Lord Edgware Dies

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.

The beautiful Lady Edgware asks Poirot to help her get rid of her husband, soon after her plea, he's found dead, stabbed in the neck, but she has an alibi.

I think it's easy to overlook that this was made back in 1934, I'm watching this almost eighty years on, and for the most part it's well made, competently acted, and actually pretty accurate, the likeness from the original text that is.

It's atmospheric, it flows well, I actually liked the staging. I felt that they captured the tone of the book, and as for the killer, I felt that they got them, and their motives spot on, not too sympathetic, but devious and cunning.

On the downside, the accents are enough to make Rene Artois blush, they are hilariously bad, Poirot sounds a little comical, Lady Edgware is inconsistent let's say, sadly the character of Hastings is an utter fool. Poirot, has no moustache, and isn't Belgian, I can imagine Christie had a few words to say about that.

I'd love to see this get a commercial release.

7/10.

During the early to mid-1930s, Austin Trevor played Hercule Poirot in several films. Seeing them now, it seems strange as Trevor was very tall...yet in the books, Poirot was 5'4"! He also doesn't look much like modern interpretations of Poirot, as he's missing the moustache and style of the great Belgian detective. Oddly, Poirot's partner in the story, the Captain, DOES look much like Poirot from the Agatha Christie novels! This is a big strike against "Lord Edgware Dies" from the onset.

Lady Edgware is a vain and narcissistic woman. She approaches Poirot and asks that she intercede on her behalf with her estranged husband. According to her, her husband refuses to grant her a divorce...and she says she hopes Poirot can convince him. Oddly, however, Poirot meets with the man and he's more than happy to grant her the divorce...which confuses Poirot. A short time later, Lord Edgware is found dead...stabbed. What's really going on here?!

Overall, this is a pretty lifeless installment of the Agatha Christie series....low in energy and curiously uninvolving. Not terrible but also not particularly good.

Lady Edgeware, played by Jane Carr, is a Hollywood actress married to C. V. France. She wants a divorce, and hires Hercule Poirot, played by Austin Trevor, in his third go-around as Agatha Christie's detective. The next day, France is stabbed to death. As long as he's there, Poirot uses his little grey cells to solve the murder.

It's a cheap version of the novel, with acting honors to Richard Cooper as Hastings, largely for his ability to save a shot by turning an error, like catching his umbrella handle on a door, into a minor comic bit. The rest of it is almost uninterrupted talk, as Trevor asks seemingly irrelevant questions.

My issue with Agatha Christie is this: she could plot the heck out of a mystery, playing endlessly with the bits of the classic British form, but she couldn't write very well. Her characters are all stock types; Poirot, for example, is Belgian - called French here - because this would permit her to indulge in a few pat phrases to stand in for an actual character. Being Continental, he didn't matter. Her Americans are standard British Stage characters, yokels with money or dumb and predatory women. Her choice of words is repetitious.

Ah, but her plots, her machinations with locked rooms and impossible murderers! That's where she excelled. And that would be the case here, were it not that the film is structured so that there is a severely limited number of suspects, and Poirot simply has to eliminate them. When he points the finger, will the criminal admit it's a fair cop? Probably. That's what the English do, isn't it?

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.