Gryphon 1957 - Adm.monash.edu.au

..When we read the book we marvel a tthis man's foresight in writing down sucha comprehensive history of his people.This is a book which demonstrates thequ alities of the author h imself as well asthe qualities of the people he ha s writtenabout.From the time of An cient Greece wenow come to the days of " Good QueenBess" and the Spanish Armada. CharlesKingsley has depicted these days in hiswonde rf u l book of adventure, " W es t­ward Ho ." We falJow the life of ourhero, Am ya s Leigh, from his home withhis mother in Devon t o the Irish Wars.Thence to the Spanish Main and SouthAmerica - always fighting and raidingwith a purpose - to toke revenge uponthe hated Spanish. This is adventure atits best for these are the " glorious days"Despite the f ilm 's three hours' length,the book's a cti on had to be pruned con ­side ra bly a nd many of the importa nt inofEngland. We are fighting in themwith Amyos to the end, to the t riumph,and all the time we are enj oying it.An adventure sto ry of a d ifferent t ypeis Ion Idriess' book " Light n ing Ridge."The character stud ies, al ong with asmooth, natural st yle , mould the lifestory of the a uthor into a very enjoyablebook. Into the picture of the Australianoutback wh ich he has painted, Idr iesshas woven an informative story on opa lsand opal gouging. This makes the bookvery interesting. Although the a bovethree books are ve ry different from oneto another, they aJI have something tointerest the reader. The first-a history,the second an adventure, and th e thi rdthe lives of a group of people. They areall well worth reading.TREVOR C. MORTON, SA.• Films Made From BooksWhen Count Leo Tolstoy wrote " W arand Peace," he produced one of thegreatest Jiterary heritage s that we possess.It is the story of a family, or morecorrectl y severa l families, whi ch we reca ught up in the train of ev ents kn ownas the Napoleon ic W ar, and in the tragediesand high drama that foll owed inits wake.An imme ns e amount of historical researchwa s put int o t he writing of thenove I and its c ha pte rs a re high lightedby a ccurately de scribed bottles, andscenes su ch a s the burning of Mosc ow,or the retreat of Napoleon's armythrough the snow and ice of a Russ ianWinter. As was to be expected, the filmproducti on of this huge volume mode amagnificent job of the spe ct acles, butthe film in itself was little more t ha n apreci s of the actual sto ry.4 1cidents went completely unrecorded.This is probably the g reatest flow of th efilm, for the actors and actresses wer eamong th e most d ist ingu ished of ourtime and could have been g iven a littl emore sco pe in which to display theirtalents.This is a fault co mmon in almostevery cinema production derived from apopular book, and th ough ine scapable,because of t he t ime limit placed uponth e di rectors, it does tend to mar thefinished fiJm.On the whole I th ink that I would preferto read a book rather than see a filmbased up on the book for , a s in the caseof "War and Peace," much of the colourof the original is Jost in the film production.The kalaedosc opic wh irl of eventsis partly missing, and the ch aracterscannot be as skilfully presented in 0comparatively sho rt film a s in a novelthat took seve ra l yea rs t o write.REX SW ANSON , SA.