The Two Faces of January

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1964. Original ribbon copy typescript five-page reader's summary and report for the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Frank Jackson, dated "2.1.64," with a received stamp dated "7 Jan 1964," with an additional supplementary "Reader's Comments" bound in preceding, by ABPC reader J. Common, undated, with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 29 Jan 1964." Unique.

One of the most powerful media conglomerates in British cinema history, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was founded in 1927 when John Maxwell acquired 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, enabling 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, its readers reviewed nearly everything being published, from established authors to those with recent screen success, to emerging new authors, in search of material for film adaptation. The resulting reader's summary and reports are an extraordinary record of mid-twentieth century literature never intended for public consumption and unseen since their composition.

The five-page reader's summary and report includes an anomalous second reader's comments as the first leaf by ABPC reader J. Common, with received stamp dated approximately three weeks after the original summary and report. The summary and report is otherwise written in the ABPC house style, including a breakdown of the source material and publication information at the top of the second page (noted as being submitted in proof format by an agent representing Highsmith), followed by a summary and a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis on the third and fourth pages, and finally the initial reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities on the fifth page. The initial ABPC reader Jackson found the material "exceptionally literate and well-written" but "cannot find it possible to recommend" as he finds "the author was trying just a little too hard," but the second ABPC reader, Common, found the material "worth buying in" having "considerable possibilities of being a "Rififi" of its genre."

Highsmith's ninth published novel, basis for the 2014 film directed by Hossein Amini, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac.

8 x 13 inches, perforation binding. Near Fine.

[Book #172907]