The million dollar bond robbery starts in the book when the famous detective Poirot is reading the newspaper and talking with his friend the Captain Hastings. A piece of news caught the attention of the detective. It is about a million bond robbery. The London and Scottish bank were sending bond to a bank in New York on board the Olympia, when those were stolen. Just in that moment comes a lady to talk with him about it. The lady’s name was Ésmée Farquhar and was the fiancée of Philip Ridgeway. Ridgeway worked at the London and Scottish bank and he was the person in charge of caring the bonds in the travel. She asked the detective to help in the investigation. He agreed. All of them were to meet Mr. Ridgeway for him to tell what had happened in travel. He said that the bonds were in a special box with a unique lock and just three people had the key. Mr. Vavasour, Mr. Shaw (both joint general manager of the bank) and himself. So that Mr. Poirot went to the bank to talk with the other two people. Mr. Vavasour and Mr. Shaw advised him that Mr. McNeil, a detective of Scotland Yard was in charge of the investigation, but they answered the questions anyway. They said that they had the special keys of the box, that Mr. Vavasour himself put the bonds on the box, because his colleague had a severe bronchitis by that time. Then he went to the liner and asked the stewards. They tell him that there was an invalid man with glasses in the very cabin next to the Mr. Ridgeway. In that moment Mr. Poirot had solved the case. Sent a letter with the explanation to Mr. McNeil and met Miss Farquhar to tell her the answer of the case: The bonds in the box were a fake. The real ones were stolen before by the supposedly sick Mr. Shaw who was hidden in the cabin of the Olympia waiting the moment to take the fake bonds and throw them overboard.
Now, the filmic version is certainly different. First of all it begins in a different time, when the bonds have not been stolen yet, and is the very Mr. Vavasour who calls Mr. Poirot to help in an investigation, but in this case the investigation is about who tried to kill Mr. Shaw and if it has something to do with the bonds, because in this version is Mr. Shaw the person in charge of carrying the bonds to New York and Mr. Ridgeway was his replacement in case he could not make it. Other thing different is that in this version there is a character that does not exist in the written story: Miranda Brooks, a glamorous American woman who is travelling in the ship, which in the video is the Queen Mary. She is an important part of the story in this version, changing lot of things from the written form.
Although the essence of the story in both styles is quite similar it is really hard for me to say which the similarities between the book and the video are. I would say for sure that at least Mr. Poirot and his friend the Captain Hastings were the same ones, as well as Mr. Vavasour and Mr. Shaw were. But Philip Ridgeway was not completely as in the book. From my own point of view, in the video he was a cold man caught by the card game, just the opposite of the Ridgeway of the book. But the method of stealing, just the same thing and that I would say it is which makes both stories so similar even they are quite different. The same way of throwing the fake bonds overboard and the presence of the main characters are what allow calling this version an adaptation of the book.
But why do people change the story when they want to film it? I think that there are many reasons. For example if the story is too long and they just cannot put it all in a film, because nobody wants to spend six or seven hour watching a movie. Other reason may be because the story has many difficult parts to represent or just because the story is too complex and it would not be really attractive to the public. Though in this case I think the story was changed because the story was too short and maybe too simple and people decided to make it more attractive to the commercial audience. Well. That was my own thinking. But I also researched just a little bit and I found out that in fact this entire thing begun when Erich Von Stroheim filmed a literal adaptation of Mc Teague in 1924 and the result was over sixteen hour and when he cut the movie to around two hour it had no sense at all.1
Now that I already read the story and watched the video, knowing why they are different and similar, I am able to give my opinion and preference to any of them. First of all I have to say that I really love reading even though Agatha Christie is not one of my favorite writers. It may be just because of it that this story did not attract me that much. Indeed it is not at all a bad story, but it is not of my taste. It is too brief that does not give time to the reader to try guessing who is the guilty. On the contrary, the video version was quite more interesting because it plays with the doubt making you think that Mr. Ridgeway is the guilty even though you read the book and know the answer. So as I never did before (I think) in this case I rather prefer the filmic version than the book, but just in comparing versions, because I will always prefer reading than watching a movie, not because I do not like them, but because reading is a habit we all should have and it help us to learn even indirectly.
1Film adaptation. Wikipedia. (November19th 2011) Recovered from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_adaptation on November 20th 2011
find out other such a stressing thing than writing by obligation having even an amount of words to write. Even more when we have to include our personal opinion of things or personal things like stories, feelings and others. I mean NOBODY should oblige us to write personal things, that is why they have that name.
