Bees and Wannabees. Girls are banished from lunch tables if they wear jeans on a Monday or ponytails more than once a week. They blackmail each other with shared secrets. They establish rigid hierarchies: “If you’re gonna be in high school, you have to stay in your place. A freshman girl cannot show up at a junior party; disgusting 14-year-old girls with their boobs in the air cannot show up at your party going ‘uh, hi, where’s the beer?” When Weisman, interviewing this girl, suggests a little compassion, the girl answers that she has absolutely no use for freshman girls; she doesn’t even know their names and why should she be expected to: “There are certain rules of the school system that have been set forth from time immemorial or whatever.”

Tina Fey is a genuine genius. She saw—in the spirit of “Heathers,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Clueless”—that there was comedy gold to be mined here. She optioned Wiseman’s book, which was non-fiction sociology, and crafted a hilarious fiction, drawing on her own high-school experiences and her impressions of Evanston Township High School, on which the film's fictional "North Shore High School" is based.

As in “Margaret,” the film’s main character Cady starts out as innocent about the ways of girl world until she is recruited by Queen Bee Regina George (Rachel McAdams, whose character here is as imperious as her mom-role in “Margaret” is sweet) into her clique, known as “the plastics.” Cady’s seduction by the clique is less conflicted and more destructive than Margaret’s, but the narrative line is basically the same: she abandons old friends, acts like a twit, and after a revelation that she doesn’t like herself very much any more, comes around. But while Margaret’s clique is composed of 11-year-old, basically clueless little girls (even Queen Bee Nancy elicits our sympathy for lying about her period) “the plastics” are at the zenith of high-school popularity and know it.

Tina Fey (who also has a part in the movie) wrote the script, so it’s not surprising that it’s pee-in-your-pants hilarious. And full of actors (like Amanda Seyfried, in her film debut) that will go on to become familiar faces.

My favorite scene is below. Don’t stop after “Jingle Bell Rock” deconstructs. Go on to watch the rest of the clip, which includes the iconic slap-down of “fetch.”

9. Little Women

As written and directed by Greta Gerwig. It is the seventh film adaptation of the 1868 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott. It stars an ensemble cast consisting of Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, James Norton, Louis Garrel, and Chris Cooper.

Greta Gerwig freely admits her “Little Women” was inspired by feminist insight. She pitched her conception of the film as about “the ambition and the dreams that you have as a girl" and how they "get stomped out of you as you grow up"—a theme of Mary Pipher’s 1994 Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Lives of Adolescent Girls:

“Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves. They crash and burn in a social and developmental Bermuda Triangle. ..They lose their resiliency and optimism and become less curious and inclined to take risks. They lose their assertive, energetic and ‘tomboyish’ personalities and become more deferential, self-critical and depressed.”

You might think this is a modern insight that Louisa May Alcott couldn’t have intended as a theme of her novel. But in fact, it’s exactly what Jo March struggles with. Louisa May Alcott did too: at the age of thirteen, she wrote in her journal: "I have made a plan for my life, as I am in my teens and no more a child. I am old for my age, and don't care much for girls' things. People think I'm wild and queer, but Mother understands and helps me.”

Actually, all the sisters—with the exception of fragile, doomed Beth—have an abundance of vitality. There’s a lot of jumping, playing, hugging, and loud, unrepressed voices in the movie, and having not read the book in years, I wondered if Gerwig had gone too far with that. So I reread the book—and was reminded that I loved it not only for the heartbreak of Beth’s death or my identification with Jo the would-be-writer who wonders if its her fate to be lonely all her life, but the warmth and exuberance of family life depicted in it. And the irreplaceable intimacy of having sisters who you can joke with, fight with, put on plays with (I remember one with my sisters involving a “virgin sacrifice”), be furious with, resent, envy, love desperately and completely.

