It seems like every year, another literary classic is dusted off for the big screen. Guillermo del Toro didn’t let the fact that Mary Shelley’s monster has featured in 430 other films stop him trying his hand at Frankenstein – his version stars Jacob Elordi and is out in cinemas today – while Emerald Fennell’s sexed-up new take on Wuthering Heights is set for release early next year.
Fans of the novels await the films with baited breath – after all, for every masterpiece, there’s a misstep (I’m still recovering from the directorial liberties taken with Simon Wells’s The Time Machine and Roland Joffé’s The Scarlet Letter).
But when done right, adaptations breathe new life into timeless stories. From disturbing gothic romance to endearing high-school satire, this list of films prove that classics never really age – especially when cinematic flair brings all the love, drama, and horror in two hours or less.
Jane Eyre (2011)
Although I haven’t seen all 23 film adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (with nearly half made as silent movies), I’ve seen my fair share, and it’s Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 version that stands out as one of the finest. Set against the wildly barren Yorkshire moors, it captures both the gothic intensity and quiet restraint of the novel. Mia Wasikowska delivers a luminous Jane, wrought with desperation yet fiercely dignified, while Michael Fassbender brings a conflicted tenderness to Mr Rochester. Though the film compresses Brontë’s sprawling narrative, it remains faithful to the novel’s spirit.
Available on Apple TV+
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
There are few Austen adaptations that Jane herself would likely approve of. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) is certainly one of them, but Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice makes this classic novel as swoon-worthy on screen as it is on the page. Keira Knightley shines as the spirited Elizabeth Bennet, sparring her way through Georgian society’s rules and expectations, while Matthew Macfadyen gives us a brooding, misunderstood Mr Darcy (whose hand flex demonstrates all the feelings his stony exterior can’t always show). With scenes of sweeping fields, grand English estates, and candlelit balls, the romantic tension between the pair builds to one of literature’s most enduring love stories. This breath-taking adaptation proves Austen’s tale of pride, prejudice, and passion will never fail to capture people’s imaginations.
Available on Amazon Prime
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
And for those craving more Austen magic, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility is essential viewing. With a stellar British cast – including Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, and a delightfully awkward, floppy-haired Hugh Grant – the film brings Austen’s world of decorum and heartbreak to life.
Thompson not only stars as the ever-composed Elinor Dashwood but also wrote the screenplay, a feat that took her nearly five years of meticulous work as she pored over the novel to craft the script. Her dedication certainly paid off: the film won six Oscars, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s gorgeously shot, emotionally charged, and surprisingly steamy for its time.
Available on Apple TV
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
While last year’s Nosferatu may be the art-house darling of Dracula adaptations, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the one that truly enthrals. Lavishly gothic, playfully sensual, and delightfully melodramatic, it’s a perfectly cast cinematic feast. Gary Oldman transforms into a pale, wrinkled Count Dracula with unnerving charm, Winona Ryder brings devastating beauty to Mina Harker, while Keanu Reeves adds to the film’s oddball allure as a sweetly out-of-his-depth Jonathan Harker. The film has excellent costumes and grotesque practical effects, making Coppola’s Victorian erotic horror equal parts disturbing and intoxicating.
Available on BBC iPlayer
The Great Gatsby (2013)
If I ever got invited to a Hollywood party, I’d want it to be at Baz Luhrmann’s house, because if his 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby proved anything, it’s that he knows how to throw one hell of a party. His version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic novel drenches Long Island’s Jazz Age in an extravagant amount of glitter, decadent champagne towers, and a soundtrack that fuses 1920s jazz with modern pop. Leonardo DiCaprio embodies Jay Gatsby’s mysterious allure, while Carey Mulligan, shimmering in gold flapper gowns, gives Daisy Buchanan her shallow charm.
