With Dominic Brigstocke's Horrible Histories: The Movie doing the rounds off the back of the bestselling books by Terry Deary, Cinema Paradiso presents a special three-part holiday survey of the best films to have been made from children's books. We start by recalling those rousing adventures and magical fantasies that have had younger viewers (as well as a fair few older ones) perched on the edge of their seats.
Until the early 18th century, the majority of educated children had to make do with reading bible stories and the myths contained in such classical texts as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid. The might also have perused the fables written by Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine or the Arabian folk stories collected in One Thousand and One Nights, which predated the popular fairytales written by the likes of Charles Perrault, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. These would all have been more fun than such works of piety and self-improvement as James Janeway's A Token For Children (1671-72), whose subtitle, 'An Exact Account of the Conversion, Holy and Exemplary Lives and Joyful Deaths of Several Young Children', suggests why this hasn't yet been adapted for the silver screen.
But things began to improve for young readers when John Newbery started publishing such volumes as A Little Pretty Pocket-Book Intended For the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly (c.1744) and The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes (1765), which some believe was written by the renowned Irish author, Oliver Goldsmith. Moreover, the birth of the novel gave children the chance to dip into tomes intended for their elders and, as we shall see, many of these early offerings have remained firm favourites, thanks, in some cases to the film of the book.
Desert Islands and Derring-Do
Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel, Robinson Crusoe, was written for adults and based on the exploits of Scottish castaway, Alexander Selkirk. Indeed, with the notable exception of Jean Sacha's The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1964-65), a dubbed 13-part serial that became a summer holiday staple on the BBC in the days before colour television, the majority of the screen adaptations have not been intended for matinee entertainment, including Luis Buñuel's Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1954), Byron Haskin's futuristic Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) and Jack Gold's Man Friday (1975), which placed as much emphasis on Richard Roundtree as Peter O'Toole. And, if you're wondering why we've not mentioned Vincent Kesteloot's Robinson Crusoe (2016), we're trying to focus on live-action rather than animated fare.
The inspiration was pretty clear for Johann David Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson (1814), which was first filmed at feature length by Edward Ludwig in 1940. Walt Disney produced a celebrated live-action adaptation in 1960, which was directed by Ken Annakin and starred John Mills and Dorothy Maguire as William and Elizabeth Robinson, who are stranded on an island with their sons, Fritz (James MacArthur), Ernst (Tommy Kirk) and Francis (Kevin Corcoran) after being swept away by a hurricane while fleeing pirates on their voyage to New Guinea.
Another Robinsonade, RM Ballantine's The Coral Island (1858), had a considerable impact upon William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), a dystopian tale of castaway schoolboys that was compellingly filmed in bleak black and white by Peter Brook in 1963 and again in scorching colour by Harry Hook in 1990. Plans to produce an all-female adaptation were abandoned in 2017, although Luca Guadagnino has recently been linked with an updated version.
Like many of his peers, Sir Walter Scott didn't write specifically for children, but a number of his novels became firm favourites with young readers. Among them was Ivanhoe (1819), which centred around the fraternal feud between Richard the Lionheart and Prince John and featured a cameo appearance by Robin Hood. Originally filmed in 1911 and most memorably by Richard Thorpe in 1952, this exciting tale of chivalry and romance has periodically been reworked for television. Eric Flynn took the role of returning crusader Wilfred of Ivanhoe against Anthony Bate's villainous Brian de Bois-Guilbert in the BBC's 12-part 1970 serial, while Anthony Andrews and Sam Neil faced off in Douglas Camfield's 1982 TV-movie, which also starred James Mason as Isaac of York, Olivia Hussey as Rebecca and Lysette Anthony as Lady Rowena. In Stuart Orme's 1997 BBC six-parter, Steven Waddington crossed swords with Ciarán Hands in an adaptation that made shrewd comparisons between 12th century England and contemporary Britain.
