Marple, Poirot (BBC)

Now and again, my brother and I pick up DVDs of the BBC's Marple and Poirot shows. We just finished up a couple this week. Bear with me while I meander.

Marple lurches between relatively faithful to the plot of the original book, with some sex and/or lesbians thrown in, and the occasional POC character or bit of incest, both treated with considerably more -- how do I put this - calm acceptance than I recall from the Christie novels. (This is not to say that Agatha Christie was a major racist, exactly, although some of her pre-war statements about Jews can be discomforting, but rather that multicultural casting and discussions of the impact of incest in society were not high on her list of priorities, and her one major attempt to write a more multicultural cast -- Hickory Dickory Dock - was just not a very good mystery. Anyway.) The other major shift in quality, and one you can't always predict from the DVD cover, is who is playing Miss Marple: the first Marple, Geraldine McEwan, is very good, sharp as a button, acidic, and yet easily leaping off into the digressions of "I remember so-and-so in St. Mary Mead....", managing to show that she is genuinely thinking through these otherwise completely off topic digressions.

I find myself oddly more fascinated by the shows that go wildly off the point and plot of the original novel, partly because with those shows, I don't know who did it. (And in the hands down worst Marple episode, bar none, the adaptation of Why Didn't They Ask Evans/The Boomerang Clue I still don't know who did it in the show. I know who did it in the book, which had the typical tight, crisp plotting of vintage Christie that makes no sense when you step back and think about it but works within the context of the book, but the filmed version not only added Miss Marple (who wasn't in that book) but a lot of very confusing and poorly edited stuff about China and poorly edited flashback scenes with left both of us going, huh?)

Sometimes, as in By the Pricking of my Thumbs, the going off the plot works -- that was a fairly effective episode if seriously hampered by a couple of inexplicable edits and some terrible acting by the American in the cast, who was just awful, and if you, like me, were willing to repress all memories of Tommy and Tuppence from the books, and willing to accept that solving a murder mystery will also solve your alcoholism problem. (It's a two for one deal!) Others....distinctly do not, providing an model lesson on what can happen when you go off your planned plot: quagmire.

Going off the planned plot is not always a bad thing. I'm currently writing a story where the original plot that I thought up for the original concept just wasn't working, and a side element that I just started typing out has sort of overcome the main story, meaning that I'm going back and transforming the former side element into the main story - and this is working out much better. Then again, I rarely have a plot in mind when I start writing a short story -- the plot sorta evolves as I go along. Sometimes, some of those evolutions have to be tossed out.

Marple doesn't toss out all of the non-working evolutions. That's its problem. Along with the solid question of why bother to change the plots of the one writer pretty much known and celebrated only for plot*, but that's a separate question, I suppose. Do the producers genuinely think that anyone is picking up an Agatha Christie novel for its nuanced characters and insightful depictions of British society? And while I'm at it, throwing a romance into each show is nice enough, I suppose, but I don't think anyone is reading an Agatha Christie novel for a romantic happy ending, either.

Poirot retains considerably more faithfulness to the original books, and tends to be a better show -- but less, for me, absorbing. I guess because at this point, I'm as interested in seeing failures as successes: a large part of figuring out what works in writing includes figuring out what doesn't.

ETA: Meant to add, the main thing we end up thinking, after every episode, is why on earth do people continue to welcome Poirot and Marple anywhere since so many dead bodies follow in their wake? Angela Lansbury had the same problem in Murder, She Wrote, of course.

* To be fair, Christie also mastered a deceptively simple and effective prose style that allowed her readers to focus only on the plot, one reason for her success. But again, that just goes back to why we read Christie - it's the plot.

It Happened One Night

My brother and I just finished watching It Happened One Night, for two reasons: one, he was convinced that no Academy Award Best Picture winner has ever had a happy ending (I guess Return of the King is mildly arguable here) or been a comedy (Return of the King is not arguable here) and that all Oscar winning films are inevitably depressing (I think we're back to the arguing), and two, this was my maternal grandmother's hands-down favorite film despite her equally hands down disapproval of Clark Gable's private life, in particular hanging out with that awful Joan Crawford person. (My paternal grandmother was slightly less disapproving but could and did gleefully recount each and every woman that Clark Gable slept with and the marriages, in order.)

