I went to see the new version of Murder on the Orient Express and thought
it was actually better in many ways than the 1974 version, which I had re-watched
a few days previously. More polished, better production values, a faster
moving narrative and at least in my opinion a better Poirot. To today’s audience
no doubt this film had a very big high octane cast but nothing compared to
the old one which is so top heavy with stars that you wonder if it will sink.
Think about this film comparison:
Lauren Bacall vs Michelle Pfeiffer
Ingrid Bergman (who curiously won an Oscar for this) vs Penelope Cruz
Martin Balsam vs Tom Bateman
Sean Connery vs Leslie Odom Jr
Vanessa Redgrave (who played Agatha Christie in Agatha) vs Daisy Ridley
John Gielgud vs Derek Jacobi
Michael York vs Sergei Polunin
Jacqueline Bisset vs Lucy Boynton
Wendy Hiller vs Judi Dench
Anthony Perkins vs Josh Gad
Rachel Roberts vs Olivia Colman
Colin Blakely vs Willem Dafoe
Richard Widmark vs Johnny Depp
Good casts in both but I think the first version wins hands down.
But then there is the character of Poirot – the Greatest Detective in the
World. There we have Albert Finney vs Kenneth Branagh. Certainly, Finney
is the better-known actor but he mangles Poirot badly with an accent that
swerves around like a bumper car from French to Italian to indistinguishable
to Eastern European to mumbling so that I could not even understand him at
times. He is also played loudly and coarsely. Poirot was rarely loud and
never coarse. Branagh though physically far from the Poirot of the books
plays him with flair and intensity with just the right amount of intellect,
compassion, egotism and obsessive compulsive disorders. The film makers also
make him into a bit of an action hero which is of course absurd, but this
is 2017. They did the same with Sherlock Homes.
Obviously, I went into this film knowing who the killer was and all the main
plot points and killer are the same in both films – so that took away any
suspense I might have had but I still enjoyed it. It appears that this may
be the beginning of future films with Branagh, who also directed this film.
At the end of the film he mentions that he is on his way to the Nile i.e.
Murder on the Nile. Covid has put a pause to that.
For reasons that I don’t quite understand, a few months ago I began reading
(slowly) Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple books (she also wrote a number
of other books) in chronological order. I read a bunch of these that my parents
had way back in high school but had not touched one in 40 years. Perhaps
it is this connection to my parents that got me started down this old-fashioned
mundane road, but I am enjoying them on some primal nostalgic level. It is
not great writing, Christie seems unable to spend any time creating characters
beyond a shallow stereotype, very little description of surroundings or mood.
She seems to have no interest in those of the lower class (unless they are
servants) with her books almost always set among the nobility or upper class.
She also has a clear tinge of anti-Semitism with recurring remarks about
Jewish people. Her books are all plot and dialogue. And thankfully short
in a time when all books seem to go on forever. They are comfort food. We
watch our two protagonists (often through a third person narrator) work their
little gray cells and display their customary and familiar idiosyncrasies
as they follow the clues to the end. You know it will end in a declamation
in which Poirot or Marple gathers the suspects in a room and fingers the
surprise killer after going through an oral narration of the clues and misdirection.
Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time – over 2 billion books
sold. B as in billion. Her books have been adapted to film, radio and television
many times. She has the longest running play – Mousetrap – that opened in
1952 and is apparently still running. So she is still popular in a jaded
time of violence and sex in crime novels though easily mocked by many for
her writing style and polite murders. To some degree, the hard boiled pulp
fiction of America was a response to her books as well as others of similar
ilk like Sayers, Allingham, Marsh, Carr.
It is not surprising that her books were usually set in an upper class milieu
as that was her life – born to a well-off family she spent her youth traveling
the world and going to various schools. She married a British army officer
in 1914 and began to write mysteries. Her first published book (after a few
were declined) was The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 featuring Poirot
(and was free on Kindle the last time I looked). In this first book the narrator
is Hastings and he was to take on this role in many of Poirot’s books – usually
made to look rather foolish and none too bright. Christie marries off Hastings
in the next Poirot book Murder on the Links three years later and has a new
narrator in her next and well-received book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)
– but Hastings was brought back later from his home in Argentina.
Meanwhile her marriage to Archie Christie crumbled and in what was a real
life mystery the very depressed Agatha disappeared for 10 days and the country
went on high alert looking for her. She turned up but never explained where
she had been. She divorced her husband in 1928. At the age of 39 she was
planning to go on vacation to the West Indies but a few friends persuaded
her to go instead to Iraq – by of course The Oriental Express. The trip changed
her life – she became fascinated with that part of the world and its history.
She spent large chunks of time over the next 30 years being involved with
archeological excavations and married an archeologist who became quite well-known
for his discoveries in the ancient city of Nimrud. She would work on the
excavations in the morning and write in the afternoon.
She was to write 33 Poirot novels and many short stories and 12 Miss Marple
novels (the first being in 1930 but the next one not being until 12 years
later – so it took her a while to warm up to the very middle class elderly
lady). Christie hated the Margaret Rutherford portrayal of Miss Marple in
four films for good reason (I quite enjoy them – but they are idiotic). The
best Miss Marple was clearly the steely eyed Joan Hickson in the TV series.
During WW2 Christie had written what was to be the final stories of Poirot
and Marple and put them in a vault for 30 years. In Curtain, Poirot passes
away. It was released in 1975 and Sleeping Murder with Miss Marple was published
in 1976. Christie was to die in the same year.