American James Fenimore Cooper was another author who appealed to children despite writing primarily for grown-ups. By far his most popular book was The Last of the Mohicans (1826), which was the second title in the Leatherstocking series about Natty Bumppo, a 1750s frontiersman who was nicknamed 'Hawkeye'. James Cruze directed the first film version in 1912 and several more followed before John Hart and Lon Chaney, Jr. played Nat 'Hawkeye' Cutler and Chingachgook in the 39-episode TV series, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957). Far more faithful to the text was David Maloney's 1971 BBC serialisation, which featured standout performances by Philip Madoc as Magua and Richard Warwick as Uncas. Such casting would be frowned upon today, however, and Michael Mann selected Russell Means, Wes Studi and Eric Schweig to play Chingachgook, Magua and Uncas opposite Daniel Day-Lewis's Hawkeye in his 1992 rendition, which won an Oscar for its sound.
When it comes to swashbuckling, few tomes have proved more popular than Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers (1844), which has been adapted almost 40 times since first coming to the screen in 1903. The most famous silent version was directed by Fred Niblo in 1921, with Douglas Fairbanks as D'Artagnan, a role that passed to the equally athletic Gene Kelly in George Sidney's lively 1948 retelling. The earliest version available to rent is the BBCs black-and-white series, The Further Adventures of the Musketeers (1967), which is worth catching to see Brian Blessed's Porthos hook up with John Woodvine's Aramis, Jeremy Young's Athos and Joss Ackland's D'Artagnan.
But it was Richard Lester who caught the audience imagination by adding a dash of devilment to the derring-do in The Three Musketeers (1973), as Michael York's D'Artagnan is aided by Oliver Reed's Athos, Richard Chamberlain's Aramis and Frank Finlay's Porthos to confound Charlton Heston's Cardinal Richelieu. Christopher Lee took over the villainous duties in cahoots with Faye Dunaway, as Rochefort and Milady De Winter plot to kidnap the Queen's go-between, Constance (Raquel Welch) in The Four Musketeers (1974).
Disney tapped into the same vein for Steven Herek's The Three Musketeers (1993), which pitted Chris O'Donnell's D'Artagnan against Tim Curry's Richelieu and Rebecca De Mornay's Milady. Fortunately, he could call on Charlie Sheen's Aramis, Kiefer Sutherland's Athos and Oliver Piatt's Porthos and there's more all for one and one for alling as Paul W.S. Anderson goes all 3D in The Three Musketeers (2011) in pitting D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman), Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans) and Porthos (Ray Stevenson) against Richelieu (Christoph Waltz), Milady (Milla Jovovich) and the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom) in a race to get hold of the plans for Leonardo Da Vinci's airship.
Spin-offs include Cole McKay's futuristic US-set The Three Musketeers (2011) and the BBC's The Musketeers (2014-16), which switched the action to England in the 1630s. And, of course, there's Dumas's own The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847-50), which has been filmed several times since 1909 under the title The Man in the Iron Mask. Richard Chamberlain doubles up in Mike Newell's 1977 retelling, which co-starred Louis Jourdan as D'Artagnan, while Leonardo DiCaprio was cast as the separated siblings in Randall Wallace's muscular 1998 romp, which brought together Jeremy Irons as Aramis, John Malkovich as Athos, Gerard Depardieu as Porthos and Gabriel Byrne as D'Artagnan.
Staying with Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-46) chronicles the efforts of sailor Edmond Dantès to escape after 18 years of false imprisonment and find the treasure bequeathed to him by his dungeon companion on the island fortress of Château d'If. First filmed in 1908, this famous yarn has since been adapted over 20 times, with Cinema Paradiso offering all 39 episodes of the 1956 TV series starring George Dolenz and the 12-part 1964 BBC serial, with Alan Badel as Dantès. The role fell to Gérard Depardieu in Josée Dayan's six-hour 1998 French tele-version, while Jim Caviezel vows vengeance on Guy Pearce after his treachery lands him behind bars in Kevin Reynolds's 2002 big-screen swashbuckler. Also available is Rowland V. Lee's The Son of Monte Cristo (1940), with Louis Hayward seeking to help Joan Bennett regain the throne of Lichtenburg that has been usurped by the hissable George Sanders.
