(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)Well well, so once again it's time for another edition of "Book Versus Movie," a concept I frankly ripped off from the Onion AV Club, in which I both read a book and see the movie based on that book in the same week, and end up writing mini-reviews of both at the same time. (Don't bother looking for the "Book Versus Movie" archive page, by the way -- you've only missed one other, concerning the Alan Moore comic From Hell.) And today's it's none other than The 39 Steps, with both a book and movie version that I've wanted to get exposed to for a long time now; the 1915 novella, after all, is one of the first spy stories ever written, while the 1935 movie was one of Alfred Hitchcock's first big hits, long before he moved to Hollywood and made the films he's now most known for. (And if this title seems particularly familiar these days, by the way, it's because there's a new comedic stage version of the story playing on Broadway right now, in which four actors play every single part in a gonzo quick-change style.) Just the title alone invokes strange and pleasant emotions to us fans of turn-of-the-century "weird" fiction, of foggy nights and mysterious stairways, and it's a project I've been looking forward to for a long time now.And indeed, let me confess that the novella doesn't disappoint at all, or at least to existing fans of that transitional period of arts history; because that's something important to remember about The 39 Steps as you read it, that much like GK Chesterton or the Futurist art movement, this was penned in a strange twenty-year period in history (1900 to 1920) that fell directly between Romanticism and Modernism, a period that basically bridged these two movements precisely through wild experimentation and the birth of many of our modern artistic "genres." It is a crucial book to read, for example, if you are a fan of mysteries, secret-agent thrillers and the like; it's one of the books that literally defined those genres, a step above and beyond the pulpy "dime novels" that Buchan himself admits in the dedication was a major inspiration behind his own story. (Turns out that he and a friend were both guilty obsessive fans of pulp fiction, and thought it'd be funny to write their own homages; ironically, of course, it's this homage that is now much more known than the pulp stories that inspired it.)The tale of bored young intellectual Richard Hannay, a British South African who has recently moved to London and just hates it, our hero is actually just about to move back home when he is suddenly swept into a world of international intrigue by his next-door neighbor, a paranoid little weasel named Scudder who claims to be an undercover agent of the government, and who has stumbled across a corporate/anarchist conspiracy to assassinate a minor Greek ambassador and thus trigger a global war*. Scudder ends up dying under mysterious circumstances while hiding in Hannay's apartment, leading to him getting framed for murder; and this is just enough of an excuse to get Hannay on the run, leading to the action-based plot that takes him from one side of the UK to the other, into and out of a series of traps, and even the object of a monoplane chase back when hardly any planes actually existed. It's an exciting tale, one with all the usual twists and turns we expect now from the genre, told in a competent style that shakes off the flowery Victorianism that at the time was just ending its dominance of the arts; a thoroughly modern novel, in other words, or I guess I should say "proto-modern," one of the many above-average projects from this transitional period of history to highly influence the mature Modernists who came after.Twenty years later, then, a young Alfred Hitchcock realized what a great story this was as well, and how it so naturally fit the themes that he wanted to tackle in his films in the first place; that led to a movie version in the mid-'30s, which like I said was one of the first really big hits of his career, one of the things that led him to Hollywood a few years later and the films he is now much more known for. I have to admit, though, that I have a low tolerance for movies that are over 50 or 60 years in age, precisely because of all the cheesiness that comes with such films -- the ham-fisted acting, the stilted dialogue, the dated hairdos, the non-existent production values. It takes a pretty special film from this period to still hold my legitimate attention as a contemporary moviegoer (see, for example, my review of Fritz Lang's 1927 Metropolis, which is just so visually stunning you can't help but to still be fascinated by it); and Hitchcock's The 39 Steps is unfortunately just not one of those films, especially considering that huge portions of the original story were rewritten in order to appease a mainstream moviegoing crowd. (In the film version, for example, Hannay is saddled with a wisecracking love interest, something completely absent from the original novella.) It's definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of historical films (and by the way is in the public domain too -- you can watch the whole thing for free if you want over at Google Video); for most of you, however, I recommend simply reading the book, which to this day is still a corker of a tale.Out of 10:Book: 8.3Movie: 7.2, or 8.2 for fans of pre-WWII films*And in fact, since it's such an integral part of the plot, it's important before reading The 39 Steps to understand in general terms what caused World War I in the first place. In fact, I can give it to you in a nutshell: Basically, the way all the royal families of Europe kept the peace throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s was through an ultra-elaborate series of international treaties, with a country for example pledging to go to war on behalf of a friendly neighbor, if that neighbor ends up going to war themselves. The thinking, then, was that no individual country would ever declare war against another one under such circumstances, because of that country basically declaring war against half of Europe by doing so; and sure enough, after the assassination of a member of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914, the retaliation by that empire against the kingdom of Serbia did indeed kick all these complicated treaties into motion, leading eventually to half of Europe fighting the other half of Europe for no particular reason at all, and with a total death toll of 20 million by the time the whole thing was over. The conspiracy behind The 39 Steps relies exactly on such a situation -- the assassination of a minor ambassador, leading to a global war because of all these international treaties -- which is why it's important to understand all this before reading the book.
