Teresa Reviews “The Body in the Library” (1984)

Fidelity to text: 4 and 1/2 garrotes.

There are minor changes, the most important of which is probably the addition of the village idiot (Malcolm) who discovers the burned-out car with the body in it. They also changed the date to about 1950 or so, instead of 1942 when the novel was published. Otherwise, this adaptation follows the text to the point of using Agatha’s own dialog.

Quality of movie: 4 and 1/2 garrotes.

It’s splendid. It’s also messier and closer to real life than ITV’s highly polished Marple series, first aired in 2004. Every single character in Marple (in the episodes I’ve seen to date) looks like they just stepped out of the beauty parlor and their buildings and grounds were freshly manicured so as to be presentable to the Queen. In Joan Hickson’s version, they don’t. Grass needs to be mowed, in other words. I would give this adaptation that all-important last half-garotte if the BBC hadn’t skimped on subtitles. I had trouble understanding what people were saying sometimes. Luckily, I know the story well. Still, subtitles are important! They make it clear what’s going on. Pay for subtitling, TV producers. Not all of your audience appreciates mumbling.

For all you fans at home, Bill and I have begun a new project in case I haven’t mentioned it earlier. We’re watching Agatha Christie film adaptations. There are many; we’ve counted over 180. This doesn’t include oddities like Knives Out (a homage to Agatha), films disavowed by the Agatha Christie estate (Innocent Lies), or the weird stuff like Doctor Who meeting Agatha herself and discovering what really went on during her eleven-day disappearance in 1926.

If we want to finish seeing them all in less than four years, we can’t stick to a viewing schedule of one every Friday night. We’ve got to watch a film on Wednesday nights, too. That gives me time to write a review of each adaptation while still working on my own books. It’s that pesky time management problem again, don’t you know. If I’m doing one thing, I can’t do another like write my Steppes of Mars series.

So here we are, interweaving the ITV Marple series (aired starting in 2004) on Friday nights with the BBC Miss Marple series (aired starting in 1984) on Wednesdays. The contrast can be jarring. The first thing (besides the criminal lack of subtitles in the BBC Miss Marple) you’ll notice is that anything filmed on videotape looks blurry and gray compared to film or crisp, high-definition digital.

But you get used to it. The softer focus adds a tinge of nostalgia.

The second huge difference is Joan Hickson. Joan is Miss Marple. Ms. Hickson was 78 when she filmed The Body in the Library and it shows. She is almost an octogenarian, not a woman in her sixties made up to look like one. There is a difference simply in the way she moves and holds herself. As in the novels, Ms. Hickson’s Marple doesn’t go racing after criminals. She lets other people do that, while she focuses on the brain work. She very realistically struggles with not being able to remember perfectly.

It feels very real. This woman is old. By contrast, Geraldine McEwan was 72 when she first played Miss Marple. Six years doesn’t seem like a lot and if you’re 22 and someone else is 28, it isn’t. When you’re 72 and someone else is 78, it’s a bigger gap, like the six-year gap between being age 2 and age 8. Your body changes rapidly at both ends of your lifespan.

The BBC people wanted to make this series as close to the source material as they could and, other than setting the episodes in the 1950s, it looks like they succeeded. At least, I think so, based on this single episode. We’ll see as time goes by.

I noticed a number of things. This England looks messy and unkempt. The people don’t look like they stepped out of central casting. Maybe it’s filmmaking in the 1980’s when the BBC cast what we in the U.S. call character actors in main parts. That is, the actors and actresses look normal like you could see them shopping at Walmart and not like stunningly beautiful refugees from beauty pageants.

The scriptwriters added a village idiot to account for the discovery of the burned-out car with a body in it. This works, although you could never do this trick nowadays. Too many people would complain that it was anti-village idiot despite the fact that every village has one. Or more. Those folks have families too and their families have to cope and so the village as a whole gets to deal with more challenging people, one way or another. Never forget that if you don’t have a village, you can end up in a snake-pit of an institution. In this case, the village of St. Mary Mead is caring and tolerant of our Malcolm although they do not take him seriously.

