AGATHA CHRISTIE SERIES MOVIE
Brought to the big screen the same year as Kenneth Brannagh’s considerably more lavish production of another Christie classic, “Murder On The Orient Express,” this movie didn’t really get its proper moment in the sun. “Crooked House,” one of her greatest novels, is an exception. The movie, on the whole, is a fairly faithful adaptation of one of Christie’s lesser novels, but it’s still worth watching thanks to a few interesting touches (like the extremely clever first scene, which I won’t spoil here) and Lansbury’s wonderful performance.ĭue, perhaps, to the immense popularity of her regular detectives, Christie’s standalone books rarely get a lot of cinematic treatment, which is a shame, because some of her best work is outside of both the Marple and Poirot series.
By the far the most faithful to the books, her Marple is a woman whose often sincere warmth and care for her neighbours conceals an avid appetite for murder and an exceptionally keen mind to solving them. “The Mirror Crack’d” is the only movie starring the character to feature a lot of the same trademarks afforded to the best Poirot films, mainly the illustrious cast stacked with huge stars: Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor are all having immense fun stretching the script’s admittedly thin characterization especially the last two, who find the humor in playing egocentric rival Hollywood actresses.īut entertaining as they are, it’s truly Angela Lansbury who carries the movie. However, the elderly lady, though just as brilliant as her Belgian counterpart, has not enjoyed the same success with cinematic adaptation as him: Marple movies are usually very modest, compared to the big-budget attention Poirot frequently gets (on television, at least, they are on par).
To those looking to get a little quick fix of Christie in their lives, there have been many good adaptations of her novels on the big screen, as this list will show (to be clear: only cinema releases were considered, so all made-for-TV movies are not included).Īny devoted Agatha Christie fan knows that Miss Marple is just as much of an iconic figure as Hercule Poirot, not only in Christie’s own oeuvre, but in the whole canon of crime fiction as well. No wonder she is, to this day, so immensely popular and addictive.
Serious literary criticism has contented with her as well, and some of her most celebrated work has been lauded in “Best Books of the Century” lists from respected vehicles. As her biographer Laura Thompson put it, Christie is “a monolith, a phenomenon” her legacy looms large over every single mystery writer in the world today and even beyond. Agatha Christie is the best-selling fiction author of all time, and anyone who has spent a few hours behind the pages of one of her books understands why: her capacity for surprising the reader, for turning narrative expectation on its head, is nearly unsurpassed.