Teresa Reviews “The Moving Finger” (2006): Poison Pens in the Post
Teresa reviews “The Moving Finger” (2006) and thought it an improvement over the 1985 episode starring Joan Hickson.
Fidelity to text: 3 poison bottles.
The overall story arc remains the same. The changes range from condensing and removing characters (minor) to adding Miss Marple at the very start (major) and everything in between. The time period was changed from 1943 to about 1953. And Jerry Burton, our hero and narrator? He’s a damaged, alcoholic vet who tried to kill himself via a motorcycle accident. Luckily, Lymstock and poisoned pen letters give him something to do other than brood and drink.
Quality of movie on its own: 4 1/2 poison bottles.
I really liked this version. Mr. Pye was a hoot and I got to see a lot more of him than in the Joan Hickson 1987 version. The actors, one and all, chewed the scenery with gusto. Great costumes too, especially Megan’s transformation into Audrey Hepburn. The English Country House Porn is to die for. Wait till you see Mr. Pye’s house. Wow.
ITV’s Marple episodes have been hit or miss for me. Their screenwriters like mucking about with Agatha’s text in order to justify their salary. The results are not always golden. In this case? The Moving Finger was a hit. I got everything I wanted to see more of (like Mr. Pye and his gilded porcelain in his gilded dining room) and, even better, I got to see why Miss Marple was able to solve the crime. There were actual, interpretable clues. These were clues that even doofus audience members like me — always fooled by the red herrings — could grasp.
It’s really enjoyable when I can follow Miss Marple’s logic. I can’t always.
Jerry Burton, our narrator, was less of wet blanket than he was in the 1987 version. His injury was handled much more realistically, something I, as a sometimes cane user, appreciated. He started out with two canes and gradually, slowly, moved down to one and then, sometimes, none. Even so, he never turned into an athlete. He limped and not just when the plot called for it.
It was also much clearer why he fell in love with Megan Symmington in this version.
Yeah. Sure. I could believe that a man would fall out of a dazed crush when he hears the screechy voice of competent dullness but this glorious-in-every-way version of Elsie Holland? Jerry and Elsie would scamper off into the shrubbery surrounding Mr. Pye’s lovely terrace and inspect the flowerbeds. Closely. At ground level. Instead, we get meh.
This version of The Moving Finger also gave a better picture of the nature of upper-class life in Lymstock. Everyone seemed to know each other well, to the extent that we got to watch how the gentry entertained themselves in little villages out in the middle of nowhere. They made their entertainment as was usual in pre-television days. We get to see the musical evening at Mr. Pye’s, complete with Horace in the original Latin, and badly sung duets. We get dinner parties with sparkling dialog at the Symmington’s with the same people sitting around the table.
I would have given this version of The Moving Finger a higher rating, except I couldn’t always understand the sparkling dinner table conversation. Not every conversation mattered to solving the murder but enough did that it was annoying when the actors mumbled.
Overall, each of the main characters got some screen time, giving me a better feel for their relationships with each other. Here though, the 93-minute run time felt much too short. Dr. Owen Griffith had charming scenes with Joanna Burton, Jerry’s sister in the novel. Most of them were axed, including the most important one where Dr. Griffith introduces Joanna to the real world. In the novel, he dragoons her into helping him with a difficult and challenging childbirth case. In the film, he gives her a picture he took of a diseased spleen. For some mysterious reason, Dr. Griffith is also given a stutter which I do not recall from the novel.
Another mid-sized change was having Joanna do Megan Symmington’s makeover in Lymstock. In the novel, Jerry sweeps her off to London where a modiste and hairdresser turn the ugly (by Hollywood beauty standards and most definitely not in the real world) duckling into a swan. Having Joanna clean up and transform Megan into Audrey Hepburn worked very well. So did Megan’s uncomfortable feelings about her transformation. That would be normal.
I would have liked this version to be longer. I enjoyed spending time with the characters and visiting Lymstock. I wanted more and didn’t get it.
There were moments when I really wanted to better understand what was going on. Did Mr. Pye imply an illicit relationship with the colonel who shot himself in the opening scene? I wasn’t sure. And did the colonel shoot himself? Or was he helped? Again, it was unclear. It was also unclear if Miss Marple was referring to her adulterous relationship that we see referenced to in the earliest episodes of the ITV production. The gentleman in question had a war to fight and “other commitments.” You mean the commitment he made to his wife on their wedding day? That’s a commitment. Adultery is a sin, folks. It’s hard for me to buy Miss Marple having a torrid affair with a married man even when she was young and hot herself.
She has too much moral fiber.
Would I watch this version of The Moving Finger again? Absolutely. Did I like it better than the 1987 Joan Hickson version? Yes, I did. The 1987 version is truer to the original text than this 2006 version. This is one of those cases when watching one after the other is interesting and instructive. You can see where the screenwriters differed. What they thought needed to be emphasized. What they jettisoned. What they changed wholesale or invented. As a writer, watching two different adaptations of the same original text, I enjoyed seeing the differing interpretations and working out why the scriptwriters did what they did.
Scripts matter as much as — or sometimes more — than the actors being cast. Two versions of the same novel show why.
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