Alcott wrote that she meant her stories to be “jolly.” And I don’t think any other version of Little Women has captured that as well as Gerwig’s—so much so that none other than Chris Miller (director of “21 Jump Street” and “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”, and “The Lego Movie”) has said, “This is the most fun and most funny version of Little Women that I’ve ever seen…I remember just thinking about Little Women as a thing that is cold and dark, about sickness and people being shivering in a hole. And this movie is joyous and full of playfulness and dancing and running around on a beach and happiness. There’s obviously lots of drama in it, but it feels like a much more enjoyable experience than my vague recollections of the previous version.”

(I unfortunately couldn’t find a way to embed Gerwig’s fascinating narration of the “anatomy” of a scene that illustrates this, but click on this link and you’ll see how she did it.)

Gerwig ‘s Little Women (like Emma Thompson’s script for Sense and Sensibility) also foregrounds the economic context of her heroine’s lives. Most of the dialogue in the movie, while chronologically rearranged (the film goes back and forth in time, which the book does not) comes straight from the book. But one striking addition is a scene with Jo’s publisher, who (having been convinced by his daughters) has agreed to publish Little Women. In the scene, Jo haggles with him about advances, copyright, and royalty percentages. Some viewers might object that Gerwig is going too far outside the text here, but I saw it as an economical way of illustrating what Alcott has Jo saying many times in the book: writing (for both Jo and for Alcott) was not just about self-expression, it had to provide a living for any woman writer not born into or married to wealth.

10. Yentl (1983)

Yentl was directed, co-written, co-produced by, and starring Barbra Streisand. It is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy". Stars Streisand, Mandy Patinkin, and Amy Irving.

“Yentl” was a passion-project for Streisand, and one she worked tirelessly to get made despite objections—from her then boyfriend and partner Jon Peters, from studios reluctant to back “an ethnic period piece with transvestite undertones,” and from Isaac Bashevis Singer himself, who wrote the first screenplay, but then backed out, believing that “Streisand’s age and celebrity would detract from the film.”

Peters also argued that Barbra was too “feminine” to play the role. He changed his mind after Barbra disguised herself and scared him into thinking the house had been broken into by a man. Age was still an issue, so Yentl/Anshul’s age was changed from 16 to 26, and with Singer no longer a part of the project, the script went through numerous rewrites by others, including Elaine May, Jack Rosenthal, and Streisand herself. The script would go through 20 variations before production began.

There was also pressure to make it a musical. But the last thing Streisand wanted was a “Sound of Music” spectacle in which characters ostentatiously break into song. People don’t stop their lives to sing, she argued. And keeping the narrative of a young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to study Torah was her central goal. The songs should not be “musical numbers” but integrated seamlessly in that narrative, and for the most part, the film succeeds at that (except for a jarring ending sequence in which Yentl, on board a ship to the United States, breaks into song like Fanny Brice singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”)

But watch instead what Streisand does in this scene:

It’s my favorite scene in the movie, and not only because the song is lovely. It’s one thing to masquerade as a man; it’s another thing to begin to inhabit the experience of a man, and through that change of location, to appreciate the loveliness of a woman—and one so unlike oneself, whose life is precisely the one Yentl has rejected for herself. Streisand could have made Hadass (Amy Irving) into a caricature of everything it is assumed (incorrectly, as are many notions about feminists) that a feminist would detest: the woman who lives to please a man. But in Streisand’s view here, the problem is not Hadass. (Who wouldn’t fall in love with her?) It’s a social order in which the loveliness of a Hadass is reserved exclusively for men’s pleasure. Which is also a social order in which Yentl doesn’t fit.

Later on in the film, after they are married, Yentl and Hadass do fall in love with each other. And while Hadass believes she has fallen in love with Anshel—a man—Yentl knows very well that the person she has come to love is a woman. “Where is it written?”—a refrain of a song and a theme of the movie—doesn’t just apply to the rules against a woman becoming a scholar. It also applies to a woman loving another woman. Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), too, is drawn to Anshel beyond friendship even though he believes Anshel to be a boy. It confuses him (“Why do you keep grabbing me?” Yentl/Anshul asks him) and he had known the truth, it would have horrified him. But it’s there: the heart goes where it goes, it doesn’t obey “what is written.

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1. For entertaining autobiography of Robert Eveans and even more entertaining screen adaption, see The Kid Stays in the Picture.