Monday, September 26, 2005

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

It's years since I last read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but having seen both the Gene Wilder version of the film, and more recently the Johnny Depp version, I thought I'd re-read it again. I particularly wanted to see how much of the book had been retained for Tim Burton's film, since he was quite adamant that his version was a new adaptation of the book, not a re-make of the earlier film. I was pleased to see that quite a lot of the book was in the film, including quite a bit of Roald Dahl's original dialogue (I'd forgotten that Dahl's Wonka berates Mike Teavee for mumbling, just as Johnny Depp's Wonka did), and of course, the original Oompa-Loompa song lyrics, for which Dahl is credited in Burton's film. I was also pleased to see that it had stood the test of time, although the Oompa-Loompa's make me squirm these days, as they never did when I was a child...

The edition I borrowed from the library features Quentin Blake's inimitable illustrations and I note that Amazon.co.uk are offering a 40th Anniversary edition (published last year) of the book, which again features Quentin Blake's illustrations. And for the audiobook fans, there's an audiobook that's narrated by Roald Dahl himself ! Although I don't usually listen to audiobooks, I may see if the library has this one, just out of curiosity to hear Dahl himself narrate the tale.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

Hi Michele:

I LOVED the squirrel scene in the Burton version. It made me realize that my lifelong fear of squirrels must have come from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

And, yes, the Oompa-Loompa business was a bit hard to watch this time round.

Michele said...

I'm sorry to hear of your fear of squirrels ! A friend who saw the film didn't believe that they were real, trained squirrels, despite much insistence on my part !

The problem is that you can't really leave the Oompa-Loompas out no matter how much they make one cringe...