[William Cloud Hicklin]

I am afraid that this is like being a little bit pregnant or partly dead. It either is or it is not. Either you can separate the two and treat them differently or you cannot.

A false dichotomy. Palpably false in this case since there is enormous commonality between the two: to wit, the story. To the extent there is commonality, they can be compared.

To attempt to apply the rules, characteristics, and qualities of a book to the cinema - something that is clearly not a book - is indeed anti-cinematic because it denies the essence of what that medium is.

Not so. Your rule applies only to those qualities of film which are different from prose. But so long as both are narrative media there is considerable overlap. The distinction is this: film uses different techiniques, for example, to establish a character than prose fiction does. But nothing about the cinematic art mandates that the character so established be a different character! Similarly, nothing about the different means of telling a story necessitates telling a different story.