Agatha Christie wrote a Mystry

Happy 120th.

I suppose I might as well revive this one, but -- and I am truly surprised to be saying this -- Branagh's Death On the Nile was...good? At the least better than his Orient Express and I wouldn't actually mind seeing it again (when it hits streaming obv.). Both it and the Ustinov version are intense at points but this one felt honestly dark and portentous.

good to hear, my last movie in the theater was Knives Out so was thinking it might be good symmetry to come back with Death on the Nile

Everything lands better in this one, like Branagh figured out both how to deliver the character and deliver the film more successfully. A big bonus point is that it is way less unnecessarily busy than Orient was -- while there's inevitably CGI gloss it's far less distracting -- and the rising paranoia really works too. Hell even the origin story of his mustache, which I thought was a weird-ass joke when I heard it would be featured, turns out to make sense too! It almost makes me want to rewatch Orient again just to see how this casts that film in a bit of a new light.

Hum. My wife LOVES all A.Christie's stuff but Orient Express was SO bad we didn't go to this one. May reconsider that. Thanks !

how was the moustache origin story

"Poirot's Moustache : Origins"

"Miss Marple Metaverse Reboot"

Said origin story made both practical and emotional sense, again much to my surprise.

I like the sad detail in Curtain about how old-man-Poirot can no longer grow a moustache but keeps wearing a falsie out of pride.

Is there a point when one is too old to grow a moustache ? just asking since I have NEVER been able to really grow a moustache !

how does it compare to the mustache origin story in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp?

Saw this last night, it’s pretty fun with lots of good lines although giving Poirot a backstory was pointless and dumb, he is too old to have served in WWI if the Egypt trip happened in the 30s!

Also, was he supposed to have been hooking up with the singer at the end?

Poirot's a WWI participant in the books, inasmuch as there's a consistent backstory, so it's not out of place at all, I thought. And given Branagh's age it all made sense to me; seemed like they made him look a little younger in the backstory part.

Re your other question: didn't get that sense. More like a wistful bit of something unrequited.

Recently read and enjoyed this John Lanchester essay about Christie from a few years ago. He argues for her as a kind of formalist experimenter.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n24/john-lanchester/the-case-of-agatha-christie

In the Mysterious Affair at Styles (set in 1916), Poirot was already in his early sixties and a refugee in England because of WWI... a little old to be in the trenches. Don't think he was supposed to have ever been a solider, just a police detective.

He's a little like Homer Simpson in that respect

reading wiki article on christie, completely forgot about her disappearance story
this particular detail is great: "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave a spirit medium one of Christie's gloves to find her"

That John Lanchester essay is interesting and I remember reading it before. I'm a bit unconvinced by the case for Christie as the great formalist experimenter as I think a lot of the appeal of her books is that you know what you're getting. Having to vary the plot and mechanics as she did is the inevitable consequence of writing so many mystery novels.

The idea is entertaining that "Poirot is understood and accepted, indeed actively enjoyed, as a formal device, an almost Brechtian reminder of the artifice in which we are being invited to participate. He’s the most popular detective because he is the least plausible." . But Lancaster needs to do a quick survey of other detectives and their plausibility.

*Lanchester

For example, Scooby Doo.

"He’s the most popular detective because he is the least plausible" - I don't follow his working here

Of the famous series detective characters, Poirot is one of the flattest and least engaging, but generally that works as a feature rather than a bug; the reader isn't led into the weeds of his background, psychology, and relationships (as we sometimes are with characters like Wimsey or Marlowe) so the focus stays on the elements and events of the mystery.

Lanchester is OTM about Christie's normative view of human evil. In terms of massive international popularity + critical derision, her closest peer is probably Stephen King, but his handling of evil is sentimental compared to her chilly acceptance.

On that front, I've always enjoyed Marple's quiet but biblical sense of vengeance; at the end of a few of the novels, she allows herself a moment's happiness in the knowledge that the murderer's been caught and is awaiting execution. It's always unexpectedly cold and effective.

