The World of Hercule Poirot

The World of Hercule Poirot
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd (2023)]

We didn't really intend to make a tradition out of it, but at the beginning of 2022 I posted a piece about finishing a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle called The World of Charles Dickens; then, in 2023, another about completing a new puzzle called The World of Dracula to usher in the New Year:

Barry Falls: The World of Charles Dickens (2021)

Adam Simpson: The World of Dracula (2021)

This year, as you'll have gathered from the picture at the head of my post, we have the world of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot - and here I am starting on the task on (or about) Christmas day:

So why Poirot? I can remember a time when some people adopted a rather sneering attitude towards Agatha Christie. Not a real author, they said (whatever that means) - a mere hack, a penny-a-line writer with no real sense of style of atmosphere.

Agatha Christie (née Miller) (1890-1976)

She was contrasted adversely with more self-consciously literary crime writers such as Dorothy L. Sayers and G. K. Chesterton - wordsmiths for whom detective fiction was simply a day-job, a way to finance their more artistic endeavours. How absurd - and patronising - all that sounds now!

Ilya Milstein: The World of Hercule Poirot (2023)

I guess what did it for me - and, no doubt, for many others - was David Suchet's superlative interpretation of the character in the wonderfully entertaining British TV show Poirot, which ran for a quarter of a century, from 1989 to 2013.

Poirot: 70 episodes (UK, 1989-2013)

I'd read a number of the books as a teenager (my father had a huge collection of them upstairs jammed onto an old wire display frame he'd liberated from a local stationery shop which was going out of business; it made a horrible graunching sound when you swung it around, so we always referred to it as 'the squeaker' ...)

I, however, I tended to prefer such stand-alone mysteries as Crooked House (1949) and The Hound of Death (1933) to what seemed to me then the more predictable puzzles of Poirot and Miss Marple (let alone the egregious Tommy and Tuppence).

Sidney Lumet, dir.: Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

I did enjoy Albert Finney's interpretation of Poirot in the original 1974 movie, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) that of Peter Ustinov in Death on the Nile (1978) and its successors. David Suchet took the character in an entirely new direction, though: away from slapstick to the intensely serious world Poirot himself inhabits.

It's not that the Suchet Poirot isn't funny - it's just that he himself is completely unaware of the fact. Ustinov, in particular, tended to play to the audience on the other side of the camera. Suchet never does that.

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Which leads us to the vexed question of Kenneth Branagh's Poirot trilogy (if it actually is a trilogy, that is - there seems little reason for him to stop at three if they're still pulling in audiences). There's no question that they're all sumptuous-looking films, with dazzling casts of A-listers.

They are awfully gloomy, though. Branagh's Poirot is constantly castigating himself for various crimes of omission (and commission), and large slabs of invented biography - his First World War service, for instance - have been rather awkwardly shoehorned into the original plots.

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: Death on the Nile (2022)

It's hard not to admire the durability of stories which continue to invite this kind of reappraisal and reinvention so many years after they were written, though. The ingenuity and originality of Agatha Christie's plots continues to astonish after all this time. She was, it seems, constantly being castigated for offending against the spirit (if not the letter) of the oath sworn solemnly by members of the Detection Club:

Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition , Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or Act of God?

It was Monsignor Ronald Knox who codified these rules into a set of Ten Commandments (or Decalogue) for detective writers:

1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9. The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

It was claimed - at least by some - that the central conceit of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), where the narrator is himself the murderer [sorry for the plot spoiler for those of you who haven't read it - but it has been in the public eye for the past century, so I do feel that it's roughly equivalent with revealing that Hamlet dies at the end of the play] was not really an acceptable innovation, but with the passage of time it's Christie's brilliance as a fabulist is what shines out from these early novels, in particular.

Kenneth Branagh, dir.: A Haunting in Venice (2023)

In any case, as the proverb has it, "the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.' Whatever your opinion of Branagh's own innovations, the result is certainly very watchable, if a little too self-consciously Orson-Wellesian at times. In any case, it's very much in the spirit of other modern adaptations of Christie. Such films as Crooked House (2017) and And Then There Were None (2015) showed that there was still lots of room for manoeuvre in these old tales.

