We will not compare him with William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Charles Dickens or Stephen King in terms of writers adapted to cinema, but we will discuss the relationship between the English novelist, poet and short story writer. and screenwriter Roald Dahl (1916 -1990) is already very valuable with cinema. The recently released ‘Wonka’ is based on the main character of one of his most defining works, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, released in 1964 and of which two film versions have already been made.
The movie starring Timothée Chalamet, who is waiting for the premiere of the second part of ‘Dune’ while having fun with very funny sketches on the television show ‘Saturday Night Live’, is a prequel to the stories told in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. ‘ This is a hugely appealing topic, given that Hollywood screenwriters, on strike or not, have shown a certain lack of original ideas.
From the disturbingly physique and portable figure of Dahl to some of his stories, we will always remember the extraordinary story of ‘Lamb for Dinner’ (1958), an episode of the third season of the ‘Alfred Hitchcock’ TV series, on the big screen. Presents it with its scenario. A woman kills her husband by hitting him in the head with a leg of lamb she put in the oven. and hosts dinner for police officers who must find incriminating evidence. Almodóvar reproduced it with the traditional ham leg. ‘What have I done to deserve this’ (1984), thus Dahl’s dark and sadistic comedy transcends boundaries.
In those days, Dahl knew how to be a special screenwriter and an ardent storyteller. His relationship with cinema was both strange and thought-provoking. He signed the script for the fifth James Bond film, ‘You Only Live Once’ (1967), and the fantasy family comedy with Sean Connery. ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ (1968), not coincidentally, was an adaptation of another novel by agent 007 creator Ian Flemming. He did his best with foreign materials, far from his own style. He had already done most of his own acting in ‘The Night Undertaker’ (1971), which dealt with the disturbing and unhealthy story between a mature woman and a young gardener, and began to see how cinema interested him in the prolific production of short stories and short stories. kids…or not.
Because what characterizes him most is his approach to the so-called children’s novel, which is always something else in his writing. From 1971 also ‘A world of fantasy’, The first adaptation of the fantastic and fantasy story of young Charlie Bucket and master chocolatier Willy Wonka. A film as suspenseful as it is suspenseful, risky and at the same time satisfying, in Gene Wilder’s interpretation, then a comedian in the ranks of Mel Brooks, there was a ‘Wonka’ that was as perfect and musical as it respected the art. the possibilities of time, the disturbing substrate of Dahl’s original story.
The author’s childhood portraits have always been special; customs, perversions and bad grapes; a postmodern Dickens. Cinema toned them down with titles like ‘Danny, Champion of the World’ (1989), a run-of-the-mill television movie about the relationship between an orphan boy and his widowed father. That is, until the blockbuster ‘The Witches’ Curse’ (1990), which Dahl did not like due to the changes his text underwent, and his novel ‘The Witches’, published in 1983. The writer died six months later. He could not object further due to the premiere of the film.
He was very fond of ‘James and the Giant Peach’ (1996), directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton.Another orphan boy and his friends’ journey with the peach of the title, which is Dahl’s specialty; and especially ‘Matilda’ (1996), whose director Danny De Vito drew great inspiration by bringing Dahl’s most characteristic images to the screen. The rebellion of a girl with certain powers against her school’s sadistic teacher.
This strange world of literature can be carried over into some fantasies in the form of films or literary stories by Burton called ‘The Melancholic Death of the Oyster Boy’. Therefore, it was no surprise that the director of ‘Bitelchús’ took a new approach to the film in 2005. ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ Johnny Depp starring. From Gene Wilder to Chalamet, through an always rebellious and sometimes histrionic Depp with Danny Elfman’s characteristic score, this is a festival of colors and homage to a story that is essentially more morbid than what cinema has to offer. A boy from a poor family who can visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory and perhaps dream of a better world.
Burton made Dahl cool again, just in case the witty author was out of touch. WesAnderson ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ (2009) and became one of its loyal and notable followers. The four short films available to stream on Netflix for a few weeks are ‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’, ‘The Swan’, ‘The Deratizer’ and ‘Poison’, all from 2023. Steven Spielberg adapted it in ‘My Giant Friend’ (2016) – here another orphan girl story about a fantastical being who happens to be a very gentle giant – and it was the object of another cross-cutting and racial reading in ‘The Curse of The Curse’. In ‘Roald Dahl’s Witches’ (2020).
All will not be well in the storyteller’s career. ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ was a bestseller, but a certain Racist look in ‘oompa loompas’ configuration, Wonka workers are inspired by African pygmies. In later editions they were turned into a sort of hippie dwarves, which didn’t quite solve the problem, and they appeared in this colorful and ‘stony’ form in the version with Gene Wilder, while in ‘Wonka’ there is only ‘oompa’ and is played by Hugh Grant.