by Mark Place
Christie Themes and Politics
Some of Christie's late 1930's books stress a theme of reconciliation, especially within a family. Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938) ends with the members of the family learning to accept each other, and end their suspicions of one another. Similar themes are found in Appointment With Death (1938). These books attempt to function on two levels: a literal look at families, and as an allegorical plea for the "family" of nations of Europe to reconcile, and avoid the war which everyone could see was looming. Later, Christie's spy thriller They Came to Baghdad (1951) will involve an effort at East -West reconciliation. Christie's stories work on a personal level. Her pleas for non-violence and learning to accept other people are cogent and touching. However, the political allegories in these novels are naive. Christie has no understanding of totalitarianism, either Nazi or Communist, and all the evils it brings.
They Came to Baghdad also involves a memorable plea for humility, a virtue unfortunately not much recognized in modern literature. She makes a strong link between humility and democracy in this book, one that is much more convincing than some of her other political ideas. In the novel Lord Edgware Dies (1933), Poirot mentions in passing what he regards as great literature: Molière and Lao-tsu. Both of these writers stress personal humility as part of our humanity. In both of these Christie works humility is seen as religious: in Baghdad it is explicitly seen as a Christian virtue, and Edgware invokes Taoism's founder Lao-tsu. N or M? (1941) also deals with themes of humility, politics and democracy. It suggests that many prominent Englishmen in the upper classes were secret Nazi sympathizers, and eager to collaborate in a Nazi conquest of England. Their motive: they were seduced by Nazi ideology, and hoped to be big shots in a future Nazi regime, where their actions would achieve, in their view, "personal glory". Christie views such people with extreme negativity, and states that they are the biggest menace facing England in 1941. Both They Came to Baghdad and N or M? compare such Fascist sympathizers to the fall of Lucifer, and suggest they they are motivated by the sin of pride. (See Chapter 1 and the end of Chapter 15 in N or M?, for Christie's look at Fifth Columnists and their motives in Britain.)
Christie's condemnation in N or M? of at least a substantial slice of Britain's upper classes is rarely noticed today. Also much overlooked: Hercule Poirot's endorsement of a left wing government for Britain, at the end of An Overdose of Death. While its political details are not spelled out, one suspects it is much like the Labour governments that came into power after 1945. Both of these books suggest that Christie's politics were actually fairly liberal. Christie often expresses sympathy with people who are "discarded" from society. Many people dismiss Miss Marple because she is an elderly woman. And Hercule Poirot because he is a foreigner. No one wants to employ Tommy and Tuppence at the start of N or M?, because they are middle-aged. One suspects that many Christie readers are themselves social rejects - it is an all-too-common phenomenon in real life - and that they find such Christie books consoling. Christie always shows that such rejects actually have much to offer. Seeing value in such marginal people is perhaps related to the Christie theme of humility.
Christie and Racism
Several of Christie's works suffer from racism. She was especially bigoted against Jews. During her lifetime, Christie's American publishers produced "cleaned-up" versions of Christie's works, with most of the racism removed. Because these editions were produced during her lifetime and with Christie's contractual agreement, they are authentic versions of Christie's books. I greatly prefer these American versions. When I recommend And Then There Were None and An Overdose of Death, it is these American versions I am recommending.
I do not see the point of promoting racist works, by Christie or anybody else. Racism has caused huge disasters in human history - and its costs are likely not yet over. One can enjoy almost all of Christie's artistry and best works - in versions that are racism free. Some other points: Much, but not all, of the worst racism in Christie is in her thriller and spy works. These books are not much good anyway. A detailed discussion of Christie and racism can be found in Victims or Villains: Jewish Images in Classic English Detective Fiction (1998) by Malcolm J. Turnbull.
A Note on the Christie Films
The best film made of a Christie work during her lifetime was The Witness for the Prosecution (1955). Based on her stage play, this courtroom drama features a superb performance by Charles Laughton as a fabulously articulate defense attorney in a murder trial. Just by itself, the scene where Laughton calls witness Marlene Dietrich a liar, is worth the price of admission. Thirty years before, Laughton was the first actor to play Poirot, in a stage adaptation of Roger Ackroyd, but his legendary performance today survives only in a series of photographs, another actor being chosen to play Poirot in the film version. After Christie's death, her novels began to be adapted en masse to film and television. Many of these adaptations, especially the early ones, although very popular with the public and the critics, leave me cold. They do not succeed at all in capturing the feel of Christie's works. The most overrated is Murder on the Orient Express.
The turning point for better adaptations of Christie was Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (1980). Evans was the first of the recent films to stress detection. Most of the earlier films avoided any sign of actual detection, perhaps because it was deemed of no interest to the public. A typical Christie novel begins with twenty pages, setting up a murder mystery. A hundred pages then follow of Poirot investigating the crime, trying to track down the killer. Finally, in the last thirty pages Poirot explains the solution. The central 100 pages of the sleuth detecting form the actual bulk of the novel. Early adaptations of Christie cut all this. The scenes leading up to the murder were stretched into perhaps an hour of film. Then there would be twenty minutes of melodrama. Finally, Poirot would offer his solution, also stretched out interminably, which he would seem to obtain out of thin air. One odd side effect of this approach, in addition to trashing Christie's storytelling, was to minimize the interest of Poirot as a character. Poirot is basically a detective. Stripped of any real detective work to do on the screen, his character becomes oddly non-functional. He becomes merely an eccentric man wandering around, talking with the other characters. The same is true of Miss Marple, and of the other Christie sleuths in the numerous bad screen adaptations of her work.
