Lord Edgware Dies

The earliest Hercule Poirot screen apperance available for us to see (Austin Trevor had already played the role twice before, but those films are lost - forever?). It's a more enjoyable film than you might expect: it moves relatively well, the plot has the classic Agatha Christie switcheroo (although the finale is very rushed), Hastings and Japp are bumbling but what else is new, and Trevor himself as Poirot is amusing and doesn't take the part overly seriously; his French accent definitely sounds like Clouseau to modern ears, but at the time it probably passed muster. Overall, the film certainly has a place in my extensive Agatha Christie collection. **1/2 out of 4.

The usual cast of patricians in evening dress take serial murder in their stride in this typical thirties quota quickie in which it's hard to decide who's accent is the more outrageous, Austin Trevor's Belgian one as a moustacheless Hercule Poirot or Jane Carr's American one as chief suspect Lady Edgeware; the latter attended to by a memorably severe maid played by Phyllis Morris.

I was pleased to catch up with this early adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1933 Poirot story because of the authentic period feel. They were quick to film this only a year after the story's original publication so the contemporary 1930s situation involved is hot off the press so to speak. What was a culture shock for me was the somewhat switcheroo of the Poirot and Hastings I'm used to seeing in the David Suchet TV series. In this film Poirot is tall while Hastings is the short and fussy one which is a most direct contrast to how the characters are seen in Suchet style. The Suchet version being more faithful to Agatha Christie's creations in that respect.

Lady Edgware approaches Poirot to persuade her husband to grant her a divorce only for Poirot to find Lord Edgware had already granted it via a letter which must have been intercepted. Lord Edgware is murdered in his library quickly followed by the death of another character which would appear to be suicide. Lady Edgware has an alibi as she has been witnessed at a dinner in Chiswick at the time of the murder. But staff at Lord Edgware's mansion say they saw her there at that time and so Poirot has to discover which of these set of witnesses are correct.

Even though this film has to lose a lot of Christie's original plot elaborations to fit a B-mystery running time I think the film tells the story well. The vanity of Lady Edgware's American actress character is so good to see and she has some great lines to deliver. She complains that she could have had her husband bumped off much more easily if she had been back home in Chicago. And she takes to wearing black because it was so fetching at her husband's funeral saying "black is very effective against white marble." I would say this is an enjoyable adaptation for fans of murder mysteries of the cozy English variety.

The reviews are,by and large,unfair. It was the early thirties and one should not ask for Finney's and Ustinov's movies or Suchet's TV series.

This is one of Christie's best books,in a golden decade ("the ABC murders ", " death on the nile " "death in the clouds","murder on the orient express ", 'the Tuesday club murders" ,ending with her triumph "and then were none" );if my memory serves me well , it's one sentence which makes the little gray cells discover the whole truth .

Written in 1933 ,the year before, it is anyway interesting for Christie's fans to see early movies based on her books;although not as good as "love from a stranger"(based on the short story "Philomel Cottage ), "lord Edgware dies " , it is ,for the time, an interesting adaptation.

Trevor may not physically be Poirot (no moustache,tall and not bald) ,but it's false to write there is no hint at Belgian :he has an accent and one can hear many French words in the dialog ( "mon cher ami" "mon Dieu",etc ) Hastings serves as a foil to him (it's his dr Watson),and when he hears that Lady Edgware might be a potential criminal, his tea goes down the wrong way .

Christie's fans should try and watch "the ninth guest" ,released the very same year ,not from one of her books, but contains the seeds of "and then there were none" .

If you forget that this is supposed to be the short, bald, mustachioed Hercule Poirot of the Agatha Christie books, this is actually a pretty good old British mystery. Some of the performances are a bit off - Trevor's French accent (no indication that Poirot is Belgian here) is overdone, Hastings is annoyingly stupid and clumsy, and the acting of the minor roles is amateurish - but Jane Carr is lively and lovely, and the Inspector is British stolidity at its best. The staging is awkward at times, but the direction moves things along nicely. Enjoyable on its own merits, but maybe not for diehard Christie fans.