If you are planning to murder someone in the quaint English village of Mary
St. Mead, step number one would be to kill the elderly seemingly harmless
Miss Marple. Because she will catch you. Based on Agatha Christie's book
of the same name, this film has an oveflow of famous actors slightly beyond
their prime. Having loads of well-known names in the Christie film adaptations
was already becoming a tradition with Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
and Death on the Nile (1978). This has continued up to the present with the
new Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. The film takes place
in the 1950s and if this film had been made then with this cast it would
have been quite the event. Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony
Curtis, Geraldine Chaplin and Angela Lansbury. Of slightly younger vintage
is Edward Fox and a future star who is in the film for a nanosecond as Taylor's
paramour in the film within a film, Pierce Brosnan.
All those names do not make a great film though as this one ponders along
till Miss Marple in the middle of the night figures it out. Having read the
book, I was way ahead of her! Angela Lansbury plays Miss Marple. Marple had
been portrayed only in four films previously - the series with Margaret Rutherford.
Fun films but the characterization of Marple is just plain silly. Lansbury
takes another tack but still doesn't get it right. First they age her badly
- horrible job - she looks 20 years older than she did in Murder She Wrote
that began in four years. Making her older is Ok I guess but the make-up
job makes her look like she hasn't slept in a month. It wasn't until Joan
Hickson got the role for the TV series that Miss Marple was done right. After
going on endlessly about Poirot's missing moustache in Lord Edgware Dies,
I don't want to make a thing of this - but here Miss Marple smokes. Come
on. What's next. Sex with the Vicar.
Nor does a great director guarantee a good film. This is directed by Guy
Hamilton who did so much better with spies and masculine heroes. I mean what
a resume - Goldfinger, Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever, The Funeral
in Berlin, Battle of Britain and Force 10 from Navarone. It feels like he
has no idea what to do with an old biddy and so he sidelines her early on
with a sprained ankle and gives the sleuthing to the Inspector, who then
reports to Miss Marple. She is housebound for nearly the entire film. After
this he did tackle another Christie book, Evil Under the Sun, with Peter
Ustinov as Poirot. This was slightly better but not by a lot. No action old
crime solvers didn't bring out his best.
The film starts off in lovely fashion - the gathering of the suspects in
one room for the denouement - and suddenly it stops due to a malfunction
and you realize you have been watching a film in the local townhall. Everyone
wants to know who the killer is - Miss Marple gets up to leave and explains
who it is and why she knows. She is right of course. Unfortunately, that
looked more interesting than the rest of the film. A famous American actress
(Taylor) and her husband director (Hudson) rent a grand manor to stay in
while they are making a film. Her comeback. Curtis is the producer, Chaplin
the secretary, Novak a rival actress, Fox from Scotland Yard. They give a
yard party for the town and someone is poisoned from the town.
Taylor, Novak and Curtis must think they are in a southern gothic play they
overact so much - Fox underplays so much he is invisible - Rock Hudson is
ok but dreary and Lansbury just doesn't nail it. She is off, The script is
off. There were plans to star Lansbury in two more Marple films but the critical
reception of this one put a bullet in the head of that. Murder, She Wrote
is much better. This was apparently inspired by the true tragedy of what
happened to Gene Tierney, though as best we know there was no murder.
