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Who wrote the crime novel Ten Little Indians. Ten little Indians. Retribution for sins

Collins Crime Club
Word
AST, Eksmo, Manager, ABC

Pages:

256 (first edition)

Carrier: ISBN:

978-0-00-713683-4

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Plot

Ten complete strangers (except for one married couple) come to Negro Island at the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. A. N. Onim (Alec Norman Onim and Anna Nancy Onim). There are no onims on the island. In the living room there is a tray with ten porcelain little angels, and in the room of each of the guests there is a children's rhyme reminiscent of Ten Green Bottles:

Ten little Indians decided to have lunch, one suddenly choked - there were nine of them left. Nine little Indians, having eaten, nodded off, One could not wake up - there were eight of them left. Eight little Indians then went to Devon, One did not return - only seven of them remained. Seven little blacks were chopping wood together, one hacked himself to death, and there were six of them left. Six little Indians went for a walk in the apiary, one was stung by a bumblebee - there are five left. Five black boys were judged, one was convicted, there are four left. Four little black girls went swimming in the sea, one took the bait - there were three of them left. Three little blacks ended up in the menagerie. One was grabbed by a bear - and the two of them were left. Two little blacks lay down in the sun, One burned out - and now there is one, unhappy, lonely. The last little black man looked tired, went to hang himself, and there was no one left.

When the guests gather in the living room, the butler Rogers, according to the written order Onim left for him, turns on the gramophone. The guests hear a voice that accuses them of committing murders.

  • Dr. Armstrong operated on an elderly woman, Mary Elizabeth Clees, while drunk, resulting in her death.
  • Emily Brent kicked a young servant, Beatrice Taylor, out of the house after learning that she became pregnant out of wedlock; the girl drowned herself.
  • Vera Claythorne was the nanny of Cyril Hamilton, who stood in the way of her lover Hugo's inheritance. While swimming, Vera allowed the boy to swim behind a rock - as a result, he fell into the current and drowned.
  • Police officer William Henry Blore gave false testimony in court, which led to the imprisonment of the innocent Landor in hard labor, where he died a year later.
  • John Gordon MacArthur During the war, he sent his subordinate, his wife’s lover Arthur Richmond, to certain death.
  • Philip Lombard threw 20 people, natives of the East African tribe into the veld, stealing all the provisions, leaving them to certain death.
  • Thomas and Ethel Rogers, while serving Miss Brady, an elderly sick woman, did not give her medicine on time; she died leaving the Rogerses a small inheritance.
  • Anthony Marston ran over two children, John and Lucy Combe, with a car.
  • Lawrence John Wargrave sentenced Edward Seaton to death.

The boat that brought the guests does not return, a storm begins and the guests get stuck on the island. They begin to die one after another, in accordance with the children's rhyme about little blacks whose statuettes disappear with each death.

Marston dies first - there is potassium cyanide in a glass of whiskey. Rogers notices that one of the porcelain babies has disappeared.

The next morning Mrs. Rogers dies; a lethal dose of sleeping pills was mixed into her glass. The judge states that Onim is most likely a dangerous maniac and murderer. The men search the island and the house, but find no one. MacArthur is found murdered. Wargrave states that the murderer is among the guests, since there is no one else on the island. No one had an alibi for the period of the general’s death.

In the morning, Rogers, the butler, is found hacked to death. That same morning, Emily Brent dies from an injection. potassium cyanide, a bumblebee crawls on the glass. Miss Brent was injected with Dr. Armstrong's syringe. At the same time, Lombard’s revolver, which he brought with him, disappears.

Vera goes up to her room, a minute later the others hear her screams. The men rush into Vera's room and discover that she has lost consciousness because she touched the seaweed suspended from the ceiling in the dark. Returning to the courtroom, they find the judge shot dead, wearing a red robe and wig. The pawnshop finds a revolver in his drawer.

That same night, Dr. Armstrong disappears. Now the rest are sure that the doctor is the killer. In the morning they leave the house and stay on the rock. Blore returns to the house for food, Vera and Lombard hear a strange rumble. They find Blore murdered - a marble watch in the shape of a bear was dropped on his head. They then find Armstrong's body washed ashore by the tide.

