DVD/150: EVIL UNDER THE SUN (Guy Hamilton, 1982)

Guy Hamilton, who delivered the flat Vimto flavour of THE MIRROR CRACK'D two years earlier, proffered a cheeky glass of fizz with EVIL UNDER THE SUN, the fourth and last EMI Agatha Christie adaptation.

Hamilton had the advantage of a script by Anthony Shaffer who also wrote the earlier DEATH ON THE NILE.

The cast glitter like the sunlit sea of the Majorca locations, tongues firmly in cheek.  It plays like a weekend murder mystery; you suspect the actor playing the victim is sunning themselves on a terrace somewhere just out of sight of the sleuthing.

Peter Ustinov returns for his second outing as Hercule Poirot who is investigating who faked a large diamond brooch.  While staying at an exclusive Adriatic clifftop hotel, one of the guests is murdered in broad daylight - and while all the other guests had a reason for doing it, they also all have unshakeable alibis.

 

 

Shelf or charity shop?  With the cast all popping like champagne corks, Anthony Powell's delicious costumes, John Lanchbery's effervescent Cole Porter-influenced score and charming title water-colours by Hugh Casson, it's sunning itself on the shelf.  Best supporting performance?  Maggie Smith as hotel owner Daphne - she delivers definitive Mag! Her wrists and elbows contribute as much to her performance as her dry delivery, landing her lines with the timing of death.  Sadly she has too few scenes with her character's nemesis Diana Rigg - one of her few successful film appearances.  Best unsupporting performance?  Nicholas Clay's swimming trunks...

 

DVD/150: DEATH ON THE NILE (John Guillermin, 1978)

The second of EMI's Agatha Christie adaptations was based on her 1937 novel and featured a new Poirot.

Albert Finney was unable to repeat his Hercule Poirot so Peter Ustinov replaced him and gives a more humane performance of the character and does not over-pitch it as he tended to do.

Heiress Linnet Ridgeway steals her best friend Jacqueline's boyfriend Simon, but Jacqueline appears on their Egyptian honeymoon, taunting them at every turn.

They elude her by boarding a Nile cruise whose passengers all bear Linnet a grudge: a German doctor she has ridiculed, a widow jealous of her pearls, the widow's companion whose family was ruined by Linnet's father, a romantic novelist sued by Linnet for libel, Linnet's embezzling lawyer - even her maid!

Jacqueline suddenly reappears and joins the cruise.  That night, in drunken hysterics, she shoots Simon in the leg.  The next morning, Linnet is found dead...

Shelf or charity shop? A much-loved film of mine so one for the shelf.  The pace sometimes seems to match the leisurely cruise - in ORIENT EXPRESS, Sidney Lumet's suspects appeared to have no connection to the victim, here Guillermin has to have each of his confront Linnet with their grievance and then, when questioned by Poirot, he shoots possible scenes of each one killing her; it does get a bit repetitive.  But any time spent watching Angela Lansbury's gloriously drunk novellist, the delicious sparring of Bette Davis and Maggie Smith, and Mia Farrow's quite remarkable performance of the playfully obsessive Jacqueline, is marvellous. Added to this, Anthony Powell's Oscar-winning costumes, Nino Rota's sweeping score and Jack Cardiff's lush cinematography makes it a joy to experience.  Guillermin's best sustained sequence is the build-up to the attempt on Linnet's life in the Karnak's Hypostyle Hall as the suspects slowly drift from sunlight into the shadows, seemingly circling Linnet and Simon, in echoing silence...