The Changing Face of Adventure
As one of the pioneers of the genre we now know as science fiction, Jules Verne demonstrates the brilliance of his imagination in Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864). Henry Levin's 1959 adaptation will have you nibbling your nails, as you follow Professor Oliver Lindenbrook (James Mason) from 1880s Edinburgh to the core of the planet after he descends into an Icelandic volcano to discover why a rock sample contains an engraved plumb-line that was used almost 300 years earlier by explorer Arne Saknussemm. Kenneth More played Professor Otto Lindenbrook following a curious map in Juan Piquer Simon's 1977 version, which is also known as Where Time Began, while Brendan Fraser's Trevor Anderson is prompted to search for his missing brother when an annotated copy of Verne's novel is found near to the volcano where he disappeared in Eric Brewig's 3D adventure, Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008).
One of Verne's lesser-known works, Captain Grant's Children (1868), provides the inspiration for Disney's In Search of the Castaways (1962), which was directed by Robert Stevenson, who will become a familiar name during the course of Cinema Paradiso's survey. A message in a bottle sparks the story, as Professor Paganel (Maurice Chevalier) invites Mary (Hayley Mills) and Robert Grant (Keith Hamshere) to join him on an expedition to tind their missing father. Published in 1870, Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea has inspired over a dozen film versions since Georges Méliès made Under the Sea in 1907. The most durable was directed by Richard Fleischer for Disney in 1954 and pitted harpooner Ned Land (Kirk Douglas) against Captain Nemo (James Mason) during a tense journey aboard the Nautilus submarine to find a sea monster threatening shipping in the Pacific Ocean.
Very much set in what was then the present day, Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1873) was first adapted by Ralph Ince in 1914, with Conrad Veidt becoming the first credited Phileas Fogg in a German version five years later. The story of an audacious wager didn't resurface until Michael Anderson won the Academy Award for Best Picture with his all-star 1956 retelling, which was filmed on Todd-AO 70mm Technicolor stock and starred David Niven as Fogg and Mexican comedian Cantinflas as his manservant, Passepartout. Former Python Eric Idle took over the latter role opposite future Bond Pierce Brosnan in Buzz Kulik's 1989 mini-series, while Jackie Chan assisted Steve Coogan in Frank Coraci's 2004 remake, which recast Fogg as an eccentric boffin out to prove the efficacy of his inventions.
Although there has never been a film version of Captain Frederick Marryat's The Children of the New Forest (1874), the BBC has adapted it on four occasions. In 1998, director Andrew Morgan and his writers took a few liberties, as fanatical Roundhead Abel Corbould (Craig Kelly) seeks out the Beverly children who are left orphaned when their Cavalier father is killed during the English Civil War. But even those unfamiliar with the story will still want to seek out the original book.
By contrast, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) is one of the most adapted volumes in film history. Since Sidney Franklin cast Violet Radcliffe as Long John Silver in his 1918 silent adaptation, there have been 20 variations on the story. But the most beloved take paired Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll in Byron Haskin's 1950 adventure, which was Disney's first fully live-action feature.
Such was its success that Newton reprised the role of Long John Silver opposite Kit Taylor's Jim in Return to Treasure Island (1954). The inimitable Orson Welles essayed the roguish pirate in Andrea Bianchi and John Hough's 1972 rendering, while the same year saw Boris Andreyev take the role in Yevgeni Fridman's Soviet interpretation. Five years later, Alfred Burke stepped into the breach for a 1977 BBC serial, while Tim Curry shivered the timbers alongside Kermit's Captain Abraham Smollett, Fozzie Bear's Squire Trelawney and Miss Piggy's Benjamina Gunn in Brian Henson's Muppet Treasure Island (1996). Jack Palance did his best to follow that as Silver in Peter Rowe's 1999 version, while Lance Henriksen and Eddie Izzard have since sought to splice the mainbrace in Leigh Scott's Pirates of Treasure Island (2006) and Steve Barron's Treasure Island (2012).
