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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