Lord Edgware Dies

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" .

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.

Austin Trevor dons his best Belgian accent as "Hercule Poirot", the famous detective here called in to investigate the fatal stabbing of the wealthy Lord Edgware (CV France). It doesn't take us long to discover that his wife (Jane Carr) was seeking a divorce so she could marry the "Duke of Merton" (Esme Percy) - could that be a motive? Well he and Scotland Yard's finest "Inspector Japp" (John Turnbull) must find out. It moves along nicely, this, and is fairly faithful to Agatha Christie's original story. Sure, Austin Trevor's persona takes a bit of getting used to and the style of the production is very stage bound, but it is still quite an engaging budget murder mystery, with some decent acting efforts that I quite enjoyed.

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.

I love Agatha Christie stories, she was an excellent writer no matter what people think or say. I read her entire work. But I think casting-wise Hastings should have been Piorot and Poirot should have been Hastings but that's just my opinion, watch it and see if you like it. One of the earliest versions of Agatha Christie as far as I know.