For me, The ABC Murders (2018) went a step too far. John Malkovich's portrayal of Poirot as an aging loser suffering from depression at his failing powers was certainly original, but not precisely enchanting - if that's the right word. The joy and zest of Christie's story was lost in a morass of self-pity (together with a truly awful performance by Rupert Grint as an grim and humourless young police detective). But no doubt the book will survive it, and go on into further incarnations in the future ...

That is, if the Agatha Christie Estate can be dissuaded from rewriting all her old books in line with modern sensibilities. It's not that it's not shocking to come across the "n-" word in the original title of And Then There Were None, and the offensively racist and misogynist attitudes of many of Christie's characters might well be a stumbling block to some readers (as they are in that throwaway remark about "Chinamen" in Knox's Decalogue, quoted above).

But Bowdlerising Shakespeare doesn't seem to have done much good in the long run: except to illustrate the absurdity of rewriting an author to fit a completely different cultural context. One of the many reasons we read is to learn about the past: how people lived, how they thought. If we try to recast them in our own (surely equally flawed?) image, then all we're really doing is adding another wing to our own hall of mirrors.

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A Happy New Year to All in
2024!

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Napoleon - For and Against

Ridley Scott, dir. Napoleon (2023)

Even bad Ridley Scott movies are generally worth seeing. As he himself has remarked, "I have an eye." There are definitely ravishing moments in Napoleon, as well as any number of nods to famous pieces of Napoleonic iconography.

Ridley Scott, dir. Napoleon (2023)

Most famously, of course, there's the above juxtaposition from the (alas, rather too short) Egyptian section of the movie, which echoes Jean-Léon Gérôme's classic late nineteenth century heroic painting:

Jean-Léon Gérôme: Bonaparte Before the Sphinx (1886)

Is it a bad film, though? The question is a complex one. Earlier this year I wrote a long blogpost about the (so-called) "Man of Destiny" on my bibliography blog.

Pieter Geyl: Napoleon: For and Against (1949)

I used there as my leit-motif there Dutch historian Pieter Geyl's classic analysis of Napoleonic historiography early and late. Written shortly after the Second World War, the inevitable comparison with a more recent charismatic dictator inevitably arose:

The case of the persecution of the Jews remains singular: for the rest we must be alive to the fact, when we compare them then and now, that although there is a difference in degree, there is none in principle.

Ridley Scott, dir. Napoleon (2023)

Recently I've been indulging myself by reading through English novelist Fanny Burney's letters and diaries, which cover the whole period of the Napoleonic wars - as well as their aftermath, the "White Terror" of the restored Bourbon regime.

Fanny was an almost grovellingly loyal admirer of the English Royal Family, whom she served as assistant Mistress of the Robes in the mid-1790s (interestingly, the period of George III's first madness). Subsequently she lived from almost ten years in France with her husband, Royalist general Alexandre d'Arblay, between 1802 and 1812.

Her testimony, then, while undoubtedly partisan, cannot be faulted for its quality of personal witness. Her defence of the systematic programme of executions which began immediately after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo, does, however, seem a little tone-deaf, to say the least:

Once restored to its rightful monarch, all foreign interference was at an end. Having been seated on the throne by the nation, and having never abdicated, though he had been chased by rebellion from his kingdom, [Louis XVIII] had never forfeited his privilege to judge which of his subjects were still included in his original amnesty, and which had incurred the penalty or chances of being tried by the laws of the land - and by them, not by royal decree, condemned or acquitted.

As Fanny's Victorian editor reminds us, this rather chilling passage was written à propos of a daring attempt by three Englishmen to smuggle a French diplomat, condemned to death by the Bourbons, out of jail:

His wife implored the king's mercy in vain, Lavalette was confined in the Conciergerie, and December 21, 1815, was the day fixed for his execution. The evening before that day his wife visited him in the prison. He exchanged clothes with her, and thus disguised, succeeded in making his escape. His safety was secured by three English gentlemen, one of whom, Sir Robert Wilson, conveyed Lavalette, in the disguise of an English officer, across the Belgian frontier. For this generous act the three Englishmen were tried in Paris, and sentenced, each, to three months' imprisonment.

