What are the similarities and differences between the movie and book versions of Of Mice and Men?

There are two feature length films of Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. One was made in 1939 with Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. It is an excellent adaptation but might not be as appealing to a modern audience as the 1992 version with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. For that reason, I will focus on the 1992 version. 

The plot is basically the same and the most important scenes, the opening scene with George and Lennie camped by the Salinas River, the fight between Curley and Lennie, and the scene with Lennie and Curley's wife in the barn are virtually identical, even down to the dialogue. In fact, the dialogue is exact in many places including the dialect used by the characters.

There are, however, some differences and things that are left out. One major difference is that the story is told as a flashback as George rides on a train. Another big difference is in the portrayal of Curley's wife. There is a hint of attraction between George and Curley's wife which does not exist in the book. There is an added scene with George and Curley's wife alone in the barn. She also seems more vulnerable in an added scene where she cries about Curley breaking her record collection. A major scene which is left out is the beginning of chapter six when Lennie is talking to the imaginary rabbit and his dead Aunt Clara. Obviously, this scene may have proved difficult to film. The ending of that chapter when Curley, Carlson and Slim show up after George has shot Lennie is also gone. 

The actors seem as though they actually walked off the pages of Steinbeck's book. John Malkovich as Lennie and Ray Walston as Candy are particularly excellent and embody all of the characteristics of those men. The director did a great job of making Malkovich look as big as Lennie. There is an added scene, which fits perfectly, showing Lennie loading grain bags on a wagon. There are two such scenes of the men working in the fields which do not detract and are implicit in the text. The setting too is very realistic. Although the movie was not filmed in the Salinas Valley, it was filmed about 200 miles south in the Santa Ynez Valley of California, which, for all intents and purposes, is virtually the same. The bunkhouse too is a good replica down to the card table and "tin-shaded electric light."

There are always differences between original novels and the movies on which are based because of the visual drama required for a screen version. There have been two movies based on Of Mice and Men, the most recent in 1992. The story behind George and Lennie and their efforts to escape homelessness and poverty because "Guys like us... they ain't got nothing to look ahead to" (chapter 1) remains consistent and is an ideal that they can never attain. George must care for the simple-minded Lennie who is a big man but unaware of his physical strength. Lennie feels comforted when the men talk about their dream and the fact that "I got you to look after me..." He wants George to remind him that they are going to have their own place and "live off the fatta the land." Lennie will get to look after the rabbits. The themes generally consider their dream versus their reality, the men's friendship and the trouble that the unchecked Lennie gets into because George is powerless to  make him understand. 

The movie version shows the vast open space and allows the reader to visualize the lives of itinerant farm workers and their almost helpless quest of bettering themselves. It is also quite apparent how hard their work is. The book is more centered on the personal struggle of these two men and how restricted their choices are which adds to George's feelings of being trapped. Some of the additional points about the differences can be seen when, in the book, the men have traveled by bus but in the movie they travel by train. In the book, Lennie's obsession with rabbits leads to hallucinations but there are none in the movie. In the movie, Curley's prowess with a punching bag while his wife looks are is a sign of trouble ahead and gives the viewer an uneasy feeling but this does not take place in the book.

The movie version of the story was released in late 1939 and received favorable reviews. It was mostly faithful to the book, with two notable exceptions. One was that the greater freedom of the motion picture medium allowed the filmmakers to "open up" the story, as they generally do with adaptations. Steinbeck had written the novella with the intention of adapting it into a stage play, which he did in 1937, the same year the book was published. In order to make the adaptation to the stage simple, the author had confined the action to two sets, a bunkhouse and a barn. The only exception was the campsite by the pool in the first and last chapters. This could easily be represented on a stage with a fake campfire and electric lights. Everything that happens outdoors in the novella is only described or represented with sound effects. For instance, Steinbeck describes the clang of horseshoes and the stomping of horses hooves. When Carlson shoots Candy's dog, the men in the bunkhouse hear the sound of one shot outside.

In the movie version, there are many panoramic outdoor scenes showing the beautiful California farmland, the big wagons being pulled by teams of horses, and the crews of men working hard at harvesting barley. Steinbeck would undoubtedly have included such scenes in his novella if he hadn't been thinking of turning his story into a stage play.

The other notable difference between the book and the movie is with Curley's wife. In the book the wife is described as a "kid" and as "jailbait." She is likely only a teenager. Steinbeck made her very young to justify her irresponsible behavior and the fact that Lennie could kill her so easily by shaking her and breaking her neck. We picture her as slender and frail, not fully mature, possibly as young as sixteen. In the movie version the role was played by Betty Field, who was born in 1913 and would have been twenty-six when the picture was made. Her character is a hard-boiled, worldly wise woman.

