The first rule is that there are no rules. Anything I might say about or against the derivation of movies from great works of literature is gainsaid by what’s at the top of my all-time-top-ten list, the adaptation of King Lear, by Jean-Luc Godard (and, high on the list that follows it, of younger filmmakers’ greats, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz). And, of course, some of the very best filmmakers, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, have made a lifetime’s work of literary adaptation. That said, the practice—which has burst into the headlines again with the news that Baz Luhrmann’s take on The Great Gatsby has been pushed back from this Christmas to next summer in order to give Luhrmann “more time to finish its extensive 3D effects and a planned all-star soundtrack”—runs on the Catch-22 double curse of fidelity and infidelity.