It's as well to bear this in mind when condemning the undoubted brutality and cruelty of Napoleon's wars. It's not as if the realms and rulers he displaced were models of compassion and probity. The imposition of the Code Napoléon on so many conquered regions was literally the first glimpse many of their inhabitants had ever had of legal process and the rights of man.

No wonder Fanny Burney and her like were so anxious to restore a system which guaranteed the subordination of the many to the luxurious lifestyles of the few.

Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon

However, while there may be a good deal to say in defence of Napoleon himself, what about Ridley Scott's movie? I was reading Michael Sullivan's enticingly titled article "The 21 movies we hated in 2023" this morning: Napoleon clocks in at no. 15, with an explanatory quote from film critic Ann Hornaday:

The biggest flaw in Napoleon, it turns out, is the actor who plays him. It's difficult to understand why [Ridley] Scott would cast Joaquin Phoenix - one of the most subtle, recessive, almost fey actors working today - to play someone with such a commanding temperament.

There's something in that, I'm afraid. Phoenix was brilliant as the Joker, and as the evil emperor Commodus in Gladiator, but he lacks the epic intensity of a Russell Crowe or a Harrison Ford. He behaves more like a sleepwalker than a man of destiny: so childishly pleased by the adulation of the midshipmen on the British ship he ends up on at the end of the bio-pic that any remaining doubts he might be feeling over Waterloo seem quite submerged.

Vanessa Kirby as Josephine

I would be interested to see the four-hour 'director's cut' we've been promised at some point in the future, but it's doubtful whether this central piece of miscasting can really be overcome no matter how conscientiously the rest of the action - and characterisation - is filled in.

All in all, Scott's film leaves one wishing that Stanley Kubrick had lived to complete his own big screen epic about the Emperor. The one thing I'm genuinely thankful for is that they didn't cast Adam Driver. He seems to star in every other film nowadays, and it's a relief that he must have been otherwise occupied at the time chasing dinosaurs in the singularly charmless 65 ...

Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, dir.: 65 (2023)

100 Years of Darkness

Bill Direen: 100 Years of Darkness (2023)

Bill Direen's latest poetry collection includes poems about 100-odd films which have enthused him - or at any rate attracted his attention - over the years.

There are definitely some rhymes there with my own filmocopia (to coin a term) - though perhaps more with directors than specific films. I too am a Jan Švankmajer devotee; Fritz Lang, Lars von Trier, Jean Vigo: the landmarks are all there.

Here are a few quotes from his book (one for each of the above):

Death
who lives in celluloid,
and is tired of witnessing suffering,
and of feeding off that
of which men are capable.

- 'Destiny'
[after Fritz Lang, Der müde Tod (1921)]

In memory of his murdered father
the filmaker raises a punkster flag
against dictator midgets on thrones
preening themselves in mirrors

- 'Zero for Conduct'
[after Jean Vigo, Zéro de Conduite (1933)]

The beginning is pain.
A professional slaps your rear faces.
A sailor suit dances a pretty dance.
Perseverance is your only name

- 'Jabberwocky'
[after Jan Švankmajer, Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta (1971)]

Shame, that happiness should exist
for you to debase.
Shame, that my great love must kill
what yours lacked greatness to save.

- 'Medea'
[after Lars von Trier, Medea (1988)]

I note, too, the presence of Alain Corneau's resplendent Tous le matins du monde (1991) and Paul Schrader's fascinating Mishima (1985), as well as such classics as Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), Fred Wilcocks' Forbidden Planet (1956) and Murnau's Nosferatu (1922).

As a kind of tribute to Direen's audacious project, rather than simply discussing his myriad choices - not all of which I'm familar with, in any case - I thought I might riposte with my own "top 100" movies, spread out chronologically over the past century of film.

You'll note, as you scroll down, that I've made up a few rules for myself:

1. Each director gets one film each - or else I could have easily filled up the tally with the likes of Hitchcock, Kubrick, or John Ford without ever straying into more esoteric regions.
2. They're arranged alphabetically, by director's surname, within each year, without worrying about exactly when they were released (since such things are staggered around the world, there doesn't seem much point in being too over-precise there).
3. Nor have I entered into the - otherwise vital - question of who is the actual 'author' of a film? The director or the screenwriter? Or (for that matter) a combination of both, together with cinematographer, designer, composer, producer(s), etc.? I tend towards the last hypothesis myself, but it's probably a discussion for another day.

