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The Observer (30/Nov/2008) - Hitchcock's inventions disappear in BBC's latest version of The 39 Steps

(c) The Observer (30/Nov/2008)

Hitchcock's inventions disappear in BBC's latest version of The 39 Steps

Mr Memory and the missing finger disappear as the BBC returns to the original plot of Buchan's classic

The woman behind a new BBC film adaptation of The Thirty-Nine Steps is braced for complaints this Christmas from fans of previous screen portrayals of the classic adventure. Gone from her version is Mr Memory, the music hall performer cruelly shot as he reveals the secret at the core of the story; gone is the gripping scene on the Forth Bridge; gone is the villain's tell-tale missing finger joint (or rather, it is back); and gone, too, is the hero's death-defying struggle on the clockface of Big Ben.

But screenwriter Lizzie Mickery insists she has done the right thing in going back to the original plot of John Buchan's 1915 novel for her inspiration. 'People ask me, "Where are you going to have your memory man scene?",' said Mickery. 'They think they know the story, but they are not talking about the book, they are talking about the films.'

The writer and actress reassures viewers that many of the key elements that have made this tale popular for more than 90 years will be there in her adaptation, to be broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day with Rupert Penry-Jones, the former star of Spooks, in the lead role of Richard Hannay. 'There is still a steam train chase,' she said. 'And a political hustings, and a scene with a biplane.' The puzzle of the meaning of the '39 steps' is one of the best-known riddles in English fiction, but the actual significance of the title has been lost in a succession of rival screenplays. Each film has put forward a new solution to the mystery.

'In my version Richard Hannay, the hero, has to crack a code,' revealed Mickery, who co-wrote the 2006 television thriller The State Within. 'There is a cypher and he has to find out what it all means while he is running for his life.'

Mickery said she knows many people will be surprised by the exclusion of several incidents, including some in Buchan's book, but she said she has refused to be daunted by the powerful legacy of earlier versions. 'To be honest, I didn't let myself think about it. I was immediately caught up in the story and I just set off,' she said. 'I have added fun and romance, I hope, and a bit of oomph.'

The best-known film version is Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, released in 1935 with Robert Donat as Hannay, our brave, accidental hero. Set in London and the Highlands, the film is still so well-loved that a recent stage show by Patrick Barlow which pokes gentle fun at it has earned rave reviews in both the West End and, now, on Broadway. The central plot gimmick, what Hitchcock would call 'the MacGuffin', is the search for vital defence secrets by German spies, the details of which have been memorised by a music hall act. This provided a cinematic showdown for Hitchcock that Mickery finds rather unconvincing. 'If Mr Memory had all that important information in his head, you would think the spies would have done their best to get him out of the country,' she said.

Hitchcock's film is set between the wars, but Mickery has taken the story back to the run-up to the First World War: 'Buchan wrote this story quickly as an entertainment when he was ill and he was talking about things that were going on at the time, like German spy rings.'

The Scottish author, a future Governor-General of Canada, was recuperating from a duodenal ulcer at a house in Broadstairs where a nearby set of steps, set into the cliff, runs down from the garden to the beach. These are thought to have inspired the title, which in the book refers to the steps down to a quay where the villains' vessel, Ariadne, is waiting to speed them away.

In the 1959 remake, which starred Kenneth More as Hannay, a beautiful spy reveals she is working for British intelligence to expose a group called The Thirty-Nine Steps, an evil gang in possession of top-secret plans for a British ballistic missile project.

In Don Sharp's 1978 version, with Robert Powell as Hannay, a ring of secret agents intend to assassinate the visiting Greek Prime Minister by planting a bomb inside Parliament. The Thirty-Nine Steps refers here to the number of stairs in the clock tower of Big Ben. Hannay realises the bomb is set to go off at 11.45 and manfully struggles to hold back the hands of the clock. Mickery has dispensed with the assassination attempt, which is in Buchan's original, but has kept the ring of German spies.

Love interest comes in the form of Victoria, a suffragette who is 'very spunky and of her time'. Penry-Jones's Hannay is 'superb', Mickery adds. 'He is not a professional spy, like a Bond or a Jason Bourne. The great joy of Hannay is that this is not a path he has chosen.'

Historic Steps

  • The Thirty-Nine Steps, 1915
    John Buchan wrote the book while in Broadstairs. Steps down to the beach gave him his title.
  • The 39 Steps, 1935
    Hitchcock's film stars Robert Donat as Hannay, who is visited by a spy being chased by assassins after uncovering a plot to steal British plans for a silent aircraft engine.
  • The 39 Steps, 1959
    In Ralph Thomas's remake, Kenneth More is thrown into the mystery by the death of a beautiful spy who has told him of an enemy group, The 39 Steps, which has stolen plans for a British missile.
  • The Thirty Nine Steps, 1978
    Starring Robert Powell, Don Sharp's film is set in the run-up to the First World War as foreign agents plan to bomb Parliament and kill a Greek leader.
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