Which is Sexier? Written Word or Cinematic Imagery?

Each time a movies based on a book is released, an age-old debate begins. Does the movie do the book justice? Does the cinematic imagery bring the characters to life or will the book eternally outshine the theater production? I happen to believe it depends on which order you experience the story in. Those who read the book before seeing the movie tend to favor the page. Those who fell in love with the movie are often disappointed by the book.

The art of seduction is difficult to capture, in either medium. My favorite book/movie comparison is The Bridges of Madison County. I, for one, loved the movie. I was seduced by its sexy subtleties. The book on the other hand, fell flat. (Although there are some beautiful phrases along the way.) In my opinion, the book was poorly organized and so obviously written by a man. Not everyone can write dual gendered.

But, perhaps I’m only proving my theory since I saw the movie first.

You be the judge. I’m including some excerpts from the book. Watch the movie (specifically the kitchen dance scene) and read these lines (or even better, the entire book). Which moves you more? I’d be interested to know.

The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

He noticed all of her. He could have walked out on this earlier, could still walk. Rationality shrieked at him. “Let it go, Kincaid, get back on the road. Shoot the bridges, go to India. Stop in Bangkok on the way and look up the silk merchant’s daughter who knows every ecstatic secret the old ways can teach. Swim naked with her at dawn in jungle pools and listen to her scream as you turn her inside out at twilight. Let go of this” – the voice was hissing now- “it’s outrunning you.”
But the slow street tango had begun. Somewhere it played; he could hear it, an old accordion. It was far back, or far ahead, he couldn’t be sure. Yet it moved toward him steadily. And the sound of it blurred his criteria and funneled down his alternatives toward unity. Inexorably, it did that, until there was nowhere left to go, except toward Francesca Johnson.
“We could dance, if you like. The music’s pretty good for it,” he said in that serious, shy way of his. Then he quickly tacked on his caveat: “I’m not much of a dancer, but if you’d like to, I can probably handle it in a kitchen.”
Jack scratched at the porch door, wanting in. He could stay out.
Francesca blushed only a little. “Okay. But I don’t dance much, either…anymore. I did as a young girl in Italy, but now it’s just pretty much on New Year’s Eve, and then only a little bit.”
He smiled and put his beer on the counter. She rose, and they moved toward each other. “It’s your Tuesday night dance party from WGN, Chicago,” said the smooth baritone. “We’ll be back after these messages.”
They both laughed. Telephones and commercials. Something there was that kept inserting reality between them. They knew it without saying it.
……………………………………

The music started again. Fortunately for both of them, it was a slow rendition of “Autumn Leaves.”
She felt awkward. So did he. But he took her hand, put an arm around her wais, she moved into him, and the awkwardness vanished. Somehow it worked in an easy kind of way. He moved his arm farther around her waist and pulled her closer.
She could smell him, clean and soaped and warm. A good, fundamental smell of a civilized man who seemed, in some part of himself, aboriginal.
“Nice perfume,” he said, bringing their hands in to lie upon his chest, near his shoulder.”
“Thank you.”
They danced, slowly. Not moving very fast in any direction. She could feel his legs against hers, their stomachs touching occasionally.
The song ended, but he held on to her, hummed the melody that had just played, and they stayed as they were until the next song began. He automatically led her into it, and the dance went on, while locusts complained about the coming of September.
She could feel the muscles of his shoulder through the light cotton shirt. He was real, more real than anything she’d ever known. He bent slightly to put his cheek against hers.
………………………………….

She finally pulled back from him, from where thy stood in the kitchen, and took his hand, leading him toward the stairs, up the stairs, past Carolyn’s room, past Michael’s room, and into her room, turning on a small reading lamp by the bed…She remembered the dream-like sequence of clothes coming off and the two of them naked in bed. She remembered how he held himself just above her and moved his chest slowly against her belly and across her neck, licking her as some fine leopard might do in long grass out on the veld.
He was an animal. A graceful, hard, male animal who did nothing overtly to dominate her yet dominated her completely, in the exact way she wanted that to happen at this moment.
But it was far beyond the physical, though the fact that he could make love for along time without tiring was part of it. Loving him was- it sounded almost trite to her now, given the last two decades – spiritual. It was spiritual, but it wasn’t trite.
In the midst of it, the lovemaking, she had whispered it to him, captured it in one sentence. “Robert, you’re so powerful it’s frightening.” He was powerful physically, but he used his strength carefully. It was or than that, however.
Sex was one thing. In the time since she’d met him, she had settled into the anticipation – the possibility, anyway - of something pleasurable, a breaking with a routine of hammering sameness. She hadn’t counted on his curious power.
It was almost as if he had taken possession of her, in all of her dimensions. That’s what was frightening. She never had doubted at the beginning that one part of her could remain aloof from whatever she and Robert Kincaid did, the part that belonged to her family and life in Madison County.
But he simply took it away, all of it. She should have known when he first stepped out of his truck to ask directions. He had seemed shamanlike then, and her original judgment was correct.
They would make love for an hour, maybe more, then he would pull slowly away and look at her, lighting a cigarette and one for her. Or sometimes he would just lie beside her, always with one hand moving on her body. Then he was inside her again, whispering soft words into her ear as he loved her, kissing her between phrases, between words, his arm around her waist, pulling her into him and him into her.
And she would begin to turn in her mind, breathing heavier, letting him take her where he lived, and he lived in strange, haunted places, far back along the stems of Darwin’s logic.
With her face buried in his neck and her skin against his, she could smell rivers and woodsmoke, could hear steaming trains chuffing out of winter stations in long-ago nighttimes, could see travelers in black robes moving steadily along frozen rivers and through summer meadows, beating their way toward the end of things. The leopard swept over her, again and again and again, like a long prairie wind, and rolling beneath him, she rode on that wind like some temple virgin toward the sweet, compliant fires marking the soft curve of oblivion.
And she murmured, softly, breathlessly, “Oh, Robert…Robert…I am losing myself.”