Books to Movies: Should the Movie Include All the Tragedy?

The Books to Movies list relies on my second A-Z List. E.M. Forster is on that list. 

I have seen a number of Forster films. The Ivory-Merchant renditions are notable for their lush settings and their overall accuracy to the books.

Foster was a true observer of human nature. The relationships run the range from bohemian to easygoing  to proper, passionate to presumptuous to unrequited. Consequently they can be sad as well as happy. And the sad brings up a film problem:

Is it wise to have ALL the bad stuff in the book happen?

Reputedly during a showing of Hardy's Tess, audience members started to snicker. Granted, Tess is an extreme case. But, in truth, events that in a book may come across as profound or real or simply angsty can begin to feel kinda silly on the screen. How many bad things can happen to one person? Seriously? 

Where Angels Fear to Tread honestly could have done without the dead baby, especially since the end, weirdly enough, is somewhat upbeat.

People do slide from sad to happy, from amused to solemn, and they do it quite rapidly and in response to stimuli, which is why I don't think it is fair to accuse people of murder based on "that person was smiling at the funeral." I think Scott Peterson killed his wife. His demeanor at the vigil, however, was not evidence of anything.

Movies, however, have to convince people of an underlying realism, including fantasy and science-fiction (I've always considered readers of "realism" far more gullible). The experience is only two to three hours after all. Too many emotional peaks and troughs may lead the viewer to think, "Oh, please, give me a break. I'm not playing anymore." I've remarked elsewhere that the number of murders in Christie novels often come across as contrived on film, though they don't on paper.

The Ivory-Merchant versions of A Room with a View and Maurice work, not only because they are more positive than other Forster movies (tragedy can come across as somewhat ham-handed) but because both movies' comedy moments rely on ordinary events being odd in passing. I describe A Room with a View elsewhere as "an elegantly lightweight film." Its lightness is what makes it good--it is consistently just slightly off-kilter, so a mother gets into an argument with her naked son at a swimming pond over a random topic (to hide her embarrassment). 

Maurice is slightly heavier in plot but it escapes the ponderousness of its topic and of other Forster films exactly because of that light touch. The best moments are when encounters are NOT emphasized. They become more memorable precisely for that reason. 

It could possibly help a film from veering too far off the LOOK-AT-US-AND-OUR-DARKNESS cliff edge if one casts Rupert Graves, who can handle tragedy and comedy with equal non-melodramatic panache.