Why is there no really great film version of Huckleberry Finn? Here is America's greatest novel, and America's favorite artistic medium.... True, the novel is in first person, making it a bit difficult to adapt, but it's also a very cinematic story; lots of action and humor. Could it be that Americans just think it's a kids book? Or that they're so immature about "the n word"? It should be possible to make a good, serious, adult version of this story in film, given people willing to take the project seriously enough.
Of the three versions available on Netflix, the best by far is the 1974 musical version starring Paul Windfield as Jim and Jeff East as Huck. The singing actually works pretty well, and although the plot gets twisted in places, it ends up working pretty well. The Sherburne speech about lynching, for example, is put into the mouth of the Dolphin. (The other movies just leave it out entirely, along with the killing of Boggs--one of the greatest moments in the novel.) The acting is good, the scenery very good, and the real heart of the story survives. It is by far truer to the book than the others, regardless of the changes. The Sarah Mary Williams scene is especially well done. But the changes are extensive. Tom Sawyer doesn't appear, and is also missing from the other two movies; Of course, nobody's comfortable with the way Twain ended the book, but come on. This movie also is willing to use the word "nigger," which people do find jarring, but for Godsake, it's a story about an escaped slave! You think they'll call him nice names?
The 1960 version starring Eddie Hodges is odd indeed and plays very fast and loose with the plot. But Huck is here presented at the right age, and he's a very good young actor. Really close to how I imagine Huck. But putting in a whole circus scene that's totally made up is a terrible choice. And the ending seems really abrupt. It has some of the heart of the original, but...it should be titled Huck Finn As Dimly Remembered By A Senile Person Who Only Read It In Fifth Grade.
Worst by far is the 1993 Disney version starrng the Hobbit as Huck. The plot is screwed with--the sisters in Jackson's Landing end up saving Jim from being lynched!--but it is actually truer to the book than the other two, in terms of plot. Yet it has absolutely none of the spirit of the book, and Jim, played by the sonar guy from Red October is completely wrong. Jim is a sweet, caring, devoted man who calls Huck "honey." But here he's played like...well, a 20th century idea of how a slave ought to have acted. Everyone's clothes are astonishingly clean for the 1840s; people use awfully polite language, and worst of all is the preachiness. Twain threatened to shoot anyone looking for a moral in this story, and here we have a moral mercilessly drilled into the viewer's head with all that classic Disney subtlety. Avoid this movie if you honor Mark Twain.
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