Only Vera and Lombard remain. Vera decides that Lombard is a murderer. She gets his revolver and kills Philip. Vera returns to the house, confident that she is safe, enters her room and sees a noose and a chair. In deep shock from what she experienced and saw, she climbs onto a chair and hangs herself...

Epilogue

The police arriving on the island find 10 corpses. Inspector Mayne and Sir Thomas Lagg from Scotland Yard are trying to restore the chronology of events and solve the mystery of the murders on the black island, but in the end they come to a dead end. They build versions regarding the last killed:

  • Armstrong killed everyone and then threw himself into the sea, his body washed ashore by the tide. However, subsequent tides were lower and it was definitely established that the body had been in the water for 12 hours.
  • Phillip Lombard brought the watch down on Blore's head, forced Vera to hang himself, returned to the beach (where his body was found) and shot himself. However, the revolver was lying in front of the judge's room.
  • William Blore shot Lombard and forced Vera to hang herself, after which he brought the watch down on his head. But no one chose this method of suicide and the police know that Blore was a scoundrel, he had no desire for justice.
  • Vera Claythorne shot Lombard, dropped a marble watch on Blore's head, and then hanged herself. But someone picked up the chair she had knocked over and placed it against the wall.

Killer Confession

The fishermen find a bottle with a letter and take it to Scotland Yard. The author of the letter is Judge Wargrave. Since his youth, he dreamed of murder, but his desire for justice prevented him, which is why he became a judge. Being terminally ill, he decided to satisfy his passion and selected ten people who committed murders, but for some reason escaped punishment. The tenth was the criminal Isaac Morris, through whom Wargrave acquired the island. Before being sent to the island, the judge poisoned Morris. While on the island, he exterminated the others. After killing Miss Brent, he conspired with Armstrong, saying that he suspected Lombard. Armstrong helped the judge fake his death, after which the killer lured him onto a rock at night and threw him into the sea. After making sure that Vera had hanged herself, Wargrave went up to his room and shot himself, tying the revolver with an elastic band to the door and to the glasses that he placed under himself. After the shot, the rubber band came untied from the door and hung on the temple of the glasses; the revolver remained at the threshold.

Characters

"Negres"

  1. Anthony Marston- a young guy. Loves to drive cars.
  2. Ethel Rogers- wife of Thomas Rogers, cook.
  3. John MacArthur - old general. He came to terms with the idea that he was going to die. He often remembered his late wife Leslie.
  4. Thomas Rogers- butler. He and his wife were hired by Mr. Onim.
  5. Emily Brent- an elderly woman. Bible fanatic; She was sure that death would pass her by.
  6. Lawrence John Wargrave- old judge. A very smart and wise man, at some point he was investigating murders on the island.
  7. Edward Armstrong- Doctor from Harley Street. Quite a weak-willed person. Has an addiction to alcohol.
  8. William Henry Blore- retired inspector. He was a scoundrel and always confident in his abilities.
  9. Philip Lombard- engaged in dirty deeds. Came to the island at the suggestion of Isaac Morris.
  10. Vera Claythorne- a young girl who came to the island at the suggestion of Mrs. Onim to become her secretary.

Minor characters

  • Fred Narracott- Boat driver, brings guests to the island.
  • Isaac Morris- Mr. Onim’s mysterious lawyer, organizes the crime, the tenth “black kid”. He dealt drugs, which caused the death of the daughter of one of Wargrave's friends.
  • Inspector Maine- Investigates murders on the island in the epilogue of the novel.
  • Sir Thomas Legge- Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
  • Old sailor
  • Station worker
  • All characters novel, including the killer, die.
  • The book has gained great popularity throughout the world and is considered best work Agatha Christie.
  • Despite the fact that the title of the novel was changed, it is still known to this day under the name “Ten Little Indians” and was published in many countries under this title.

In culture

Play

There is a 1943 play called And Then There Were None, written by Agatha Christie. Consists of three acts. The play was staged in London with director Irene Hentschell. It premiered at the New Wimbledon Theater on 20 September 1943, before moving to the West End at St James's Theater on 17 November the same year. The play received good reviews and ran for 260 performances until February 24, 1944, when a bomb hit the theater. The production then moved to the Cambridge Theater on 29 February and ran there until 6 May, before returning to St James's on 9 May and finally closing on 1 July.

