Deep Water

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1958. Original ribbon copy typescript three-page reader's summary and report for the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Summary and report made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Frank Jackson, dated "July 58," with a received stamp dated "5 Aug 1958."

One of the most powerful media conglomerates in British cinema history, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was founded in 1927 with John Maxwell's acquisition of British National Pictures Studios and its Elstree Studios complex, first named British International Pictures (BIP).

The company was renamed ABPC in 1933 after acquiring British Pathé, and enabled the company to become a fully vertically integrated studio capable of producing, distributing, and exhibiting its own pictures. Following Maxwell's death in 1940, Warner Bros. purchased a large stake in the company, allowing ABPC to distribute its films into the lucrative US market, as well as taking an active stake in television by launching the Associated British Corporation (ABC). Amid the downturn in the British film industry by the late 1960s, EMI staged an aggressive takeover of ABPC in 1969, and by 1970 the name was officially retired.

At the height of ABPC's success in the 1950s and 1960s, ABPC's readers reviewed nearly everything being published, from established authors to those who had recent screen success, and emerging new authors, in search of material for film adaptation

The three-page reader's summary and report, written in the ABPC house style, includes a breakdown of the source material and publication information at the top of the first page, followed by a summary, a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis, and finally the reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities. ABPC reader Jackson's comments on Highsmith's novel for film adaptation is exuberant, "brilliant, original, intelligent and sophisticated," but notes the "American background" of the story "is so American in essence, in characterisation, in social values that it could not be transferred to a British setting without losing a great deal of it's credibility."

Highsmith's fifth published novel, basis for the 1981 French film starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert, and for the 2022 Adrian Lyne film starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas.

8 x 13 inches, perforation binding. Near Fine.

[Book #172905]