What does it take for a movie to become more successful and memorable than the book it was adapted from? If the writing duo Boileau-Narcejac's The Living and the Dead is talked about today, it is rarely without a mention of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) (also applies to another great movie based on a Boileau-Narcejac novel, Les Diaboliques [1955]). Where the former's first half meanders tediously and overall never takes flight as a psychological story or a mystery story or whatever it wants to be, the latter is a powerful tale about obsession and has the most gorgeous (and meaningful!) use of color I have ever seen. I could never imagine that I would like the less cynical version more, but it seems that most people on Goodreads disagree with me, so maybe from an objective point of view the book should deserve more attention?