Radio, Film, TV or Theatrical Adaptations
There have been several film versions of the book; all depart substantially from the text, for example introducing a love interest absent from the original novel. For the films, the title is often abbreviated to The 39 Steps, but the full title is more commonly used for the book and for the 1978 adaptation.
An interesting feature of the phrase "the 39 Steps" is that its meaning in each of the film versions is essentially different not only from the book, but also among the various films. In the 1935 film and the 1959 remake, the phrase refers to the clandestine organisation itself; in the book and in the 1978 and 2008 film versions, it does refer to physical steps, but located in different places and with different significance to the plot.
Read more about this topic: The Thirty-Nine Steps
Famous quotes containing the word theatrical:
“A Carpaccio in Venice, la Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of visual or theatrical art that the prestige surrounding them made so alive, that is so invisible, that, if I were to see a Carpaccio in a gallery of the Louvre or la Berma in some play of which I had never heard, I would not have felt the same delicious surprise at finally setting eyes on the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousands of my dreams.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)