Abstract
Choderlos de Laclos's novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been the object of four main cinematic adaptations, all very different from one another or from the source text itself. These films are Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (1959) by Roger Vadim, Dangerous Liaisons (1988) by Stephen Frears, Valmont (1989) by Milos Foreman and Cruel Intentions (1999) by Roger Kumble. All these filmmakers departed from the same text and worked on it, some of them respected the time of the events, others played with the subject but changed the setting (like Vadim and Kumble). Laclos's work is an epistolary novel and we will see in what way it is a challenge to adapt such a novel, how the letters are included and used in the films, the rules dictated by this specific genre. Voyeurism in both novel and adaptations is an important element we shall discuss. Of course, we notice some changes from an adaptation to another, and we will try to point the major ones out in order to compare them.
