Posted by Mike Field on May 10, 2016 at 18:28:23 user mikefield.
In Reply to: Re: New S&A Film posted by Peter Hyland on May 09, 2016 at 02:06:32:
"Instead we are going to have the introduction of, wait for it: a "Russian spy" - Gosh, wow, no one has ever thought of that before, have they?"
Enid Blyton did that -- although her spies were German because the book I remember was written in 1940. It was 'The Children of Kidillin', that I was given when I was a kid, and in which were a couple of spies and (in my recollection) a submarine hidden in a sea-cave.
Spy stories are okay, and hers was at least an original work. But why does AR need to be either 'tarted up' or 'dumbed down' with spies for "today's young generation"?
My earlier remarks on bowdlerisation still apply.
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As for the Hitchcock version of 'The Thirty Nine Steps', as Wiki puts it, it is "very loosely based on the 1915 adventure novel". The various versions get looser until they're unrecognisable.... I'd be sorry to see 'Swallows & Amazons' go that way.
I have no knowledge of Buchan's wishing he had used a female in a primary role in 'The Thirty Nine Steps', as Paul suggests. Indeed, he had introduced a woman (Julia Czechenyi) early in the story who could have taken a primary role but who he dropped altogether after the third chapter. So I suspect that story's a furphy. Indeed, I don't recall Buchan's writing any novel that had a woman in a primary role, although there were several that had important secondary roles -- like Janet Raden in 'John Macnab' or even (near the end of the story) Anna Haraldsen in 'The Island of Sheep'. And plenty more in supporting roles of various kinds, of course. He lived in a male-dominated time in a male-dominated world, and his stories reflect this.
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