”I know what it is to feel lonely and helpless and to have the whole world against me, and those are things that no men or women ought to feel.” Richard Hanney in The 39 Steps. In the edition that I read Toby Buchan, grandson of John Buchan, wrote an introduction that was almost an apology. About half way through the book I understood the need for an apology. The book pales in comparison to the movie. The writing is jaunty and for a while sustains the reader, but soon I was searching desperately for the dialogue or the scenes that I loved most about the movie. They are not there. Charles Bennett adapted the novel to the screen and Ian Hay wrote the dialogue. They took a Buchan framework and turned it into an entertaining and exciting movie. I recently rewatched The 39 Steps (1935) during one of the Hitchcock weekends on TCM in September which made me that much more interested in reading the book that inspired the movie. Most of the book is one long chase scene involving motor cars, planes, bicycles, and leg races over hill and dale. There are numerous disguises, car crashes, and one rather large explosion. No overtones of sexual attraction or for that matter... women. It is a boy’s adventure played by a 37 year old man who has made his fortune in Rhodesia and found himself in dire circumstances when he decides to see London. Indulge me while I plug the movie. I had three favorite scenes from the movie that I hoped would be in the book or at least that there would be other memorable scenes that Bennett and Hay decided not to use. None of these scenes are in the book unfortunately. The scene with the farmer’s wife that the writers and Hitchcock managed to convey to the watcher in so brief a span of time how lonely and desperate her life is married to a jealous, older, crusty man with no hope of respite. When the Richard Hanney character played by Robert Donat kisses her as he scrambles out a back door with her husband’s coat and hat I almost cheer every time. That kiss, so easy to give, might be the very thing she needs to sustain herself or to break free. The scene when Richard Hanney has made it to what he feels is a safe haven only to discover that his benefactor is the very man he has been trying to thwart. The reveal of the missing digit on the villain's hand is done so well that I still feel the cold, tightness of suspense grip my heart each time. In the course of the movie Richard Haney ends up cuffed to a hostile female named Pamela played by Madeleine Carroll. They escape from police custody and end up wet and very annoyed with each other in a room over a bar. They have the police and a pair of henchmen looking for them. In the room she sits down to peel her wet stockings off her legs and because he is cuffed to her his hand travels down each leg with her hands. It is one of the most sensual, sexy scenes in movie history and no one is naked. Toby Buchan did provide me with a tidbit of information in the introduction that was interesting. The character of Richard Hanney was based off the exploits of Lord Edmund Ironside, 1st Baron Ironside who had a long distinguished British military career. He commanded forces in WWI and WWII ending his career as a Field Marshal. John Buchan when he was writing this book in 1914 was only aware of Edmund “Tiny” Ironside’s exploits during the Boer War.At the end of the war, he was part of the small force which escorted Jan Smuts to the peace negotiations. He then disguised himself as an Afrikaans-speaking Boer, and took a job as a wagon driver working for the German colonial forces in South West Africa. This intelligence work ended unsuccessfully, however; he was identified, and escaped shortly before being caught. This escapade later led to claims that he was the model for Richard Hannay, a character in the novels of John Buchan; it is interesting to note that Ironside himself enjoyed these novels, reading Mr Standfast in the implausibly romantic setting of the passenger seat of an open-cockpit biplane flying from Iraq to Persia. Wikipedia You can probably guess which one is Edmund “Tiny” Ironside.I prefer my armchair traveling where I can experience escaping captivity or flying in an open-cockpit biplane from Iraq to Persia in the safety of my oversized leather reading chair, but it does make me feel like my life is...well...a bit pedestrian.I must apologize if this doesn’t seem like a book review, but the book can be summed up in a paragraph. I have discovered that I am incapable of writing a review that is that short in length. I am a big fan of the movie and couldn’t help, but share some the reasons why. My advice skip the book and go watch the movie.