The play was also produced on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater by director Albert de Corville, but under the title Ten Little Indians. The premiere took place on June 27, 1944, and on January 6 the production moved to the Plymouth Theater and ran there until June 30. In total, there were 426 performances on Broadway.

The text of the play is still published to this day. For production reasons, the names of some characters and their crimes are changed in the play, and also, unlike the novel, the play ends with a happy ending. Vera, unknowingly, only wounds Lombard when she shoots him, after which she is confronted by the killer (the killer's identity has not been changed), who tells her that he took a slow-acting poison, and when he dies, Vera will have nothing left , except to commit suicide to avoid being arrested. Then Lombard appears, kills the killer with a pistol, which Vera drops after she thinks she killed him, and that's where the play ends. For the sake of this ending, Vera’s crime and Lombard’s biography were changed - in the play, Vera is suspected of the death of her sister’s husband, but from the very beginning she says that she has nothing to do with it, and Lombard admits in the finale that he is in fact not Philip Lombard, and his friend Charles Morley, and that the real Philip Lombard died a mysterious death shortly before, but Charles found his invitation to Negro Island and came here under his guise, thinking that this would help reveal the secret of his death. This ending was used in the first film adaptation in 1945 and was subsequently used in all subsequent ones, except for the Soviet one in 1987.

Film adaptations

The novel has been filmed many times. The first film adaptation was American painting"And Then There Were None Left", filmed in 1945 by René Clair. The main difference from the novel was the ending, remade as a happy ending based on what Agatha Christie wrote for the play, with only one difference: Lombard offers Vera in advance to fake his murder, after which Vera deliberately shoots past Lombard, since they are standing outside home and the killer from the window cannot hear what they were talking about. Subsequent remakes of the film (1965, 1974 and 1989), released under the title Ten Little Indians, used the same ending. Only the Soviet 2-part television film “Ten Little Indians” directed by Stanislav Govorukhin (1987) used the original title of the novel and was fully consistent storyline with a dark ending.

Computer game

See also

  • Nursery rhymes

Notes

Links

Ten Little Indians (novel) in Wikiquote
  • Ten Little Indians in the Library of Maxim Moshkov
  • Ten Little Indians on the website www.agatachristie.ru

Well, one more book...

Quote:
Десять негритят / Ten Little Niggers

The history of the famous counting song begins in the North American States in the 1860s. It was then that Septimus Winner, an author from Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, North in civil war), wrote the song “Ten Little Indians” based on folk humor.

After some time, as part of a cultural exchange, the song ended up in Victorian England and was enthusiastically accepted into the then light theatrical shows, but previously underwent some changes. Английский автор-песенник Фрэнк Грин адаптировал текст под потребности времени и места, переписав некоторые строки и поменяв индейцев на негритят (точнее негров – niggers). But this had to be changed not only because blacks, more than Indians, are understandable to the European public. An important point It was that at that time, techniques were popular in entertainment genres in which actors grotesquely made up themselves as blacks and performed their numbers in this form. This image feature existed for quite a long time and was later actively used in jazz - “white” music passed off as “black”, which can be seen in newsreels of the first half of the 20th century.

As a result, this English version of F. Greene about “Ten Little Indians” became canonical literary, and in this form returned to America, where it was luxuriously published in 1890 in the form of a colorful children’s book, becoming one of the brightest artifacts of the “Golden Age of Children’s Literature.” "

In some ways, “Ten Little Indians” is the same North American classic as “The Wizard of Oz” or “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but it is unlikely that in the current format of society, anyone perceives it that way. It is much easier to see the “racist” background here than the lively humor and signs of the time. In fact, there is no racism there - people thought so then, they lived in such a world. In addition, slavery was abolished, the black population began to acquire rights. The prospects were excellent.