There's definitely something revealing about such exercises. I note in myself a weakness for big spectacle, unabashedly emotive plots, and pretty broad humour. There is - to put it mildly - a lack of subtlety in many of the selections below. But these are the films I watch again and again - often in preference to far more celebrated items in each director's filmography.

I decided early on that if you're not being honest you might as well not bother. I like Jimmy Stewart, whether he's playing straight or serious. Sue me. I'm not a fan of teen movies in general, but I do have a weakness for The Breakfast Club. I don't know why, but the fact remains. Maybe you had to be there. I love ghost stories, Sci-fi, and heroic war movies. All of the above are well represented here.

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My Own Century of Cinema:

1. 1910s
2. 1920s
3. 1930s
4. 1940s
5. 1950s
6. 1960s
7. 1970s
8. 1980s
9. 1990s
10. 2000s
11. 2010s
12. 2020s

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1910s:

1. D. W. Griffith, dir. Intolerance (1916)



1920s:

2. Robert Wiene, dir. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

3. Abel Gance, dir. Napoléon (1927)

4. Fritz Lang, dir. Metropolis (1927)



1930s:

5. James Whale, dir. Frankenstein (1931)

6. Jean Renoir, dir. La Grande Illusion (1937)

7. Alfred Hitchcock, dir. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

8. Frank Capra, dir. Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

9. Victor Fleming, dir. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

10. John Ford, dir. Young Mr Lincoln (1939)



1940s:

11. Charlie Chaplin, dir. The Great Dictator (1940)

12. Walt Disney, dir. Pinocchio (1940)

13. Orson Welles, dir. Citizen Kane (1941)

14. Sam Wood, dir. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

15. Sergei Eisenstein, dir. Ivan the Terrible (1944)

16. Roberto Rossellini, dir. Rome, Open City (1945)

17. John Huston, dir. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

18. Carol Reed, dir. The Third Man (1949)



1950s:

19. Henry Koster, dir. Harvey (1950)

20. Akira Kurosawa, dir. Rashomon (1950)

21. Elia Kazan, dir. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

22. Billy Wilder, dir. Ace in the Hole (1951)

23. Vittorio De Sica, dir. Umberto D. (1952)

24. Henri-Georges Clouzot, dir. The Wages of Fear (1953)

25. Cecil B. De Mille, dir. The Ten Commandments (1956)

26. Alexander Mackendrick, dir. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

27. J. Lee Thompson, dir. Ice Cold in Alex (1958)



1960s:

28. John Sturges, dir. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

29. David Lean, dir. Doctor Zhivago (1965)

30. Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. Blow-Up (1966)

31. Sergio Leone, dir. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

32. Henry Hathaway, dir. True Grit (1969)



1970s:

33. Nicolas Roeg, dir. Walkabout (1971)

34. Bob Fosse, dir. Cabaret (1972)

35. Werner Herzog, dir. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)

36. Víctor Erice, dir. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

37. Pier Paolo Pasolini, dir. Arabian Nights (1974)

38. Roger Donaldson, dir. Sleeping Dogs (1977)

39. Hal Ashby, dir. Being There (1979)

40. Andrei Tarkovsky, dir. Stalker (1979)



1980s:

41. Stanley Kubrick, dir. The Shining (1980)

42. Ridley Scott, dir. Blade Runner (1981)

43. Paul Schrader, dir. Cat People (1982)

44. Philip Kaufman, dir. The Right Stuff (1983)

45. Miloš Forman, dir. Amadeus (1984)

46. David Lynch, dir. Dune (1984)

47. Peter Bogdanovich, dir. Mask (1985)

48. John Hughes, dir. The Breakfast Club (1985)

49. Peter Masterson, dir. The Trip to Bountiful (1985)

50. Geoff Murphy, dir. The Quiet Earth (1985)

51. Rob Reiner, dir. Stand by Me (1986)

52. Bruce Robinson, dir. Withnail and I (1987)

53. Terry Gilliam, dir. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

54. Jan Švankmajer, dir. Alice (1988)

55. Denys Arcand, dir. Jesus of Montreal (1989)

56. Peter Brook, dir. The Mahabharata (1989)

57. Joe Dante, dir. The 'Burbs (1989)



1990s:

