Until recently I'd avoided Michael Winner's 1988 movie version of Agatha Christie's Appointment with Death for two reasons. First, I'm not keen on the book. I recall that when I first read it as a teenager I felt it might have been called Disappointment with Death. For me, the characters didn't really come to life and I didn't believe in the criminal motivation, which was not, I felt, adequately foreshadowed. Second, I've never been a big fan of Winner, and the memoirs of Anthony Shaffer, who co-wrote the screenplay, were very negative about the film.
However, I decided to give it a go on realising that Peter Buckman also had a hand in writing the screenplay. Peter and his wife were very kind to me a couple of years back when I narrowly missed my own appointment with death. While en route to have lunch with them in Oxfordshire, my car was involved in a hit and run with a motorbike, a pretty terrifying experience. These days Peter is primarily a literary agent, but he's also a good writer. And the screenplay does have some rather nice touches.
There is a starry cast. Peter Ustinov plays Poirot in a very Ustinov way, as usual, while John Gielgud is the official detective, Colonel Carbury. The appalling Mrs Boynton, now the matriarch of a dysfunctional American family, is played by Piper Laurie, while Lauren Bacall is cast as the almost equally unappealing Lady Westholme. Winner cast his partner Jenny Seagrove as the young Dr King and David Soul as the lawyer Jefferson Cope. The two Boynton sons are played, rather underwhelmingly, by less well-known actors, but it's still quite a roster.
The story is significantly changed from the book, but here that's arguably a positive, given the flaws in the original. However, it's a shame that filming was done in Israel rather than Petra, which made a notable backdrop for the novel. Overall, it's not a brilliant movie, but it's competent: by no means as bad as some critics have suggested, and far superior (for instance) to The Alphabet Murders.
3 comments:
I find it interesting that you're not a fan of the book, as I really enjoyed it. It might be due in part to the fact that for some reason I'd never seen in bookshops until years after I started reading Christie, so it was almost a lost Poirot for me. Having said that, I much prefer the ending to the stage version.
We were underwhelmed by it as well. There were gaps in the screenplay, like when David Soul and Carrie Fisher disappeared only to return on camel accompanied by native tribesmen. And the children weren't nearly as browbeaten as the story implies. It seems like Christie wanted to show children who were raised to be totally dependent on their parents, with no agency of their own, under the hand of a dominant, amoral mother. The Japanese version with Mansai Nomura was much better, even though (as in "Evil Under the Sun"), once you see the murder method, you realize it needs Olympic-level athleticism and split-second timing to carry off.
Steve, Bill, thanks for these comments. I haven't seen the stage version or the Japanese version, but you have tempted me!
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