The counting song about black children received powerful PR and popularity from a new side after the release of Agatha Christie's detective novel of the same name in 1939. However, during reprints, the book, for politically correct reasons, changed its title several times to “Ten Little Indians,” “And Then There Were None.” In the 70s, the novel was seemingly republished under the original title - “Ten Little Indians”, but still in the English-language segment of world literature it is better known as “Ten Little Indians”. In our country, due to the absence of problems with blacks and slavery, the book was always published under its native title, and in 1987 a famous film was made.

I accidentally discovered photographs of the miracle book at an online auction. There was no cover, and, accordingly, there was no left side of the picture on the first spread. I don’t remember what text was used in A. Christie’s book and the film and I don’t want to look for it, so I offer my free translation with semantic reference to the illustrations.

Ten little black kids gathered for a ride.
One sold his bike - there were nine left.

Nine little black kids had a blast half the night.
One slept through the fun, the eight of them remained.

Eight little blacks drove 10 miles.
One got stuck on the road, but seven made it.

Seven blacks were trying to chop wood in the yard.
One overdid it, and six were left.

Six little blacks were playing with beehives in the apiary.
One was severely bitten, and five escaped.

Five black boys were sorting out cases in court.
One went to prison, and four ran away.

Four black children went swimming in the sea.
One was eaten by a fish, and there were three left.

Three little black boys in the menagerie laughed loudly.
One bear was captured, but two escaped.

It was hot in the sun for two little black boys at noon.
One went crazy, the other was lucky.

The latter did not experience loneliness for long.
He married successfully. And there are no blacks left...

At the end, I would like to give a sample of our Russian urban folklore on the theme of ten little Indians. I recall from childhood:

Ten little Indians went swimming in the sea,
Ten little Indians frolicked in the open space.
One of them drowned
They bought him a coffin.
And here's the result:

Nine little Indians went swimming in the sea...

None of the little blacks go swimming in the sea,
None of the little blacks frolic in the open air.
But then one resurrected
They bought him a cross.
And here's the result:

One of the little black kids goes for a swim in the sea...

And so on until all ten are resurrected, and then begin to drown again...
This is such metempsychosis, such is the cycle of blacks in nature. Our little blacks never disappear “for no reason, no matter what”, they always come back...

Http://nkgr.livejournal.com/8372.html#cutid1

Original published November 6, 1939 Translator Larisa Bespalova Publisher Pages 256 (first edition) Carrier book ISBN Previous Riddle at sea Next Sad cypress Electronic version

The writer considered this novel her best work and in 1943 she wrote a play based on it. The novel is also Agatha Christie's best-selling novel, with approximately one hundred million copies sold worldwide.

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    ✪ Agatha Christie - Ten Little Indians. Audiobook detective

Subtitles

Plot

Ten complete strangers (except for one married couple) come to Negro Island at the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. A. N. Onim (Alec Norman Onim and Anna Nancy Onim). There are no onims on the island. In the living room there is a tray with ten porcelain negros, and in each of the guests’ rooms there is a children’s counting book reminiscent of “Ten green bottles”:

"Ten Little Indians"

(classical translation by L. G. Bespalova)

Ten little Indians went to dinner,
One choked, there were nine left.

Nine little Indians, having eaten, nodded off,
One couldn’t wake up, there were eight of them left.

Eight little blacks went to Devon later,
One did not return, only seven remained.

Seven little black boys chopped wood together,
One killed himself - and there were six of them left.

Six little black boys went for a walk in the apiary,
One was stung by a bumblebee, there are five left.

Five little black boys did the judging,
They convicted one, leaving four.

Four little black girls went swimming in the sea,
One took the bait, leaving three of them.

Three little blacks ended up in a menagerie,
One was grabbed by a bear, and only two were left.

Two little black boys lay down in the sun,
One burned down - and now there is one, unhappy, lonely.

The last little black man looked tired,
He went and hanged himself, and there was no one left.

When the guests gather in the living room, the butler Rogers, according to the written order Onim left for him, turns on the gramophone. The guests hear a voice that accuses them of committing murders.