Available on Prime Video
Little Women (2019)
Lots of filmmakers have given their take on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, but Greta Gerwig’s 2019 version may be the definitive take. While Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 film (with Winona Ryder’s unforgettable Jo March) long held the crown, Gerwig’s adaptation feels both timeless and refreshingly modern. Saoirse Ronan brings fiery determination to Jo, Florence Pugh adds unexpected depth to Amy, and Timothee Chalamet gives Laurie a tender vulnerability. The award-winning costumes and inventive nonlinear storytelling enrich the tale of sisterhood, ambition, and love. Future remakes will surely come, but they’ll have to work hard to top this one.
Available on Netflix
Lolita (1962)
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita remains one of the most unsettling novels of the 20th century, and bringing it to screen was as bold as writing it. Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation, with a screenplay co-written by Nabokov himself, is the version that endures. Shot in stark black and white, it softens none of the novel’s disturbing themes and relies on implication rather than explicitness to portray Lolita’s pain. Unlike the later 1997 adaptation, which leaned more into the sexualisation of her, Kubrick’s Lolita captures the story’s dark satire, moral unease, and the disturbing charisma of James Mason’s Humbert Humbert.
Available on Prime Video
Clueless (1995)
There have been many takes on Jane Austen’s Emma, the most recent starring Anya Taylor Joy as the lead, but none as iconic (or as endlessly rewatchable) as Clueless. Amy Heckerling’s chick flick comedy reimagines Austen’s matchmaking heroine as Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), a stylish and sweetly shallow Beverly Hills high schooler who meddles in everyone’s love lives… until she realises her own heart belongs to her ex–stepbrother, played by a charming Paul Rudd. With its sharp satire and stylish wardrobe, Clueless is both a sparkling Austen update and a pop culture classic in its own right. It’s as timeless as Emma – just with a lot more plaid.
Available on Paramount+
Great Expectations (2012)
Mike Newell’s Great Expectations may not be the most famous Dickens adaptation, but it has moments of brilliance that make it worth a watch. Among them is Helena Bonham Carter, who chooses to play Miss Havisham as a spoiled and damaged woman rather than a witchy recluse. Ralph Fiennes is equally compelling as Abel Magwitch, introduced in a chilling opening scene in a marsh graveyard. This adaptation leans into the novel’s darker tones of Dickens’s tale of ambition, betrayal, and unrequited love with strong performances and a bleak atmosphere.
Available on Prime Video
Capote (2005)
Bennett Miller’s Capote isn’t so much a straightforward adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood as it is a portrait of the man who wrote the first-ever true crime novel and the toll it took on him. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance captures Capote’s eccentric mannerisms with uncanny precision, while revealing the unsettling empathy he developed for one of the Clutter family killers he was chronicling. A pioneer of the New Journalism era, Capote’s journalistic rigour collides with his fictional writing techniques as well as his morals, all of which Miller tactfully explores.
Available on Prime Video
The Age of Innocence (1993)
Unsurprisingly, the most noteworthy adaptation of The Age of Innocence is Martin Scorsese’s. Based on Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel, the film dives into the suffocating world of Gilded Age New York high society. Despite not depicting any actual bloodshed, Scorsese once called The Age of Innocence his “most violent film” due to the brutal weight of societal expectations that the characters endure. The casting is stellar: Daniel Day-Lewis is Newland Archer, a lawyer torn between duty and desire, Michelle Pfeiffer plays the Countess Ellen Olenska, and Winona Ryder is the perfectly polite May Welland, the idealised 19th-century woman. Scorsese turns repressed passion into devastating cinema.
Available on Prime Video
Wuthering Heights (1939)
1939 is a golden year in Hollywood history. Not only did it give us The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, but also Wuthering Heights – a perfectly framed take on Emily Brontë’s gothic classic. Every shadow, storm, and lingering stare between Heathcliff and Cathy drips with an intoxicating, melancholic tension.
Laurence Olivier, who later credited the film with teaching him how to act on camera, brings a Shakespearean gravitas to Heathcliff with his diction-perfect monologues. Opposite him, Merle Oberon’s headstrong, conflicted Cathy radiates both passion and pain. Yes, it was filmed on a California ranch rather than the Yorkshire moors, and yes, the film misses out 18 chapters of the book, but those quibbles fade away in the face of William Wyler’s atmospheric direction.
Available on Prime Video