This is the sort of film that doesn't need a review, exactly, but some things I noted while watching:

1. Good bizarre aliens do people smoke a lot in 1930s films. Like, all the time. Like, every single character. Pause two seconds and someone's lighting up. What makes this even more striking, in this film, is that Peter and Ellie can't afford food and are skimping on meals and stealing raw carrots and yet somehow or other are still managing to smoke. Peter trades his suitcase, nearly all of his clothing, and his hat for some gas – and yet hangs on to the pipe. How cheap were cigarettes back then?

2. There's a marvelous bit where a band just happens to be in the back of a Greyhound bus, and they just happen to start playing, and everyone is singing along, not a single MP3 player or iPod in sight. I had to wonder if anyone would even notice these days….although I also remembered, not too long ago, being with my singing group in a Disney busy and breaking into "Rose, Rose," (a round) and following that up with an English madrigal and getting rather stunned applause, so it can happen.

3. I'd heard that portions of this film inspired the creator of Bugs Bunny and Pepe LePew, but this was the first time I saw it. On a related note, wow, is the guy who inspired Pepe LePew uninspiring and ugly in the film -- I mean, definitely gets us on the side of hoping Clark Gable wins the girl, and definitely gives us an idea of how desperate Ellie is before her escape and how right her father is to want the marriage annulled (if actually forbidding the marriage, in the 20th century, seems a bit much). Just -- ugly and blah and uncharming with no redeeming values except the ability to fly a plane.

4. I should be upset by the fact that early in the film, Ellie's father slaps her in the face, and later, Peter spanks her while carrying her across a river. I should be, but I'm not, for three reasons: one, both are very light strikes that do not and are not meant to cause pain or injury; two, in the first case, Ellie's father is responding to the fact that the adult Ellie has just overthrown a tray of food that he's been eating; three, Ellie doesn't just take the slap from her father, or agree she deserves it; she gets furious and takes off – starting the film; and four, let's face it, the gender relations in this film are not exactly contemporary.

5. Particularly the bits where they show up at a small roadside camp place/hotel – with twin beds in each cabin – and have to pretend that they are married in order to share a cabin.

6. But for all that, kudos to a film that presents Ellie as, yes, highly sheltered and naïve and more than occasionally unthinking, but also smart, determined and not afraid to use her sexuality when necessary. And for creating a relationship that ends up being between two equals, based on respect.

7. No, I do not believe that Peter and Ellie waited until her annulment was official before sleeping together. Sorry. I'm astounded enough they made it through the entire film without a single kiss.

8. If you see it, the first twenty minutes of the film are, I admit, slow – I was wondering, on this rewatch, just why I liked the film so much – until Ellie and Peter end up in a cabin together. And then it sucks you in. By the time Peter was begging his editor for money I was yelling at the film "JUST GIVE HIM THE CASH ALREADY HE'S GOT TO GET BACK IN TIME!" (I've seen this film about, um six times.) And all tense until the scene of Ellie's wedding.

9…although, that wedding. Ok, well, since Ellie and King were already legally married and only lacked the church service part, I guess it's not a big deal that King saw the bride in her wedding dress before the wedding (although the amount that she's drinking ought to be raising some eyebrows) but what I don't exactly get is the timing: Ellie and her father talk, while she's all dressed up and ready for the wedding, she cries a bit, King shows up, they chat, Ellie's father calls Peter, who somehow has time to get out to Westchester or Long Island (whichever) and chat with her father; Ellie drinks more….

….and then, the same day, King apparently has time to head out, get into a little plane, and fly it over to her house for a dramatic wedding landing, which, ok, yes, but then why did he come by earlier? Just to annoy me and provide further inspiration for the character of Pepe LePew? We'll never know.

Anyway, despite the sound problems, the gender stuff, and my conviction that It Happened One Night would have been a very, very different movie with cell phones, good flick.