Jim,
I think "Saboteur" and "North By Northwest" are too far from
"The Thirty-Nine Steps" to be considered versions of the same
source material, even if the form of the story is roughly
similar.
Which indirectly leads to the issue of how faithful a movie
should be to the novel on which it's based and from which it
takes its title and characters etc. I gather from your posts
to this list that you feel passionately about this issue in
the case of "The Long Goodbye". I'm on the other side of that
question: I like both the novel and the quite different
Altman movie and I have no problems with the liberties Altman
took. I think the movie maker is entitled to do as he wishes
with the source material.
However, I have to admit that in the case of "The 39 Steps" I
had to watch it a few times before I was able to get past its
differences from the novel. I read the book for the first
time when I was pretty young, and knew it well by the time I
saw the film. I'm a fan of Buchan's stories, with all their
weaknesses and ugly aspects. I think this is the root of my
sense that the novel is "better". The movie, for all its
energy and humour and cleverness, doesn't deliver the
storytelling magic I associate with the book. And the
screwball comedy-type "romantic tension" is utterly alien to
the spirit of Buchan.
So, rather than argue the point in any kind of analytical
way, I'll just leave it at that. For me at bottom I think
it's a matter of my affection for the book, and perhaps
disappointment that the movie is so different. However
inconsistent I'm being. I do also like Hitchcock a lot.
Stephen Burridge On 6/29/07, JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Stephen,
>
> Re your coment below:
>
> "Buchan's 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' is a classic of
its
> kind (not hard-boiled or noir) and I'd say it's
highly
> arguable whether the excellent and quite
different
> Hitchcock film is superior."
>
> I never meant to imply that Buchan's novel was
bad.
> In fact, I quite agree that it's a classic, and
I've
> also enjoyed the other books in the Hannay
series.
>
> Nonetheless, I think Hitchcock's version is a
better
> film than the novel is a novel. Better crafted,
better
> written, wittier, plus it has a romantic
tension
> totally lacking in the book.
>
> I also regard Hitchcock's two uncredited
remakes,
> SABOTEUR (not to be confused with SABOTAGE) and
NORTH
> BY NORTHWEST as superior to Buchan's novel. I
didn't
> include them in this discussion, despite their
clearly
> being loose remakes of THE 39 STEPS, because
they're
> "officially" original screenplays and,
consquently,
> don't credit Buchan as the author of the
source
> material.
>
> I never meant to imply that any of the source books
of
> the films I listed were bad. Just that the films
were
> better.
>
> JIM DOHERTY
>
>
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