Stepping into territory more usually associated with Sir Walter Scott, Stevenson's Kidnapped (1886) is set against the backdrop of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion and has been reworked for the screen on nine occasions since Alan Crosland's 1917 silent version. Warner Baxter played Alan Breck helping Freddie Bartholomew's abducted David Balfour in the 1938 retelling, with the roles passing to Peter Finch and James MacArthur in Robert Stevenson's typically accomplished 1960 Disney adaptation. Michael Caine and Lawrence Douglas took over for Delbert Mann's 1971 variation on the yarn, while Iain Glen and James Anthony Pearson were paired in Brendan Maher's three-part BBC serial in 2005.
The '45 also featured heavily in The Master of Ballantrae (1889), which was filmed by William Keighley in 1953. Errol Flynn and Anthony Steele were paired as Scottish brothers Jamie and Henry Durie who flip a coin to see who fights for Bonnie Prince Charlie and who for George II at the Battle of Culloden in order to keep hold of the family's Durrisdeer estate. And there's more civil conflict, albeit of a medieval kind, in The Black Arrow (1888), was first filmed in 1911. But it's the six-part ITV series from 1972 that is available from Cinema Paradiso and stars Simon Cuff as Richard Shelton, who masquerades as a secret avenger during the War of the Roses between the Lancastrian and Yorkist claimants to the English throne.
Ne'er the Twain
Samuel Clemens came up with the nom de plume Mark Twain while working as a Mississippi riverboat pilot and his experiences inform both The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which are regarded as two of the cornerstones of American literature. Filmed in Technicolor, Norman Taurog's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) stars Tommy Kelly in the title role and Jackie Moran as Huckleberry Finn, as they pretend to be pirates on the Mississippi River. The role of Huck passed to Patrick Day in Peter H. Hunt's 1985 retelling, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which co-starred Eugene Oakes as Tom Sawyer.
When Disney took a tilt at the story, Elijah Wood was cast in Stephen Sommers's The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993), which also featured Courtney B. Vance as Jim the escaped slave and Jason Robards and Robbie Coltrane as the scurrilous con men, The King and The Duke. Showcasing his talent as a humorist, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) has also been filmed several times, with Bing Crosby playing a blacksmith who finds his way to Camelot in Tay Garnett's 1949 musical version, A Connecticut Yankee, while Keshia Knight Pulliam falls off her horse and lands in 528 in Mel Damski's centennial reworking, which uses the novel's full title.
The first English adventure novel to be set in Africa, Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1886) has come to seem dated in our post-colonial times. But it has been filmed on numerous occasions, with director Robert Stevenson pairing Cedric Hardwicke and Paul Robeson as adventurer Allan Quartermain and chieftain's son, Umbopa, in an epic search for a fabulous diamond mine. This 1937 monochrome version is available to rent on The Paul Robeson Collection.
When Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton returned to the story in 1950, they shifted the emphasis on to the romance that develops between Stewart Granger's Quartermain and Deborah Kerr's Elizabeth Curtis when they venture into the wilderness to find her missing husband. Sharon Stone's Jessie Huston hires Richard Chamberlain's Quartermain to locate her lost father in J. Lee Thompson's 1985 version, which places more emphasis on the screwball banter between the leads. But the mood is more sombre, as Patrick Swayze leads the expedition to track down the father of Elizabeth Maitland (Alison Doody) in Steve Boyum's 2004 teleplay.
Chamberlain and Stone reprised their roles in Gary Nelson's Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986), while Quartermain also formed part of the cabal assembled by authors Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill for a bestselling graphic novel series (1999-). Sean Connery took the role in Stephen Norrington's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), but it failed to fire the audience's imagination. Give it a try and see what you think.
King Solomon's Mines inspired numerous 'lost civilisation' novels, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912), which was first filmed by Harry D. Hoyt in 1925, with Wallace Beery as the intrepid Professor Challenger heading into the Amazonian jungle to find a lost explorer. However, the human cast was overshadowed by the magnificent stop-motion dinosaurs created by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, which also surpassed the creatures devised for Timothy Bond's 1992 remake with John Rhys Davies and Stuart Orme's 2001 BBC serial, with Bob Hoskins.
