I'm an great admirer of the Raffles books. E W Hornung was a better writer than the more famous Arthur Conan Doyle, his more famous brother in law. The stories were very well constructed,characters well-defined and deserved classics. This is a thin lazy adaptation, combining of several of the stories losing a great deal of what was important. It is though a scene by scene and largely word for word re-make of the superior 1930 Ronald Colman version.
One, and perhaps the, reason for the remake seemed obvious to me. The 1930 version was too steamy and too suggestive for 1939. When Ronald Colman courteously escorts the large and elderly Lady Melrose to her bedroom and wishes her goodnight, Lady Melrose affects to mishear and Colman repeats with great emphasis the finality of NIGHT!. It is made very clear from their expressions that Lady Melrose was hoping Colman would join her. It think it was not perhaps until the 1970s that Hollywood would again dare suggest such a thing. Colman's love interest is clearly passionately besotted with him and would do anything for him. It was realism but of a kind which Hollywood would I think never portray again. Firstly Hayes Code prudery and later the box office obligation to show women as heroic and independent.
The adaptation removes Bunny's connection with Raffles (formerly a junior at Raffles public (fee paying) school and the odd obligations this entailed. Bunny in this version has little purpose. Raffles was the ultimate professional thief and corrupts Bunny and in the process teaches him (and the reader) his philosophy of life and crime. His cricket was a calculated necessary high profile front. Raffles lived alone without a servant - his night time arrivals and departures, often in disguise made that obligatory
As other reviewers have said, Niven makes a good job of his part but only Olivia de Havillands loveliness makes the film at all watchable.
The best screen rendering of the Raffles was a 1975 British TV series - again combining different stories but a seamlessly invisible adaptation. The interiors were those of a wealthy single gentleman of 1890s London - based on gentleman's clubs. Raffles, Bunny and McKenzie were authentically true to the books. It did Hornung honour. BBC Radio has done two versions (at least), first a reading and second a full production complete with distinctive signature tune.
Thanks once again to Talking Pictures TV for screening these famous early Raffles versions. Otherwise I would never have known of them.
