Movies - And Then There Were None

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	Movies - And Then There Were None

The 1945 movie And Then There Were None is one of several film adaptations of Agatha Christie's best-selling mystery novel And Then There Were None concerning several people summoned to an island retreat by a mysterious stranger, only to meet their ends one by one.

Apart from changing certain characters' names, the film is a good companion to the novel and is remniscent of some of Alfred Hitchcock's murder mysteries. Even though its subject-matter is dark, the film is actually quite humorous in places. It was directed by Rene Clair from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols. Its cast featured Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, Roland Young, June Duprez, Mischa Auer, C. Aubrey Smith, Judith Anderson, Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard as the people stranded on the island. The film could arguably be seen as a precursor to the modern slasher film.

Comparison with novel

This adaptation of the novel took, overall, fewer liberties with Christie's plot than some of the other versions. The ending, though, is radically altered. Only the 1987 Russian film version kept the novel's ending. This film, like all the other Western versions, nixed the shooting of Philip Lombard (played by Louis Hayward) and the suicide of Vera Claythorne's character (played by June Duprez) in favour of a much happier Hollywood-ish ending. Interestingly enough, this cannot be seen solely as Hollywood tampering with an ending to the annoyance of the author's original intention. Agatha Christie herself rewrote the ending for the stage. So Dudley Nichols, the screen-writer, cannot be said to have changed Christie's ending, he simply used the play version's ending, though with one major alteration. In the play, Vera thinks she has shot Lombard, after which the murderer appears and attacks her. Lombard, who was only grazed, comes to at the last minute and shoots the murderer as he is about to hang the terrified girl. But the film simply has Vera knowingly fake Lombard's death, then confronting the culprit who commits suicide after revealing his motive and murder techniques, but, all in all, the end result is the same; the two major characters are left alive and innocent of the crimes they were accused of. All other American versions used the ending of the 1945 film rather than the book or the play, however, the 1989 version borrowed a few more details from the play's ending, though it left the killer's voluntary suicide.

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Movies - And Then There Were None

Comparison with novel

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