Although Fritz Lang made a fine job of adapting J. Meade Faulkner's Moonfleet (1898) in 1955, the version available for rent was directed in two parts by Andy De Emmony in 2013. It stars Aneurin Barnard as John Trenchard, who is torn between a life of crime with 1750s Dorset smuggler Elzevir Block (Ray Winstone) and a romance with Grace (Sophie Cookson), whose father, Mohune (Ben Chaplin), just happens to be the local magistrate.
Once Upon a Long Ago
Not every children's book set in the past turned around swashbuckling action. Inspired by the reforming strategems of Dr Thomas Arnold at Rugby School, Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) has influenced just about every subsequent boarding school story, including those involving junior wizards. First filmed in 1916, it was adapted by Robert Stevenson in 1940, with child star Freddie Bartholomew in the title role, alongside Cedric Hardwicke as Dr Arnold and Billy Halop as the bullying Flashman. Following his performance in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948), John Howard Davies took over the lead in Gordon Parry's 1951 version, which saw Robert Newton excel as the benevolent Arnold.
However, both Anthony Murphy and Iain Cuthbertson were upstaged by Richard Morant's Flashman in the BBC's Emmy-winning 1971 serial, which prompted Michael Palin and Terry Jones to launch the Ripping Yarns series (1976-79) with Tomkinson's Schooldays, with Ian Ogilvie as the sadistically decadent School Bully. In 2005, Stephen Fry restored a modicum of dignity as Dr Arnold in Dave Moore's feature interpretation, which saw Alex Pettyfer play Tom Brown alongside Joseph Beattie's Flashman.
Another book with a philanthropic purpose, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863) was published to draw attention to the plight of working children in Victorian Britain, although the social message is somewhat toned down in Lionel Jeffries's innovative 1978 retelling, which starts out as a live-action drama, as 12 year-old chimney sweep, Tom (Tommy Pender), is duped into helping Mr Grimes (James Mason) and his sidekick, Masterman (Bernard Cribbins), commit a robbery. Once Tom and his pet dog Toby jump into a river to evade capture, however, the action becomes animated and the boy has to help his new fishy friends confound a killer shark and his eel henchman (who are also voiced by Mason and Cribbins).
In essaying Albert Perks, the porter at Oakworth Station, Bernard Cribbins also played a significant part in Lionel Jeffries's 1970 feature adaptation of Edith Nesbit's The Railway Children (1906), which saw Jenny Agutter reprise the role of Roberta that she had taken in eight episodes alongside Gillian Bailey's Phyllis and Neil McDermott's Peter in the Julia Smith's much-feted 1968 serialisation (which was the BBC's third take on the tale). In the film version, however, the family name is Waterbury rather than Faraday and Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren played the siblings accompanying their writer mother (Dinah Sheridan) to Edwardian Yorkshire after their father (Iain Cuthbertson) is mysteriously taken away from their London home. Such is Agutter's association with the story that, when Caroline Morshead returned to Three Chimneys for a 2000 teleplay, Agutter played the mother to Bobbie (Jemima Rooper), Phyllis (Claire Thomas) and Peter (Jack Blumenau). However, she had no connection to Ross MacGibbon's 2016 adaptation, which was filmed at the National Railway Museum to bring a whiff of authentic steam to the acclaimed stage production by the York Theatre Royal company.
Katharine Hepburn was famously suspended when she refused to star in a 1938 screen version of Kate Douglas Wiggin Mother Carey's Chickens (1911). The role of Nancy Carey eventually went to Anne Shirley and it was taken up by Haley Mills in James Neilson's Summer Magic (1963), as widow Margaret Carey (Dorothy McGuire) is forced to leave Boston with her three children to move into a new house in Beulah, Maine. Published a decade later, Dodie Smith's 1948 novel I Capture the Castle was adapted by Tim Fywell in 2003 to tell the story of 17 year-old Cassandra Mortmain (Romola Garai), whose idyllic, if impecunious existence in a rundown English castle in the 1930s is threatened by the arrival of its American owners.
