About this book

These poems are inspired by themes of the world’s all-time greatest films or at least films that I love. Any of them might be inconsequential; however, each is each is a line or so in a book of love poems.

The world’s greatest films, in turn, were inspired by great literature:

Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca is based on “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, and the scene of the singing of “La Marseillaise” in the bar is an adaptation of a similar scene from Jean Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion.
Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner is inspired by Miklós László’s 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie.
Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be is adapted from from the story by Melchior Lengyel.
Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night is based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ 1933 short story “Night Bus.”
Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.
Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is based on Lewis R. Foster’s unpublished story “The Gentleman from Montana.”
Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace is based on Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 play of the same name.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story “It Had to Be Murder.”
Hitchcock’s Vertigo is an adaptation of the 1954 novel D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.
George Cukor’s Holiday (1938) is a remake of the pre-Code film directed by Edward H. Griffith (1930), which was adapted from Philip Barry’s 1928 play of the same name.
Cukor’s My Fair Lady is a adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play Pygmalion, which was inspired by the story of Pygmalion in Greek mythology.
Otto Preminger’s Laura is based on Vera Caspary’s 1943 novel of the same name, although the story started as a play called “Ring Twice for Laura.”
John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon was based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel of the same name.
Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was based on B. Traven’s 1927 novel of the same name.
Huston’s The African Queen was based on C. S. Forester’s 1935 novel of the same name.
David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Lean’s Doctor Zhivago is based on Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel of the same name.
Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard is inspired by Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 novel The Loved One.
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashōmon was based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story “In a Grove,” with the title and framing story taken from Akutagawa’s “Rashōmon.”
Kurosawa’s Ikiru was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Ronald Neame’s The Horse’s Mouth was based on Joyce Cary’s 1944 novel of the same name.
Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali is an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 Bengali novel of the same name.
Ray’s Aparajito is an adaptation of the last part of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali and the first part of his followup novel Aparajito.
Ray’s Apur Sansar is based on the second half of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Aparajito.
Ray’s Mahanagar is based on Narendranath Mitra’s short story “Abataranika.”
Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s is based on Truman Capote’s 1958 novella of the same name.
Stanley Donen’s Charade is from Peter Stone and Marc Behm’s script “The Unsuspecting Wife,” which Stone turned it into a novel, retitled Charade.
Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird’s is based on from Harper Lee’s 1960 novel of the same name.

The cover features a photograph of Toshiro Mifune in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

The directors

Here I give credit for these films to their directors, when others—screenwriters, cinematographers, choreographers, composers, and actors—are also responsible for the success of the film. In some cases, the director is also a screenwriter or composes the film score. Full credits are given elsewhere.

I have ordered the directors by their birth and death dates.

Links and shortcuts

In any page, you can click on or touch links to jump around in this book.

Each entry in the contents links to the poem.
The title for a poem links back to the contents, highlighting the entry for the poem.
Words in the headers and footers link to the index, the contents, a listing of books by the author, to this page, and to the previous and next poems in the book.

You may find the following keyboard equivalents to be convenient. Here I use the symbol ⌥ for the option key on Mac/OS or the alt key on Windows, ⇧ for the shift key, and ⏎ for the return (enter) key. Arrow keys are ◄ (left), ► (right), ▲ (up), and ▼ (down).

Keyboard shortcuts for navigating this book
Context	Keys	Jump to / Behavior
cover	⌥ ◄	Books by Tom Sharp
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contents	⇧ ⌥ ▲	cover
	⌥ ▼	select the next item in the contents
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	⌥ ►	open the selected page
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The poet

Tom Sharp is a Native American of Aleut heritage, a member of Seldovia Village Tribe. He is the author of numerous books, including Spectacles: A Sampler of Poems and Prose, Taurean Horn Press (ISBN 0 - 931552 - 10 - 9), a novel, Hans and the Clock (ISBN 979 - 8580172484), The book of science, SciFi (ISBN 979 - 8694935210), Things People Do (ISBN 979 - 8687425568), The book of beliefs (ISBN 979 - 8683553593), The I Ching (ISBN 979 - 8573510620), Images (ISBN 979 - 8577560515), Aleut Artifacts (ISBN 979 - 8575608998), Aleut Words (ISBN 979 - 8582103394), and First Nations (ISBN 979 - 8682924769).

You may email tom/AT/liztomsharp/DOT/-c-o-m-/ to share comments on this work.