Evans changed all that. The early scenes of Evans set up the mystery, and the rest of the film shows the heroine and her friends trying to solve the crime. Like the novel, of which it is a faithful adaptation, it concentrates on the detective work done by the heroine. Evans is a long film: it was made as a two part TV movie, so it runs around three and a half hours. This gives the filmmakers leisure to explore every detail of the actual process of detection, as set forth in a Christie novel. Why Didn't They Ask Evans is in many ways a revolutionary film, with a radically different technique from most previous screen whodunits. It is perhaps closest in feel to the RKO B-MOVIE WHODUNNITS from the late thirties and early 1940's, such as Two in the Dark or the Falcon films, which also concentrated on their heroes sleuthing. But Evans has a unique feel all of its own. A genuinely experimental film, its maximalist aesthetic ("Lets include everything, and explore it all in great detail") is aided by the Christie novel on which it is based, which contains one of Christie's most meandering and overstuffed plots.
The stars of Evans, Francesca Annis and James Warwick, and the producer-director Tony Wharmby, were reunited for a series of one-hour films based on the Tommy and Tuppence short stories in Partners in Crime. While less experimental than Evans, the ratio of one hour of film (actually around 50 minutes) to adapt a twenty page short story still gave the series plenty of leisure to explore characters, plot and detection. Aided by beautiful production values, that capture the clothes and lifestyles of the 1920's, this series formed a most entertaining adaptation of Christie. The same team also filmed the first Tommy and Tuppence novel, The Secret Adversary.
A similar approach is
used for the TV adaptation of Poirot short stories starring David Suchet, that began in the late 1980's, and is still going on today. The Poirot series is shot on stunning Art Deco sets and locations, and furnishes a virtual primer on English Art Deco. It also has a first rate cast, and adopts a pleasantly non-campy approach to the characters, unlike many earlier screen adaptations of the Poirot tales. Oddly enough, Suchet once played Chief Inspector Japp in a Poirot theatrical film.
One has to point out that neither TV series, well done as they are, is entirely faithful to Christie's tales. In particular, both series try to dramatize elaborately each character in the story at hand, making them into detailed portrayals often way beyond their simple role in the short story. The effect is a "fleshing out" of the characters in the piece. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Film is a dramatic medium, and it functions best with strong characters. In addition, both humor, and political and historical material are often added to the pieces. The majority of the additions add a great deal of liveliness to the series, as well as being creative accomplishments in their own right. But they are not quite Christie, either.
There have been other pleasant recent adaptations of Christie, notably the TV-movie Murder With Mirrors (1985), and Appointment With Death (1988). The last substitutes 1930's Palestine for the novel's setting of Petra, but is otherwise largely a faithful adaptation. One wonders if Christie's What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! / The 4:50 from Paddington (1957) was actually written with a movie adaptation in mind. Much of the imagery is strikingly visual, as if planned for a film. The opening murder concerns pure seeing, as the title suggests. Christie also includes a major role for a beautiful young woman assistant for Miss Marple, someone not present in the earlier books. Christie perhaps felt that this would be a necessity for a movie. Ironically, when the book was indeed filmed a few years later as Murder She Said (1962), this young assistant was eliminated from the film version. This was the first of a series of Miss Marple movies. Another odd sidelight: much of the novel takes place at Rutherford Hall; in the movie, Miss Marple would be played by Margaret Rutherford.
Poirot TV Shows
Wasp's Nest "Wasp's Nest" (1991) is an adaptation of Agatha' Christie's 1928 Poirot short story. The story is a mere twelve pages long. It shows great artistic economy. Everything is compressed down to two scenes in the same location, with a short break in between. Poirot and one other man are the only characters who show up "on stage", and there is a great deal of vivid dialogue. Christie develops one of her patented and well constructed complex plots, which includes a detailed summary of a long prior history of the character and his friends. All this is opened out and dramatized surprisingly well in the film adaptation. All of the characters that are merely discussed on the page show up in the film, and they enact Christie's background story from its beginning. The characters are given professions: a philosopher, a model, a sculptor, the last whose main work is clearly a version of Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International (1919-1920), and whose other works are Constructivist facial portraits in the style of Antoine Pevsner. I also like the sculptor's Art Deco house. The model's fashion show is also photogenic. The one scene with the wasps in the story is expanded out into several for the drama, and made slightly more complex. A mysterious stranger is added to Christie's plot, and a well done bit about a minor traffic accident. All of these additions work marvelously well. But the filmmakers also preserve Christie's story, with almost all of her dialog. The film reaches the same moving ending as Christie's tale, with spiritual redemption at hand. This is an outstanding adaptation of a Christie story, and it shows especial creativity in that so much of the film had to be dramatized from what was essentially a plot outline in the original story.