Harking back to Ancient Briton, Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth (1954) was reworked as The Eagle (2011) by Kevin Macdonald to send Roman centurion Marcus Aquila (Channing Tatum) on a mission across Hadrian's Wall into Caledonia with British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) to discover the fate of his disgraced father's legion. The scene shifts to a manor house dating back to the Norman Conquest in Colin Cant's BBC 1976 serialisation of The Children of Green Knowe, which was adapted from the first of the six novels written between 1954-76 by Lucy M. Boston.
Sent to spend Christmas with his great-grandmother (Daphne Oxenford), Tolly (Alec Christie) gets to learn about his Oldknow ancestors and doesn't initially realise that playmates Toby (Graham McGrath), Alexander (James Trevelyan) and Linnet (Polly Maberly) lived during the reign of Charles II. Stately homes clearly appeal to Julian Fellowes, who found time to direct From Time to Time (2009) between writing Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001) and the hit ITV series, Downton Abbey (2010-16). Based on the second of Boston's novels, The Chimneys of Green Knowe, the story of the Regency friendship between the blind Susan Oldknow (Eliza Bennett) and the family's black servant, Jacob (Kwayedza Kureya), is told to Tolly (Alex Etel) during a wartime visit to his grandmother (Maggie Smith).
When Nina Bawden published Carrie's War in 1973, many of the parents who would have read it with their children would have been evacuated from Britain's major cities to avoid Luftwaffe bombing raids during the Second World War. The award-winning story has twice been adapted by the BBC, with Juliet Waley and Andrew Tinney from 1974 being succeeded in 2003 by Keeley Fawcett and Jack Stanley, as London siblings Carrie and Nick Willow, who are billeted in a small town in rural Wales with the strict Mr Evans and his sister, who have some delightfully eccentric neighbours. Michelle Magorian explored similar themes in Goodnight Mister Tom (1981), which was adapted by ITV in 1998 and starred John Thaw as Tom Oakley, an embittered widowed recluse living in the village of Little Weirwold, who is ordered to take in traumatised nine year-old William Beech (Nick Robinson) after he is evacuated from Deptford in September 1939.
Set around the same period, but in Nazi Germany, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (2005) was filmed by Brian Percival, with Sophie Nelisse as the young girl adopted by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson who befriends Ben Schnetzer, a fugitive Jewish boy who desperately needs somewhere to hide. John Boyne explored similar themes in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006), which was adapted by Mark Herman in 2008, with Asa Butterfield playing the eight year-old German who is relocated to occupied Poland with his family and makes friends with Jack Scanlon through the barbed wire fence of what he is too young to realise is a concentration camp.
Switching the scene to 1930s France, the early days of the moving image are exquisitely recalled in Hugo (2011), Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007), which sees a young French boy (Asa Butterfield) discover that the man who runs the toy stall on the concourse at the Gare Montparnasse is none other than pioneering director, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley). As is revealed in Jacques Meny's Méliès the Magician (1997), the master of the trick film had ceased production by the time Europe was plunged into darkness in 1914. There's more than a hint of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty (1877) about Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (1982), which was adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2011 to follow a Devonian bay Thoroughbred named Joey through several owners before he is reunited with Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine), the farmer's son who had trained him, on the Western Front during the Second Battle of the Somme in 1918.
Coming Up to Date
Written before the Great War, Frenchman Louis Pergaud's La Guerre des boutons (1912) remains relevant a century later. It first came to the screen through the auspices of producer David Puttnam and his Chariots of Fire (1981) screenwriter Colin Welland as War of the Buttons (1984), which director John Roberts relocated to 1960s Ireland to focus on the feud between the boys from the neighbouring villages of Carrickdowse and Ballydowse.
Boasting Billy Wilder and an uncredited Emeric Pressburger as its screenwriters, Gerhard Lamprecht's 1931 adaptation of Eric Kästner's Emil and the Detectives (1929) is vastly superior to Peter Tewkesbury's 1964 Disney version. Released by the BFI, the German original centres on the efforts of 10 year-old Emil Tischbein (Rolf Wenkhaus) to recover the money that is stolen from him by a man named Grundeis (Fritz Rasp), who had given him a piece of drugged chocolate on the train from Neustadt to Berlin. Also demonstrating the power of teamwork, Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons (1930) was adapted by Claude Whatham in 1974, with Virginia McKenna playing the mother whose four children have adventures with two mettlesome girls in the 1920s Lake District. Kelly Macdonald took over the role for Philippa Lowthorpe's 2016 remake, which moved the action forward to 1935 so that the Walker and the Blackett children could have a brush with a sinister secret agent.