The scriptwriters also had various locals, including the constable, riding around on bicycles. In 1950, England was still recovering from World War II’s devastation. The country remained near bankruptcy. Rationing for various categories remained in place until the mid-to-late 1950’s. It’s even mentioned in the storyline, when the hotel manager comments that Conway Jefferson doesn’t seem to recognize that rationing exists.

Conway Jefferson is rich enough that it effectively doesn’t. He gets what he wants, except when he doesn’t.

Another good addition was seeing the interview with Pamela Reed’s distraught father. His behavior contrasts nicely with Josie Turner’s behavior on discovering that her cousin, Ruby Keene, was dead. It’s also a demonstration of how having your sixteen-year-old daughter murdered will destroy your life and your family’s life. You will never recover. It parallels Conway Jefferson’s loss of his legs, his wife, his son, and his daughter in a plane crash. That’s why he is still keeping close company with his son-in-law (Mark Gaskell) and his daughter-in-law (Adelaide Jefferson). They are bound together by mutual shared grief.

The other thing that really struck me about this particular adaptation is the sheer disdain everyone had for Ruby Keene, other than Conway Jefferson.

You can make the obvious case for Conway Jefferson’s infatuation. There’s no fool like an old fool and what could a rich, lonely, disabled old fool like better than a sweet-natured, cheerful blonde who resembles his long-lost daughter? And indeed, when we see Ruby interacting with Conway, she’s bright and chipper and attentive.

Everyone else, including her cousin, Josie, despise her for this. Yet everything we see of the actual Ruby on camera shows she’s exactly what Conway thinks she is. Raymond Starr, tennis pro at the hotel, admits he thinks Ruby is dim. He doesn’t see her as smart enough to be a gold-digger. He and other people tell the investigators that Ruby is obedient enough to do what her older, wiser cousin, Josie, tells her to do. That Ruby doesn’t have a boyfriend that he knows of. This is a telling point because if there’s one thing that staff in a large, luxury hotel know, it’s the details of everyone else’s personal lives.

Everyone goes into great detail about how Ruby is rising above her station in life. That Ruby is taking advantage of an old man, who everyone describes as strong-willed and intelligent. That Ruby is no better than she should be. That Ruby is manipulating Conway Jefferson. This is at the same time that characters tell Miss Marple and other investigators that Ruby is vapid and naïve! Vapid, naïve 18-year-olds don’t make good gold-diggers.

You can see the class divide right there on screen in front of you. Everyone is grubbing for money, desperate for money, yet Ruby is despised by her betters for being nice to a lonely old man. She’s not putting out for him.

We see Pamela Reed’s father’s grief when she is murdered. We do not see Ruby Keene’s family’s grief. Josie is the only relative we meet and she doesn’t care. What are we, the audience supposed to think? That Ruby’s death doesn’t matter? I got that distinct feeling, even from Miss Marple, who disapproves of murder.

Ruby Keene did nothing wrong, other than to have a lonely old man pay attention to her. He liked her and she, young and pretty, liked him back. You can see why. Conway Jefferson was safe. He didn’t paw at her like the male hotel guests undoubtedly did while dancing. He treated her well. Like a daughter, in fact, from what we see on screen. It must have been a relief. She could relax and let down her guard because an old man in a wheelchair didn’t want that one thing from her that every other man around her probably did.

It was fascinating to watch everyone else — well-bred, well-educated, upper-class people and their servants — despise Ruby Keene for doing what they, themselves, did. Marry for money and status.

Class differences show up all over the place. Watch the interactions between the village constable, Inspector Slack, Colonel Melchett, and Sir Henry Clithering. They all know their place in the hierarchy. It affects the investigation and who gets to question who and how aggressively. I didn’t notice the class divide nearly as much in ITV’s version.

I’d definitely watch this version of The Body in the Library again. It is far superior to the ITV Marple production with Geraldine McEwan with its radical reworking of the murderer.

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