- Dr. Armstrong operated on an elderly woman, Mary Elizabeth Clees, while drunk, resulting in her death. - Emily Brent kicked a young servant, Beatrice Taylor, out of the house after learning that she became pregnant out of wedlock; the girl drowned herself. - Vera Claythorne was the nanny of Cyril Hamilton, who stood in the way of her lover Hugo's inheritance. While swimming, Vera allowed the boy to swim behind a rock - as a result, he fell into the current and drowned. - Police officer William Henry Blore gave false testimony in court, which led to the imprisonment of the innocent Landor in hard labor, where he died a year later. - John Gordon MacArthur During the war, he sent his subordinate, his wife’s lover Arthur Richmond, to certain death. - Philip Lombard threw 20 people, natives of the East African tribe into the veld, stealing all the provisions, leaving them to certain death. - Thomas and Ethel Rogers, while serving Miss Brady, an elderly sick woman, did not give her medicine on time; she died leaving the Rogerses a small inheritance. - Anthony Marston ran over two children, John and Lucy Combs, with a car. - Lawrence John Wargrave sentenced Edward Seaton to death.

The boat that brought the guests does not return, a storm begins and the guests get stuck on the island. They begin to die one after another, in accordance with the children's rhyme about little blacks whose statuettes disappear with each death.

Marston dies first - there was potassium cyanide in the glass of whiskey. Rogers notices that one of the porcelain babies has disappeared.

The next morning Mrs. Rogers dies; a lethal dose of sleeping pills was mixed into her glass. The judge states that Onim is most likely a dangerous maniac and murderer. The men search the island and the house, but find no one. MacArthur is found murdered. Wargrave states that the murderer is among the guests, since there is no one else on the island. No one had an alibi for the period of the general’s death.

In the morning, Rogers, the butler, is found hacked to death. That same morning, Emily Brent dies from a cyanide injection. Miss Brent was injected with Dr. Armstrong's syringe. At the same time, Lombard’s revolver, which he brought with him, disappears.

Vera goes up to her room, a minute later the others hear her screams. The men rush into Vera's room and discover that she has lost consciousness because she touched the seaweed suspended from the ceiling in the dark. Returning to the courtroom, they find the judge shot dead, wearing a red robe and wig. The pawnshop finds a revolver in his drawer.

That same night, Dr. Armstrong disappears. Now the rest are sure that the doctor is the killer. In the morning they leave the house and stay on the rock. Blore returns to the house for food, Vera and Lombard hear a strange rumble. They find Blore murdered - a marble watch in the shape of a bear was dropped on his head. They then find Armstrong's body washed ashore by the tide.

Only Vera and Lombard remain. Vera decides that Lombard is a murderer. She gets his revolver and kills Philip. Vera returns to the house, confident that she is safe, enters her room and sees a noose and a chair. In deep shock from what she experienced and saw, she climbs onto a chair and hangs herself.

Epilogue

The police arriving on the island find 10 corpses. Inspector Mayne and Sir Thomas Lagg from Scotland Yard are trying to restore the chronology of events and solve the mystery of the murders on the black island, but in the end they come to a dead end. They build versions regarding the last killed:

  • Armstrong killed everyone and then threw himself into the sea, his body washed ashore by the tide. However, subsequent tides were lower and it was definitely established that the body had been in the water for 12 hours.
  • Philip Lombard brought the watch down on Blore's head, forced Vera to hang himself, returned to the beach (where his body was found) and shot himself. However, the revolver lay in front of the judge's room.
  • William Blore shot Lombard and forced Vera to hang herself, after which he brought the watch down on his head. But no one chose this method of suicide and the police know that Blore was a scoundrel, he had no desire for justice.
  • Vera Claythorne shot Lombard, dropped a marble watch on Blore's head, and then hanged herself. But someone picked up the chair she had knocked over and placed it against the wall.

Killer Confession

The fishermen find a bottle with a letter and take it to Scotland Yard. The author of the letter is Judge Wargrave. Even in his youth, he dreamed of murder, but his desire for justice prevented him, which is why he became a lawyer. Being terminally ill, he decided to satisfy his passion and selected nine people who committed murders, but for some reason escaped punishment. The tenth was the criminal Isaac Morris, through whom Wargrave acquired the island. Before going to the island, the judge poisoned Morris. While on the island, he exterminated the others. After killing Miss Brent, he conspired with Armstrong, saying that he suspected Lombard. Armstrong helped the judge fake his death, after which the killer lured him onto a rock at night and threw him into the sea. After making sure that Vera had hanged herself, Wargrave went up to his room and shot himself, tying the revolver with an elastic band to the door and to the glasses that he placed under himself. After the shot, the rubber band came untied from the door and hung on the temple of the glasses, the revolver fell at the threshold.