The same spirit courses through Enid Blyton's Five on a Treasure Island (1942), which was the first of 21 novels featuring four adventure-seeking children and their faithful dog, Timmy. Blyton was played by Helena Bonham Carter in James Hawes's BBC biopic, Enid (2009), which reveals how she initially struggled to find a publisher for her writing. By the time Gerald Landau serialised Five on a Treasure Island for the Children's Film Foundation in 1957, however, Blyton was one of the country's most prolific authors. Daga plays the canine companion as Julian (Richard Palmer), Anne (Gillian Harrison), Dick (John Bailey) and their cousin George (Rel Grainer) discover a shipwreck during their summer holidays. Unfortunately, the actors were too old to reprise their roles in Ernst Morris's Five Have a Mystery to Solve (1964). So, David Palmer (Julian), Darryl Read (Dick), Amanda Coxell (George) and Paula Boyd (Anne) were cast in an encounter with a boy named Wilfred (Michael Wennink), who can talk to animals.
With the exception of the two CFF titles and Five Have Plenty of Fun (1956), the remaining books were dramatised for ITV's The Famous Five series (1978-79), which brought Julian (Marcus Harris), Dick (Gary Russell), Anne (Jennifer Thanisch) and George (Michelle Gallagher) to a new audience. However, they also drew the attention of those naughty boys and girls at The Comic Strip, who cast Peter Richardson (Julian), Adrian Edmondson (Dick), Jennifer Saunders (Anne) and Dawn French (George) in Five Go Mad in Dorset (1982) which can be found on The Comic Strip Presents: The Complete Collection.
As just about every boy in Britain knew in the middle of the last century, William Earl Johns's Biggles series (1932-68) chronicled the exploits of a fearless pilot. However, this heyday had passed by the time John Hough made Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986), which sees New York catering executive Jim Ferguson (Alex Hyde-White) travel back in time to assume the identity of ace Great War fighter pilot, James Bigglesworth.
Gordon Buford's Car, Boy, Girl (1961) may be a forgotten book, but everyone knows the Volkswagen Beetle who shot to fame in the Disney quartet formed by Robert Stevenson's The Love Bug (1968) and Herbie Rides Again (1974) and Vincent McEveety's Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977) and Herbie Goes Bananas (1980). In 2005, Angela Robinson enlisted the service of Lindsay Lohan to give Herbie: Fully Loaded some va-va-voom, but it didn't really get out of first gear. Disney was also behind Norman Tokar's 1975 adaptation of Jack Bickham's The Apple Dumpling Gang (1971), which features Bill Bixby as a gambler who finds himself caring for three orphans in the Wild West frontier town of Quake City.
Although Jack Sparrow is an original character, fans might like to know that Tom Powers's 1987 swashbuckling novel, On Stranger Tides, provided inspiration for screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio during pre-production on Rob Marshall's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011). Continuing the nautical theme, Wendy Orr's Nim's Island (2001) offered Abigail Breslin a plum role, as the 11 year-old in Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin's 2008 film, who draws on the stories written by her favourite author, Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), when she is stranded on a South Pacific island after her marine biologist father (Gerard Butler) is shipwrecked in a cyclone. Finally, another beleaguered relative drives the action in Michael Horowitz's Stormbreaker (2000), a rousing thriller that was adapted by Geoffrey Sax in 2006, with Alex Rider (Alex Pettyfer) leaping into action with the Special Operations Division of MI6 after he learns that his Uncle Ian (Ewan McGregor) was a spy who was assassinated by the murderous Yassen Gregorovich (Damian Lewis). Sadly, film-makers have yet to be tempted by any of the other 12 novels in the series.
Explore even more by browsing through Family adventures section and find films you can enjoy watching with the whole family!
