Frank Harvey's version of - what? Is it an adaptation of the book, or the Hitchcock version? I'd have to say the latter, as much of the classic is copied verbatim, but there are some inventive (Hitchcockian, even) differences - the opening, featuring a nanny with a pram and a gun, a moment where Hannay hides in a wheat field, only to have it being harvested, and turning his female foil into a teacher at a girls' school, where he has to make an impromptu speech.
Of course it's easy to say "Murmur, murmur, not as good as the original, blah blah" but it's really not bad, though Kenneth More is perhaps a little too easy-going and Taina Elg is no actress. Compensations come with Brenda de Banzie (Hobson's Choice, The Man Who Knew Too Much), Reginald Beckwith, Faith Brook ('Nanny'), James Hayter ('Mr Memory'), Joan Hickson and Sid James.
I knew of the Robert Powell seventies version (must watch this - David Warner's in it too and John Coquillon shot it) but there's also a 2008 Rupert Penry-Jones effort which has very mixed reviews.
Another of those fifties films that people are quite happy to show in a 4x3 cropped version (even the DVD is reportedly in this shape). Ernest Steward wouldn't have approved.
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