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Suchet is just at another level and played the part to a tee, like Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, no one is likely to top their interpretations of the characters they are portraying.
Yet to watch ABC Murders but as Then There Was None is the only decent BBC adaptation to date of recent times. Was not impressed with either Witness For The Prosecution or Ordeal By innocence so quite cautious about this and how Malkovich will tackle the Belgian sleuth.
We are set to tackle this tomorrow.
The BBC version is... questionable to say the least.
It seems like I've not missed very much then!
Yes, I believe it's considered one of the first serial killer novels in fiction too. I'll still try to catch this adaptation later on.
The original novel is actually an anti serial killer novel, it's a, whodunit disguised as a serial killer novel. The BBC adaptation goes out of its way to make it closer to a straight serial killer story.
What I disliked about this bbc version is that all the personal habits , the walk etc are missing.Turning his character into a bland detective, unless told you wouldn't have know which detective you were watching. As if you were to remake Columbo, but without the crumpled rain coat, the unbrushed hair and the " just one more thing " question".
There was also a few very bad wardrobe malfunctions, Poirot's collar and tie at the railway station looked terrible, as if it didn't fit.
I recently watched both versions of Murder on the orient express, and now actually prefer the new one.
Strange if she did as Fleming wrote nice things about her in OHMSS.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is overrated and based on a cheat. Christie was not a very good writer : she basically found a formula that paid off. Otherwise her stories are basically gossip with added poison, or the occasional dagger, or revolver.
Something I've found from reading just a few of her Poirot novels (Murder on the Orient Express and Death in the Clouds) is that she was a much less descriptive writer than Ian Fleming was and not as detailed in delineating characters as he was. Fleming is, to my mind, a much better writer.
Instead, plot is seemingly everything in these sorts of stories. You could even say that characterisation is sacrificed on the altar of plot. I suppose that's what Golden Age crime novels were about, though? I've not really read enough of her work, but that is what strikes me most anyhow, as a first impression.
I'd also be very interested to hear what Christie said about Ian Fleming, @Revelator!
Really?! Do tell!
I take it it has something to do with a certain Belgian in Britain? ;)
Christie's writing was very journalistic and her characters were at best stereotypes. Indeed the plot, or rather the resolution, matters more than characters or even plausibility. Her murderers are basically criminal amateurs, yet when they kill they use the most convoluted plans. So many things could go wrong, yet they succeed unopposed until Poirot or Miss Marple or another steps in. That said, I want to be fair: this was pretty much the case of the whodunits at the time, and from the ones I read Agatha Christie is miles ahead them when it comes to characters and even plausibility. At least her detective is a real person, not a diet, bastardised, poor man's Sherlock Holmes. Poirot has a personality that stands on its own.
I didn't mind that too much because in the novel Poirot is targeted/challenged by ABC partially because the murderer is an Anglo centrist, maybe even jingoistic, who thinks little of foreigner. The issue is that it never builts up to anything. In the end this new ABC is actually rather friendly and does not show any sign of racism.
Poirot was created at a time when it was patriotic to have Belgians as the good guys. But Christie herself, although francophone, was sometimes racist and definitely antisemite. I find it ironic that the actor who became for many the definitive Hercule Poirot is half Jewish.
Yes, well, I didn't mean to imply she wasn't successful. She evidently was one of the very best writers of the Golden Age detective novel and Poirot is a significant and enduring character. I enjoyed both Poirot novels I read immensely and would certainly like to read more of them in the future. That is why I created this thread, so that we could all learn from each other.
Perhaps I should give Dame Agatha some slack, since Fleming certainly wasn't great at plotting and that would have been a major failing to someone like Christie, for whom "plot is seemingly everything," as Dragonpol remarks. Interestingly, Elizabeth Bowen was a Fleming fan and positively reviewed a couple Bond novels for Tatler.
@Dragonpol I was merely commenting on her work. I have ambivalent feelings about it: I have fond memories of reading her, but ceased to be a fan when I read other authors, big and small. But ATTWN is the very first novel I read back to back.
Yes, certainly, I understand. I just didn't want it to come across as too harsh on my part! I enjoy her work too, and need to read more of it.
"But of course we've still got in England the old-fashioned detective story--the Agatha Christie type of story, with the suspects and the poisoning and all the rest of it. I personally can't read them, because I'm not interested enough in who did it. But lots of people, the Oxford don and the Cambridge don, go on writing this sort of book. Up to a point in America too--Rex Stout and Erle Stanley Gardner. They're all exactly the same, the Erle Stanley Gardner ones. I can't read them. But Stout I always read because his Nero Wolfe is such a splendid monster."
Albert Finney's death made me think of him playing the role. Physically he may have been the closest to the source material. I really like how he seemlessly gave Poirot his mannerisms while keeping his dignity. Not sure which one I prefer between Suchet and Finney.
Peter Ustinov's Poirot, I regret to say (as I love the actor), was a fat buffoon.
Yes, I agree that Suchet and Finney were the best on-screen Poirots. I've been watching a few episodes of Suchet's Poirot on DVD and he is just how the books describe him.
I'd like to see Finney's turn as Poirot again as I've only seen that film once back in 2004, having read the source novel back in 1999.
Although I've not seen all of his appearances as Poirot I tend to agree with you on Ustinov, @Ludovico.