A Tale of Two Cities. Poster of the 1935 movie and cover of the 1859 book
VS3
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens, 1859
movie vs book
Jack Conway, Robert Z. Leonard, 1935

The exciting story of Dr. Manette, who escapes the horrors of the infamous Bastille prison in Paris. The action switches between London and Paris on the eve of the revolution where we witness ‘the best of times and the worst of times’ – love, hope, the uncaring French Aristocrats and the terror of a revolutionary citizen’s army intent on exacting revenge.


The Scarlet Letter. Poster of the 1926 movie and cover of the 1850 book
VS3
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
movie vs book
Victor Sjöström, 1926

It is 1667 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and an uneasy truce exists between local Puritans and their neighbors, the Algonquian. Hester Prynne arrives overseas from England and while she waits for her husband she falls for a young minister. Sentenced to wear a scarlet A for adultery, Prynne is ostracized by the public, and a drummer boy is charged to follow her whenever she comes to town.


The Birth of a Nation. Poster of the 1915 movie and cover of the 1905 book, The Clansman
VS3
The Clansman
Thomas Dixon Jr., 1905
movie vs book
D.W. Griffith, 1915

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie’s congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.