Agatha

Michael Apted created a truly beautiful movie in this period piece. Watching it was an exercise in restraint, beauty, and remarkable taste, each frame seemingly more beautiful than the next. Again, Ms. Redgrave delivers a nuanced but powerful portrayal of this equally powerful mystery writer, who's real life disappearance was thoughtfully imagined in this thought-provoking film. Perhaps the choice of Dustin Hoffman was a bit of a stretch, when his physical height often seemed a little incongruous combined with the extreme height of the statuesque Redgrave, especially during the single love scene. That said, Hoffman's performance was more than up for the task, revealing a degree of stoic steadfastness and street smarts that makes the entire enterprise move along quite well, in spite of its generally slower pace, which English films generally employ to good effect. Never having heard of or seen this film before, catching it on TCM was an interesting and captivating delight.

In 1926, when her marriage with a stiff colonel has run down, Agatha Christie mysteriously vanishes. In the middle of both police and public investigation after the famous writer, an American journalist finds her in a Harrogate spa-hotel where, under a pseudonym, she prepares an elaborate revenge against her husband's lover.

Straightly fictitious solution to a famous and still unsolved real-life disappearance, with more attention to gleaming period detail and chillingly murky atmosphere than to suspense or credibility, while Redgrave's finely sensible portrait is downed by the somewhat strained and out-of-place casting of Hoffman as love interest. Eventually, this glossily romantic thriller has its own fascinations and is always well worth looking at, but the mystery is simply not as startling or revealing as one would expect from the Grande Dame of whodunit.

Pushy American journalist joins the search in 1926 Britain for mystery writer Agatha Christie, who has disappeared upon learning of her husband's extramarital affair, leaving behind a cryptic note taken to be suicidal. Exceedingly handsome production (plagued with troubles behind-the-scenes) is a fictionalized account of a relative non-event, the secret of which Christie apparently took to her grave. Screenwriters Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft seem to think they're writing a mystery story along the lines of something the real-life Agatha might have concocted (at least it was marketed that way) but, with so little happening, attention falls on the performances of leads Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave. Hoffman, exhaling cigarette smoke through his nostrils, is almost intentionally unappealing; he looks tiny standing next to his lanky co-star, and is unbearably mannered and stiff (it's one of his weakest performances). Redgrave looks stunning in her elaborate, Oscar-nominated '20s ensembles, and almost manages to create a character even though she's working from next to nothing (the picture is a showcase for her marvelously well-attired look and the graceful way she carries herself--all externals). The direction by Michael Apted is sleek and smooth, relying on the decorative detail to hold our interest. ** from ****

Fie on all adulterers!!!! Vanessa makes you feel her pain as she is rejected by her handsome cold husband and then subjected to his lies about his new mistress. We follow her thought processes, so good is her acting, as she mulls over suicide and the various ways it may be accomplished. Her masochistic love for this man is hard to believe, unless you've been caught up in the spell of a @#$$^$*%()_ , know what I mean? She certainly doesn't need him, financially.

Anyway, Dustin Hoffman comes along playing a hard-eyed, confident newspaper man, quite against type. He meets the wealthy owner of the paper he's stringing for eye to eye with great firmness. The way he brings another reporter into some high faluting meeting place over the snobbish insults of the wait-staff is a beautiful and subtle thing to watch.

I of course enjoyed all the English scenery at Bath, England at the old hotel there meant for folks in the old days to take different 'cures'. Of course, we're talking the idle rich here, and it was rather fascinating since we have our own Warm Springs, also used for similar type cures during the 30s and 40s.

Buy the movie for your big screen TV, and back it up with some Merchant Ivory for a great evening of hoighty-toighty England.

who could be discovered as embroidery of speculations. or as coherent explanation of an obscure moment of life . but its virtue is the meet between Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffmann. and the atmosphere. and, in same measure, the story who has the gift to be reflection of a period more than reflection of a life. this is the key of film - status of woman, need to escape from pressure, desire to become anonymous, the impossible love who could be a second chance and the drops of great literature from Emma Bovary to Anna Karenina. a beautiful film and impressive performances. and the flavor of a lost time. using the figure of Agatha Christie as pretext.