58. Bernardo Bertolucci, dir. The Sheltering Sky (1990)

59. Anthony Minghella, dir. Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990)

60. Bruce Beresford, dir. Black Robe (1991)

61. Joel & Ethan Coen, dir. Barton Fink (1991)

62. David Cronenberg, dir. Naked Lunch (1991)

63. Lars von Trier, dir. Zentropa (1991)

64. Francis Ford Coppola,, dir. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

65. Clint Eastwood, dir. Unforgiven (1992)

66. Harold Ramis, dir. Groundhog Day (1993)

67. Tim Burton, dir. Ed Wood (1994)

68. Mel Gibson, dir. Braveheart (1995)

69. Christopher Hampton, dir. Carrington (1995)

70. Ron Howard, dir. Apollo 13 (1995)

71. James L. Brooks, dir. As Good as It Gets (1995)

72. Atom Egoyan, dir. The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

73. Charles Sturridge, dir. FairyTale: A True Story (1997)

74. Terrence Malick, dir. The Thin Red Line (1998)



2000s:

75. Curtis Hanson, dir. Wonder Boys (2000)

76. Wolfgang Petersen, dir. The Perfect Storm (2000)

77. Alejandro Amenábar, dir. The Others (2001)

78. Hayao Miyazaki, dir. Spirited Away (2001)

79. Irwin Winkler, dir. Life as a House (2001)

80. Spike Jonze, dir. Adaptation (2002)

81. Phillip Noyce, dir. Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

82. Mark Pellington, dir. The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

83. Martin Scorsese, dir. Gangs of New York (2002)

84. Greg Page, dir. The Locals (2003)

85. Roland Emmerich, dir. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

86. Michel Gondry, dir. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

87. Ken Burns, dir. Unforgivable Blackness (2005)

88. Joss Whedon, dir. Serenity (2005)

89. Christophe Gans, dir. Silent Hill (2006)

90. Clayton Jacobson, dir. Kenny (2006)

91. Joel Anderson, dir. Lake Mungo (2008)

92. Jane Campion, dir. Bright Star (2009)

93. Zack Snyder, dir. Watchmen (2009)



2010s:

94. Emilio Estevez, dir. The Way (2010)

95. Debra Granik, dir. Winter’s Bone (2010)

96. Steven Spielberg, dir. Lincoln (2012)

97. Ben Stiller, dir. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

98. Doug Lyman, dir. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)



2020s:

99. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, dir. Drive My Car (2021)

100. Christopher Nolan, dir. Oppenheimer (2023)

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I note a strange preponderance of rabbits in the above: Harvey, the invisible six-foot rabbit, who befriends Elwood P. Dowd in the 1950 Jimmy Stewart film of the same name; that creepy white rabbit, with his stuffing leaking out, in Jan Švankmajer's 1988 version of Alice; above all, those heroic little girls setting off to make their way back home in Rabbit-Proof Fence ...

More to the point, there were quite a few films that didn't make the final cut. I would have loved to include one of the Marvel Avengers movies: Infinity War (2018) or Endgame (2019), perhaps. But much though I enjoyed them, it was hard to persuade myself that they were actually very good movies, despite a few intensely stirring setpieces: "Avengers - assemble!"

Gregory Jacobs's brilliant thriller Wind Chill (2007) should have been in there. So should Jean Vigo's classic L'Atalante (1934). So should Cy Enfield's Zulu (1964). I'd have also liked to have included a Sergei Bondarchuk film: perhaps Waterloo (1970) rather than the more self-consciously epic War and Peace.

And then there was the wonderful James Baldwin documentary below. Perhaps that could be my no 101, in fact. It certainly deserves it.

Raoul Peck, dir. I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

So thanks again for the wonderful idea, Bill. I can't claim to have interpreted it in quite the same way that you did, but I doubt if I would have taken the trouble if it hadn't been for your fascinating collection of poems.

Bill Direen: The Bloke with the Blue Guitar (2019)

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