Brian Farnham also directed some of the earlier TV series, The Agatha Christie Hour (1982). This adapted non series tales, such as those from The Listerdale Mystery. The best story in that collection is the exuberant jeu d'espirit, "The Manhood of Edward Robinson" (1924), and it similarly became the best episode in that TV series, under Farnham's direction. Farnham has also directed such Fay Weldon written TV scripts as "Heart of the Country" (1986) and "Growing Rich" (1992). He also works as a director on the British high tech mystery series, Bugs. This show is a big hit in Britain and France, but has not yet been seen in the US. I love high technology, and feel it is a pity that more American TV shows do not feature it.
The fashion show in "Wasp's Nest" is a very graceful piece of filmmaking. Similarly, "How Does Your Garden Grow" was opened out to a sequence involving a garden show. It has some extra Russian characters too who were not in the original story. Brian Farnham's technique in "Wasp's Nest" shows a Bazinian faithfulness to the technique of camera movement. A shot early on of Poirot and Hastings walking though the village, following a hedge, is a graceful tracking shot. The climax of the film makes dramatic use of the gate to the philosopher's house. The camera tracks Poirot as he walks through the gate, and implacably approaches the house. The scene inaugurates Poirot's final confrontation with the truth, and seems a prelude to this climactic event. The tracking shot fully establishes the spatial relationships in the garden, where the drama occurs. It also makes apparent the tremendous force of Poirot's mission. There are three regions in the garden - the house terrace, the lawn, and the gate. The terrace is where all the mystery plot takes place; the lawn is the locus of the characters' personal relationships, and the gate is where Poirot arrives and then leaves at the end - it is a site of his intervention - and salvation of the characters.
The Affair at the Victory Ball "The Affair at the Victory Ball" (1923) shows signs, by internal evidence, of being Agatha Christie's first Poirot short story, perhaps her first published short story of any kind. It is the first of dozens she will publish in 1923. The story opens with Doyle like flourishes, describing the history of the Poirot-Hastings relationship, in the style of Holmes and Watson. This is one of many Doyle like touches in Christie. Later, the story contains an Ellery Queen like Challenge to the Reader, although Christie does not use those words directly. The tale was not collected in book form until many years later, and was unlikely to have directly influenced the Challenge in Queen's first novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). I wonder if other 1920's writers did similar things.
Christie's mystery plot here is not one of her best. Biggest weakness: why does the killer execute this elaborate plot? It hardly seems to buy the killer anything. And it is most unlikely that such a complex scheme could be pulled off. Just as in Murder on the Links (1923) of the same year, we have plot complexity without much logic or justification. Christie is at least in there trying: creating a complex plot is at least a sign of creativity. The plot does show strong personal qualities: it is her first centering around the Commedia dell' Arte, a personal obsession, and one that will become virtually a Christie signature in later works. Just one year later (1924) she will create her Mr. Quin stories, in which Harlequin comes to life and serves as her detective. The story is also rich in incident, much of which is visually striking.
The film version of the tale (1991) picks up on the visual character of the tale to a fare thee well. The opening Victory Ball, taking up the first 15 minutes of the show, is one of the great set pieces of the Poirot TV series. It shows marvelous mise-en-scène and production values, from director Renny Rye and production designer Mike Oxley, respectively. Andrew Marshall's script also extends Christie's story by giving it a subplot involving radio drama, allowing the show to be partially shot at the BBC Broadcast House, an Art Deco monument of the era, and one consistent with the Art Deco motif of the series. The radio background also allows for some well done humor and drama. All in all, visual values are so high in this work that the viewer almost neither notices nor cares about the plot's lack of rigorous logic.
This film version, like others in the series, follows some basic principles, somewhat altering Christie's storytelling technique. For one thing, Poirot is made to be present at the Victory Ball, whereas in the tale he me
rely reads about it in the papers. In the stories, Poirot is a consulting detective; he gains realism by being brought in to solve cases that have happened elsewhere. In a drama, you want your protagonist to be involved as possible. At a risk of seeming to invoke coincidence, Poirot is often made a direct participant in the mysteries. Secondly, the tales are told in linear fashion. In the story, Christie summarizes the double murder right away, then gradually explores its details. In the film, we see the events in chronological order. This too, is a reflection of the needs of the dramatic medium.
Murder on the Links Murder on the Links, Christie's 1923 novel, was adapted into a two hour Poirot movie, one of the Poirot TV series. It was given beautiful location filming, apparently in Deauville, France, where the story is set. The highly complex plot makes little more sense on screen than it did on the printed page. At least it makes for a two hours filled with dramatic incident. The film is entertaining throughout, and shows what a sincere effort in filmmaking can do, even without the best source material. The film has a lyrical quality, and reminds one a bit of Jean Renoir, perhaps because of its location photography and French period setting.