Characters

"Negres"

  1. Anthony Marston- a young guy. Loves to drive cars. Was invited by my friend.
  2. Ethel Rogers- wife of Thomas Rogers, cook.
  3. John MacArthur- old general. I received an invitation to the island from old army comrades.
  4. Thomas Rogers- butler. He and his wife were hired by Mr. Onim.
  5. Emily Brent- an elderly woman. I received an invitation written in illegible handwriting and assumed it was from an old friend.
  6. Lawrence John Wargrave- old judge. A very smart and wise man.
  7. Edward Armstrong- Doctor from Harley Street. He was invited to work as a doctor for a substantial fee.
  8. William Henry Blore- retired inspector. He was a scoundrel and always confident in his abilities.
  9. Philip Lombard- engaged in dirty deeds. Came to the island at the suggestion of Isaac Morris.
  10. Vera Claythorne- a young girl who came to the island at the suggestion of Mrs. Onim to become her secretary.

Minor characters

  • Fred Narracott- Boat driver, brings guests to the island.
  • Isaac Morris- Mr. Onim’s mysterious lawyer, organizes the crime, the tenth “black kid”. He dealt drugs, which caused the death of the daughter of one of Wargrave's friends.
  • Inspector Maine- Investigates murders on the island in the epilogue of the novel.
  • Sir Thomas Legge- Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
  • Old sailor
  • Station worker
  • Hugo Hamilton- Vera Claythorne's lover, Cyril's uncle. After the boy’s death, he inherited the title and fortune, but, guessing that Vera had deliberately let Cyril go to the rock in the open sea, he broke off all relations with her. It is from Hugo that Lawrence Wargrave learns about Vera's crime.

In culture

Play

In 1943, Agatha Christie wrote a three-act play called And Then There Were None. The play was staged in London with director Irene Hentschell. It premiered at the New Wimbledon Theater on 20 September 1943, before moving to the West End at St James's Theater on 17 November the same year. The play received good reviews and ran for 260 performances until February 24, 1944, when the theater was hit by a bomb. The production then moved to the Cambridge Theater on 29 February and ran there until 6 May, before returning to St James's on 9 May and finally closing on 1 July.

The play was also produced on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater by director Albert de Corville, but under the title Ten Little Indians. The premiere took place on June 27, 1944, and on January 6, 1945, the production moved to the Plymouth Theater and ran there until June 30. In total, there were 426 performances on Broadway.

The text of the play is still published to this day. For production reasons, the names of some characters and their crimes are changed in the play, and also, unlike the novel, the play ends with a happy ending. Vera, unknowingly, only wounds Lombard when she shoots him, after which she is confronted by the killer (the killer's identity has not been changed), who tells her that he took a slow-acting poison, and when he dies, Vera will have nothing left , except to commit suicide to avoid being arrested. Then Lombard appears, kills the killer with a pistol, which Vera drops after she thinks she killed him, and that's where the play ends. For the sake of such an ending, when transferring the play to the big screen (during the film adaptation), Vera’s crime and Lombard’s biography were changed - Vera is suspected of the death of her sister’s husband, but from the very beginning she says that she has nothing to do with this, and Lombard admits in the finale that in fact, he is not Philip Lombard, but his friend Charles Morley, and that the real Philip Lombard committed suicide, but Charles found his invitation to Negro Island and came here under his guise, thinking that this would help solve the mystery of his suicide. This ending was used in the first film adaptation in 1945 and was subsequently used in all subsequent ones, except for the Soviet one in 1987. In the play itself, Lombard remains Lombard, and the crimes of which Vera and Philip are accused are identical to the crimes in the novel.