What do You think about The 39 Steps (2004)?
Richard Hannay's been feeling bored with his life in London. Reading the paper one morning, Hannay sees something about a politician he admires, and next thing he knows, he's conjured an anti-semite out of thin air to spin yarns in his parlor and tell him there is a plot to kill the admirable politician and launch Britain and Germany into war. Luckily for Hannay, this anti-semite is murdered mysteriously, leaving Hannay looking pretty suspicious, so what can he do but become the author's wish-fu
—Kristopher Kelly
"Contrary to general belief, I was not a murderer, but I had become an unholy liar, a shameless imposter, and a highwayman with a marked taste for expensive motor-cars." Richard Hannay's life is boring. At the beginning of this novel, the hero of this story is "pretty well disgusted with life" and wishes for any kind of excitement to get him out of the humdrum "ditch" he feels he's currently stuck in. Enter a man named Scudder, an American (yay!) journalist, who's gathered a little too much information and staged his own death to get the villains off his back. Unfortunately, the bad guys figure it out and he gets killed off anyway. But not, of course, before leaving Hannay with a vague idea of what's going on and a pocketbook with all his secrets encoded in it. (I gotta admit, I absolutely loved the whole pessimistic, dismal outlook Hannay has in the first chapter. After Scudder dies, he loses a little of this because he's so busy running from the law and trying to catch the bad guys, etc.) Hannay, like all spy/action heroes, is extremely smart. Some of my favorite parts of the story were when he'd change to a new "character." He did it so fast, and so smoothly. He never really disguised himself, just maybe slipped on a different coat, or got a little dirt on his face. There was an observation on acting a part which I thought was rather interesting..."A fool tries to look different: a clever man looks the same and is different." Anyway, it's a nice little novella to read in your spare time. I give it an actual rating of 3.5 stars because it's simply a fun read, nothing deep at all and there's no time for character growth or a feeling of closeness with the characters. All the same, I enjoyed it very much. :) {Pre-read}Saw the movie over a year ago...Forgot about the fact that it was based on a book. But then, I found it at the library this afternoon!Twas a joyous occasion, indeed.
—Hope
I became enchanted with 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' when we did it as a set book at school and since then I have read it a number of times and seen the various film versions with Robert Donat's Hannay being my favourite followed closely by Kenneth More.So having found a copy in a secondhand shop I purchased and began my 39th read (well, not quite) and thankfully it remained as good as ever, if perhaps a little dated by today's standards. But that never worries me!Hannay, fresh from South Africa, is bored in London but then a dramatic turn of events changes his perspective completely. A fellow resident of his block of flats bursts into his apartment and relates an incredible story. Hannay is taken in and when his new flat-mate meets a sad end, he flees up to Scotland.Then, Buchan's familiarity with the Border countries is used to great effect as Hannay tramps around meeting various strange people and escaping from danger from the villains who have discovered his whereabouts. He narrowly escapes with his life before meeting up with someone he could trust and he relates his story.Arrangements are made for him to make his way down south where he was to meet up with the people in power to try to overcome the plot that he has deciphered from a notebook left by his late friend.Time runs short but, at the very last moment, he works out what is happening and, with help from Scotland Yard, the villains are apprehended.No doubt I will read it again some time in the future and I feel it will still have the same appeal for me as it is a classic tale of adventure.
—Gerry
