Some of the slight differences between the versions concern the use of maps. For example, the earlier film's opening has the written prologue superimposed on a map, followed by the map alone, then comes a train; the later version shows the written prologue on its own, followed by a superimposition of map and train:
The 1952 Prisoner of Zenda (see here) is a sequence-for-sequence, almost a shot-for-shot, remake of the 1937 version, using the same shooting script. Some of the slight differences between the versions concern the use of maps. For example, the earlier film's opening has the written prologue superimposed on a map, followed by the map alone, then comes a train; the later version shows the written prologue on its own, followed by a superimposition of map and train: The 1952 version actually borrows the footage of the train from the earlier film. This superimposition is both intertextual, acknowledging the pretext, and intermedial, laying colour film over black-and-white. (Incidentally, there are no maps in Richard Quine's 1979 version of The Prisoner of Zenda, made from a new script,so the intertextual chain stops at this post.) In Duke Michael's room there is an astrolabe rather than the globe we see in the later film: In both films there is the same sequence where the rescue from Zenda is planned, though the maps are not of the same castle:
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After a written prologue the film opens with a map superimposed on an advancing train, the Orient Express, heading East. This movement across Europe suggests the general vicinity of Ruritania, without having to show the fictional country on the map: According to the panel on the train, Strelsau, the capital of Ruritania, is somewhere between Vienna and Bucharest: A globe serves as a real-world counterpoint to the fanciful place names that identify these protagonists - Antoinette de Mauban, Michael Duke of Strelsau and Rupert of Hentzau: The film's last map is entirely fictional, a plan of the castle of Zenda from which the King must be rescued:
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