Watch 70+ Classic Literary Films Free Online: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Gulliver’s Travels, Jane Eyre, and More

The term gaslight has gained so much trac­tion in pop­u­lar dis­course so recent­ly that you’d swear it was coined around 2010. In fact, that par­tic­u­lar usage goes at least as far back as 1938, when British nov­el­ist and play­wright Patrick Hamil­ton wrote a stage thriller about a hus­band who sur­rep­ti­tious­ly rearranges things in the house so as to make his wife believe that she’s gone insane. Gas Light proved enough of a hit to be adapt­ed for the cin­e­ma two years lat­er, with the two words of its title stream­lined into one. You can watch Thorold Dick­in­son’s Gaslight just above, and if you enjoy it, have a look at the rest of the more than 70 lit­er­ary movies col­lect­ed into this playlist from the ver­i­fied YouTube chan­nel Cult Cin­e­ma Clas­sics.

If you know your cin­e­ma his­to­ry, you’ll know that Gaslight was remade in Hol­ly­wood in 1944, direct­ed by George Cukor and star­ring Charles Boy­er, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cot­ten, and Angela Lans­bury. (That ver­sion inspired Steely Dan’s song “Gaslight­ing Abbie,” where I first heard the word myself.)

In those days, the Amer­i­can film indus­try looked to the British one for proven mate­r­i­al — mate­r­i­al the British film indus­try, for its part, had found in lit­er­a­ture. Take the work of a ris­ing young direc­tor called Alfred Hitch­cock, who adapt­ed Charles Ben­net­t’s Black­mail in 1929, John Buchan’s The Thir­ty-Nine Steps in 1935, Joseph Con­rad’s The Secret Agent as Sab­o­tage in 1936, and Daphne du Mau­ri­er’s Jamaica Inn in 1939.

Today, lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion seems to have become a rel­a­tive­ly niche prac­tice in Hol­ly­wood, but in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, it had real cachet: hence the increas­ing ambi­tion of pro­duc­tions like The Scar­let Let­ter (1934), Of Mice and Men 1939, Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ ani­mat­ed Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els (1939), The Snows of Kil­i­man­jaro (1952), and Jane Eyre (1970). Nat­u­ral­ly, these films reflect their own eras as much as they do the autho­r­i­al visions of Hawthorne, Stein­beck, Swift, Hem­ing­way, and Char­lotte Bron­të. Each of these pic­tures offers its own way of regard­ing its source mate­r­i­al. And would it seem so insane to believe that some of them may even have influ­ence still to exert on pop­u­lar cul­ture here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry? Watch the playlist of 70 lit­er­ary films here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Very First Film Adap­ta­tions of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tem­pest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

The First-Ever Film Ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Tale Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

Watch the Trail­er for the Long-Lost First Film Adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by (1926)

When François Truf­faut Made a Film Adap­ta­tion of Ray Bradbury’s Fahren­heit 451 (1966)

Watch the Huge­ly-Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

Watch an 8‑Part Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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