Film adaptations

The novel has been filmed many times. The first film adaptation was the American film “And There Was No One Left,” filmed in 1945 by Rene-Clair. The main difference from the novel was the ending, remade as a happy ending based on what Agatha Christie wrote for the play, with only one difference: Lombard offers Vera in advance to fake his murder, after which Vera deliberately shoots past Lombard, since they are standing outside home and the killer from the window cannot hear what they were talking about. Subsequent remakes of the film (1965 and 1989), titled Ten Little Indians and Ten Little Indians, used the same ending. Only the Soviet 2-part film “Ten Little Indians” directed by Stanislav Govorukhin (1987) used the original title of the novel and was fully consistent with the storyline with a dark ending.

In December 2015, the British mini-series “And Then There Were None” was released on BBC One, which became the first English-language film adaptation to use the original ending of the novel.

The famous counting rhyme has a long history, initially not connected with Agatha Christie and the detective story. In the 1860s American poet Septimus Winner composed the humorous song "10 Little Indians." After some time, the song ended up in Victorian England, where songwriter Frank Green replaced the little Indians with little Indians that were more understandable to the English. In this form, the counting rhyme returned to America and was published in 1890 in the form of a children's book, which became a classic of American children's literature.
In the first version of the rhyme, the last little black man got married, lived happily ever after and had 10 little black babies...

In the film, the counting rhyme sounds the same as in Agatha Christie’s work:

Nine little Indians, having eaten, nodded off,
One couldn’t wake up, there were eight of them left.

Eight little blacks went to Devon later,
One did not return, only seven remained.

Seven little black boys chopped wood together,
One killed himself - and there were six of them left.

Six little black boys went for a walk in the apiary,
One was stung by a bumblebee, there are five left.

Five little black boys did the judging,
They convicted one, leaving four.

Four black girls went swimming in the sea,
One took the bait, leaving three of them.

Three little blacks ended up in a menagerie,
One was grabbed by a bear, and the two were left alone.

Two little black boys lay down in the sun,
One burned down - and now there is one, unhappy, lonely.

The last little black man looked tired,
He went and hanged himself, and there was no one left.

The penultimate part of the counting rhyme was not voiced in the film.

Writer Agatha Christie wrote a detective story in 1939, and four years later playwright Reginald Simpson asked permission to write a play based on her novel. The writer refused, saying that she would do it herself. For the theater production, she decided to redo the ending - leaving two characters alive, making them innocent. On theater stage survived by Vera Clayton and Philip Lombard.

After the release of the novel, which instantly became a bestseller, the “negros” began the process of turning back into “Indians”... In the USA, for reasons of political correctness, the novel was published under the title “And Then There Were None,” and later would be renamed “Ten Little Indians” and that’s it “ "negros" in the text were also replaced by "little Indians." Despite the fact that detective films have been made many times and in different countries— the film adaptation by Stanislav Govorukhin became the only one that retained the original title and ending.

Filming took place in Crimea. Mr. Owen's mansion became the famous Swallow's Nest. Part of the building was covered with plywood decoration of the castle, built by employees of the Yalta film studio. Interior scenes were filmed in the Vorontsov Palace in Alupka, views of Negro Island were filmed in the village of Gaspra, and general plan The islands "played" the layout in the pool.

Stanislav Govorukhin and Tatyana Drubich, in parallel with “Ten Little Indians,” starred in “ASSE” with Sergei Solovyov. Fortunately, Soloviev was filming nearby, in Yalta, so the director and actress could be away for filming. True, once for Stanislav Govorukhin the filming of an episode was directed by actress Lyudmila Maksakova, and Tatyana Drubich in final scene The make-up artist replaced the suicide - Judge Wargrave sees her legs when he opens the door of Vera Clayton's room. You can also notice that the stunt double is wearing different stockings...

According to the plot, the butler Rogers, played by Alexey Zolotnitsky, was hacked to death with an ax. The actor in bloody makeup was asked to lie in the rain before filming to enhance the effect. In this form he was caught by a group of unsuspecting tourists who ran away screaming as soon as the actor turned his head towards them.

At the very beginning of the film, an unknown person arranges figurines of little blacks on a shiny tray. All that is visible is a hand in a black glove and a flickering blurry reflection male face. The audience decided that this was the killer and looked for him among the heroes. However, it was the director of the film, Stanislav Govorukhin.