Steinbeck was a relatively obscure regional writer before Of Mice and Men. He had a spectacular and unanticipated success with that story. It was a successful novel, a successful stage play, and a successful movie. The book has now become an American classic.

What are the differences between the movie and novel versions of Of Mice and Men?

Besides what I have written in the above answer, I would like to add a bit of interesting trivia. In the 1939 version of the story, the character of Curley is played by an actor named Bob Steele. This character frequently appears riding on a beautiful horse and then galloping away. Obviously an expert rider, Bob Steele played in a long list of cowboy films going all the way back to 1930, when he appeared in Oklahoma Cyclone. A viewer who watches the 1939 version of the film on DVD may feel that Bob Steele looks familiar. It turns out that he played the part of Lash Canino in the 1946 film version of The Big Sleep, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Canino was the heavy who killed Harry Jones in Walgreen's office by giving him a glass of whiskey laced with cyanide and was subsequently shot to death by Bogie at Art Huck's garage in Rialito.

I assume you are referring to the 1992 adaptation starring John Malkovich. The major difference between this movie and the novel is that the filmmakers "opened up" the play by showing the vast fields of California with the men and horses working in the sun. This was entirely missing in Steinbeck's 1937 book, apparently because he intended to adapte it into a stage play, which he did. Please refer to the Introduction in the eNotes Study Guide for Of Mice and Men as well as to the media adaptations via the reference links below.

Steinbeck's original novel or novella is very short, consisting of only six chapters. All the settings are indoors except for the opening scene at a riverside campsite and the closing scene at the same place. Most of the play takes place in the bunkhouse, in the barn, or in Crooks' room adjacent to the barn. It seems obvious that Steinbeck was thinking about making it easy to adapt the story for the stage while writing the novella. There is an unusual amount of dialogue and little prose exposition. All important information could be communicated to the theater audience by what the characters say to one another, so the work of adaptation would be easy for Steinbeck and his collaborator George Kaufman.

The 1992 film version of the novella makes up for the absence of the panoramic outdoor scenes which seem to be called for in a story about farm workers. The book mentions horses but only represents them by sounds of stamping hooves and jingling harnesses. The movie shows the big teams of horses which were still in use for pulling agricultural implements in the 1930s but which have since been replaced by all kinds of specialized farm machinery.

Another difference between the novella and the motion picture is to be seen in Curley's wife. Steinbeck makes a great point of her extreme youth in the book. Judging from her revelations to Lennie in the barn, she is only about sixteen years old. But in both the 1939 and the 1992 film versions Curley's wife is played by a much older woman. In the novella several of the characters, including George, refer to the girl with such terms as "the kid" and "jailbait."

Steinbeck probably wanted Curley's wife to be very young because of the reckless way she flirts with the other men, the injudicious way in which she approaches Lennie alone in the barn and gets herself killed, and the apparent fragility of her adolescent body which made it more plausible that she could have her neck broken by being shaken. Curley obviously has a big inferiority complex, which makes it seem plausible that he would choose to marry such a young girl and that he would have such a hard time relating with her. The dreams of glory she expresses to Lennie are those of an immature girl, not a grown woman married to a rancher.

In death:

Curley's wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent an the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young.

Both the 1939 adaptation starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Burgess Meredith and the 1992 adaptation starring John Malkovich use Steinbeck's original dialogue without significant changes. The novella is easy to adapt to stage or screen because Steinbeck planned it that way. Steinbeck apparently chose to make one of the characters retarded so that his friend has to explain everything to him in detail--and be explaining the plot to the audience at the same time.

Of Mice and Men has been adapted for the screen several times. The most recent version appeared in 1992 and was directed by Gary Sinise, who also starred as George. One of the most important changes Sinise made in the film was to include a framing device, whereby the story is told by George, who is sitting in a boxcar and reminiscing at the beginning of the narrative.

The characters of George and Lennie are both significantly changed in the film. Lennie, while he has some form of mental disability, does not suffer from hallucinations in the film. The physical disparity between George and Lennie is also significantly reduced, with George being larger and Lennie smaller than the way they are described in the book.

George also appears as a more cynical and less sympathetic character in the film. Instead of agonizing over the decision to shoot Lennie, he does so immediately and then departs. In the book, he tells Lennie a story before shooting him and shows how powerfully the shooting affected him in the way he talks about it afterward.