Christie’s casual racism is now mostly expunged from copies of her work, thankfully.) (In the original book, they were not Indian boys, but ‘n*gg*rs’ – I cannot bring myself to spell the word out. The guests are bemused by this remote location where their hosts are absent, and by the presence of ten figurines that appear to match those in an old nursery rhyme about ten Indian boys who die mysterious deaths. It soon becomes clear that nobody has met the Owens, and the initials of their name spell U.
#AND THEN THERE WERE NONE 1945 PROFESSIONAL#
A few have been offered employment by them, or invited in a professional capacity. Most are invited as guests of the mysterious hosts, the Owens. Ten people are invited to the island under a series of pretexts.
Clearly such a story could not be easily moved to a contemporary setting without some adjustments. In an age of limited technology it is more conceivable to understand how ten people could be trapped for three days with no means of being able to contact the mainland. The action takes place on a remote island off the coast of Cornwall. I will leave out telling you who the murderer is, as that would take out some of the fun of reading it, or watching Clair’s movie. I may as well begin with a quick synopsis of Christie’s original story, as simply telling the story will partly answer those two questions. What is it that makes And Then There Were None such a popular choice for adaptation? And why do so many moviemakers get it so wrong? To understand this, we need to look at Christie’s original book, and René Clair’s 1945 movie, perhaps the only one version that somehow got it right. Naturally this raises questions about Christie’s book. I must also add that almost every version of it has been mediocre at best, while many were downright awful. Of all Agatha Christie’s novels, And Then There Were None is the one that has been filmed the most.
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