Steven Cutts looks at a new wave of on-screen adaptations and asks what, if anything, can the camera do for great works of literature.

It is, perhaps, a sign of our disappointment with modern writing that we so often return to the literature of the past.

Even for new writing, the classics remain the raw material from which so many modern authors build their work.

On screen dramatisations of the classics give film-makers the opportunity to reach a broader, younger audience and if nothing else, the big screen offers us the opportunity to deliver a story to people that might otherwise ignore it.

This year Ralph Fiennes will attempt exactly this with his own directorial debut in Coriolanus.

As Roman tragedies go, the play has long been overshadowed by the Bard’s more popular tragedy, Julius Caesar and even a more literate audience may not be familiar with the plot.

Fiennes himself is that very British film star who has entered the world of movies via theatre and taken his on stage acting skills with him.

Having spent his formative years at the RSC, he became known to Hollywood with a stand out performance in Schindler’s List. As with Shakespeare’s Richard III, as with Fiennes’ SS officer, Coriolanus is both likeable and monstrous.

But to make it in movies, a film-maker has to do more than project a stage play onto the screen.

He must cope with the limited attention spans of cinema going young. Fiennes attempts to achieve this by both editing the text down to 122 minutes and setting his story against the backdrop of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Words that were written 400 years ago must be spoken as if they have only just entered an actor’s mind and for many young thespians, this isn’t an easy thing to do.

In Coriolanus, the cast is able to make this look easy. But Fiennes has done more than deliver rationalised dialogue, injecting a level of action that can only be inferred on the stage.

In the former Yugoslavia, where warring factions wear camouflaged jackets and carry assault rifles.

In an age when screenwriters seem to compete to dumb down their dialogue, selling Shakespeare to the masses is going against the grain.