Throughout the years, we have witnessed how authors of best novels and written stories have transformed their stories to movies or into great films telling them in a similar or a different way. Books usually tell the stories in a “describing way” because of the possibility that words gives us to explain and capture features of places, stuff, environment, smells, frangances, people features etc. And in movies, the image of a scene is important, but no more than the story itself.
The story of “The million Dollar Bond Robbery” by Agatha Christie is about a theft of Scotland and London bank’s money in a liner while is crossing the sea to come to New York to increase the credits in that country. The case is investigated by Mr. Poirot who must to find the person that planned this huge robbery. Everything starts with a conversation between a woman and an important investigator: Mr. Poirot. She goes to visit him with the intention to ask him for help because of her fiancé’s troubles. Her fiance was in charge of the money that was stolen from its package in a trip aboard “The Olympia” so at that time, he was the only one guilty. Nevertheless, the lady was pretty sure that his future husband wasn’t the guilty so she wanted Mr. Poirot to discover the real guilty in this case. Mr. Poirot heard her version and then her fiance’s version to start the investigation. Then he goes to visit every single person involve in this case, any character to talk to him and corroborate his still uncertain theories. To summarize, Mr. Vavasour, the director of “London and Scottish Bank”, as I said before, wanted to increase credits outside the country to reach more area to make business. He and his associate Mr. Shaw put a million dollar bond in a locked package to transport it by a liner: “The Olympia” making responsible to the assistant general manager Mr. Ridgeway (lady’s fiancé) who was the only one that had to carry on the bonds, having the special key to open the package. So in that trip the package was opened and the bonds were stolen. The story ends when Mr. Poirot corroborates the whole story making the pieces complete the puzzle. He discovers that one of the characters within the people in charge of the money was contacted with a guy outside to steal the money before it aboard “The Olympia”. This character was Mr. Shaw who was really close to the director of “London and Scottish Bank” Mr. Vavasour, who contacted a person to receive the money and sell the bonds in New York before “The Olympia” arrived to that country.
There are many differences between the movie and the book, starting with the way it was told. The story in the book is told by Hastings while in the movie is told from outside the story. Besides, the story in the movie suffered some changes with the times within the story. Let me explain myself. The story in the book it is told in past, telling the facts of the theft days ago, and with this, the case must be found out by Mr. Poirot time after. In the movie, the story is in the present and Mr. Poirot must look for the guilty during the stolen is happening. In the video, Mr. Vavasour, the general director of the bank, with his associate Mr. Shaw, calls to Mr. Poirot to avoid the possible robbery they could suffer. They both are in charge to make this trip in the liner called “The Queen Mary” unlike in the written format called “The Olympia” and if one of them has any problem, it would be replaced by Mr. Ridgeway who always show how interested was to make this trip because of his necessity of the money because of his gambling. During the development of the story in the video format, characters like Mr. Ridgeway, give many clues to make the receptor doubt of everybody in the case. But finally everything make sense and the links are evident.
In my opinion, I have always enjoyed both ways of format to tell stories, I mean in movies or in books. But it’s different and in this case it was very well shown. For example my favorite book is called “A place called Here” which is full of description, something that you do not realize when you watch a movie. This fact happens because you focus your attention in the story instead the details of the presentation (environment). Even though sometimes the director or the producer of the movie tries to create a complete image, we need to see the scene repeated times to find details that we usually do not watch at the first time, that’s the reason why people like me likes watching the same movie many times. So in the books you enjoy when you uses words and phrases to create your own image to imagine what is happening with the story and among the characters in there. With the written story of “The million Dollar Bond Robbery” happens the same. The book plays with vocabulary including words in French, and writing dialogues mixed with description, enough to make the story more fun and interesting. But these were not enough in a video so we could see that the story has to be changed. Anyway when I have the option to read or watch a movie with the same story, I have to decide very well because it always happens to me that if I read a book, then the movie is awful for me, but when I only watch the movie, I enjoy it so much anyway. In Agatha Cristie’s story, I liked both ways but if I have to decide which I preferred, I could say that I preferred the video, because I like this kind of acting, it reminds me when I watch movies with my dad any Sunday afternoon and he starts to guess everything. Stories like this one helps me to increase my vocabulary in a funny way, and when it’s about books and stories, I enjoy very much reading them over again.
