Adapting Auntie Mame

 

I read and reviewed Auntie Mame back in September.  I'd meant to watch the film shortly after, but alas life got in the way.  Well I just watched it and skimmed through the book to get my bearings.

The basic plot for book and film is the same:  Patrick Dennis is sent to live with his eccentric Auntie Mame at the tender and impressionable age of ten. Mame promptly enrolls him in an all-naked all-the-time coed school...and he is promptly removed by his much more conservative trustee. From there Patrick's life is turned upside down and inside out by his aunt, who is determined he not turn into some briefcase wielding stuffed shirt.

According to Auntie Mame, nine a.m. is the middle of the night, adopting the accent and habits of any culture makes you of that culture, alcohol is an everyday, all hours necessity, and intellectualism is akin to godliness. According to a review at Powell's, "She was anti-establishment, anti-bourgeois, anti-racist, anti-bad taste, and anti-pretension. She was also pro-youth, pro-sex, pro-tolerance, pro-nudity, and pro-drugs (though her drug of choice was gin)."  That is the Auntie Mame I met and fell in love with while reading Dennis's book.

The Auntie Mame in the film is a bit different.  While still eccentric, Mame is a bit more...sad in the film.  She's not the same carefree, intelligentsia, rebelling against the system.  She's comes across as more flighty and less substantive, partially because the film is missing an obscene number of chapters from the book.  I would hazard a guess that not even half of this book is in the film.  Patrick is practically non-existent - the narrator of the book for heaven's sake - and the events that are portrayed have very little depth.

I think it entirely possible that the reason some of the more "irreverent escapades" are left out is that the book was a bit more liberal than 1950s film would allow. And yet, I think missing these events and conservatizing (new word) the events that were shown diminishes the impact of the book.

That being said, I have read quite a few reviews where the film ranked much higher than the book.  As always, I think the order of experience affects opinion:  If you see the movie first, I think you have a greater chance of enjoying it more than the book, and of course vice versa.  Then again, I pretty much always like the book better than the movie, so it's difficult for me to make any sort of objective claim regarding such things.

For those of you who have neither read, nor seen, Auntie Mame, go get the book now.  You will not be disappointed.

Challenge:  Read the Book, See the Movie