I don't quite agree about Poirot being unengaging - the novels where he doesn't turn up till page 80 (and there a lots of them) are often boring until he arrives. And as with Marple, the moments when he gets emo (Cards on the Table, Lord Edgware Dies, Curtain) are more effective because of their relative scarcity

That said Hercule Poirot's Christmas is probably one of the best, and that's a full-on flatness-a-feature-not-a-bug Poirot novel

I don't remember which Marple it is, but there's one where she figures out that a dead body isn't who it's supposed to be because the fingernails were chewed, and the ostensible victim was a lady of good birth who would never do such a thing. That's how I always think of Marple, as this judgy old classist.

Ah, it's The Body in the Library. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_in_the_Library

The thing I like about Christie is that no matter how neat and jigsaw-puzzle her plots are, no matter how thin and stylized her characters are, I always end up feeling as if I'm reading horror. If I read her late at night I end up afraid to go to bed, just like a kid scared of the dark - hairs prickling, looking twice into every corner, jumping at my own reflection in the mirror. And she does that in the most mundane settings, without any of the overt trappings of horror writing, just a pervading sense of wrongness. Her writing gives me the psychopath creeps; there's a sense that somewhere in this story, someone is evil - not comprehensible, not redeemable, not entirely human - but also sane, and apparently normal; they could be anyone. And it's odd, and confusing, and very distinctive, because you usually expect that atmosphere in a noir or a psychological thriller, something with characters - not in the kind of mystery where eight cardboard cutouts are staying in a country house and a detective with a comic accent is poking through clues.

My favorite Marple moment is when she illustrates a point about human memory by recapping the storm scene in A High Wind in Jamaica.

For a long time I was under the impression that Marple was Christie's cozy, comic alternative to Poirot, but the opposite is more the case; she's a much stronger and stranger character.

there's a sense that somewhere in this story, someone is evil - not comprehensible, not redeemable, not entirely human - but also sane, and apparently normal; they could be anyone

i feel this is one of Christie's main themes, the real horror hides in the mundane and anybody can be a murderer. pretty typical for classic mystery books to have some super gothic setting (The Hound of The Baskervilles, i'm looking at you) and Christie is really good at creating the atmosphere, but i wonder if Miss Marple books were a way to subvert that, a boring sleepy village instead of some exotic setting (and while it's a Poirot book, the very title of "Evil Under the Sun" was a similar statement).

Miss Marple herself is an expression of that. you can't surprise her, because she really thinks that anybody can become a murderer. it reminds me of Father Brown's "i kill all those people" speech.

but yes, the settings help too, and Christie is really good at painting a creepy atmosphere with very few strokes. "N or M?" particularly.. reminds me of Ngaio Marsh's excellent "Clutch of Constables" (and Marsh's writing and themes in general remind me of Christie a lot, similar grim practicality, concise writing and sense of humour poking through)

to fix my typo, quoting what Father Brown said exactly: "You see, it was I who killed all those people."

IIRC the Joan Hickson adaptations were pretty scary - the murder in 450 From Paddington (a woman on a train sees a strangling in another train on the tracks beside them) terrified me. And there is something inherently chilly about the quiet documentary-style direction of many BBC dramas shot on film in the 70s/80s

(Which is to say, that sense of uncanny and evil is definitely there in the books, but only the old Marple adaptations seem to notice it)

Death on the Nile (2022) not a bad adaptation!

I was slightly weirded out by the 50s/60s soul music in a late 30s period piece, but then realized Sister Rosetta Tharpe had at least cut some of the originals in the late 30s/40s.

Audio for the first nightclub scene seems to be from the 1960 Antibes Jazz festival, this take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoZoilbA48w

Anyone know where I can find this in a cleaner version? Just the audio I want, thought maybe I could avoid buying this weird Italian compilation
https://www.discogs.com/release/8663145-Various-1-Festival-Del-Jazz-Di-Antibes-Juan-Les-Pins-1960-Live

Also - as far as I can gather Rosetta Tharpe did not play UK until 1957, but how can anyone perhaps enlighten me on how far fetched is the idea of presenting an integrated proto-r'n'b/soul outfit in a London nightclub in the 30s? supposedly there would be at least some chance of catching something slightly similar in New York, maybe Chicago, Kansas City?

Let me know if I should take this to rfi: sister rosetta tharpe but I did see some knowledgeable posters (and thread action) here