Teresa Reviews Agatha Christie: An Unfinished Portrait (1990)

Teresa Reviews Agatha Christie: An Unfinished Portrait (1990) and liked the documentary’s film clips, but what was that psychic on about?

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Is it entertaining? 3½ Agathas

Photos I’ve never seen before, and Agatha and Max Mallowan’s own voices with film clips, but overall it’s choppy and muddled.

Is it educational? 3 Agathas

Why did the production crew need a medium to channel Agatha at the Swan Hotel? Or that hack biographer?

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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This is a very uneven documentary, with lots to love and lots to dislike.

It’s got plenty of photos of Agatha that I’ve never seen before, particularly when she was very old. There are vintage film clips of her being interviewed, and you can almost see her weariness at being asked the same inane questions by young journalists who think they’re being clever. There are voiceovers from her and her husband Max Mallowan, recorded in 1974, a year or so before her death on Jan. 12, 1976 at age 85. She still has opinions, as does Max, and they aren’t afraid to voice them.

Janet Morgan, the estate-vetted biographer, speaks frequently. Among other topics, she does her best to dispense level-headed reality about Agatha’s notorious eleven-day disappearance.

Hint, hint: she was distraught and overwhelmed as her life collapsed around her. She ran away to hide and lick her wounds in peace. World-wide notoriety was not Agatha’s goal and the ensuing shitstorm mortified this very private woman.

You’ll also get an interview with Robert Barnard, a mystery author himself and a longtime Christie fan. He wrote a book entitled A Talent to Deceive: An Appreciation of Agatha Christie. He read everything she wrote and dispenses his opinions and rankings on her novels. He never belittles her as a cardboard woman with cardboard characters. Similarly, the great H.R.F. Keating of Inspector Ghote fame is interviewed. This Agatha fan compiled Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime, an anthology of writers (most, unlike Agatha, are forgotten today) discussing aspects of her work.

Anne Hart who wrote biographies of Miss Marple and Poirot is interviewed too. Since they’re fictional, she must have carefully read every word Agatha ever published to write her books.

Theatrical impresario Peter Saunders discussed (behind vintage film clips of Agatha) his production of The Mousetrap. Neither of them thought it would run as long as it has and they’d be amazed that the play is still going strong in London, breaking its streak after 68 years when most of the world shut down for the Covid-19 pandemic.

You’ll even meet George Gowler, Agatha and Max’s butler. He demonstrates some of the parlor magic she enjoyed. Max’s archeological friends come in for a few moments too, talking about how happy Max and Agatha were.

At the same time, the production company tried to cram her entire life into an hour resulting in an often muddled and confusing script. It leapt from thought to thought, much like Agatha’s last few novels when her writing prowess was failing and she desperately needed an editor to corral her thoughts. This documentary needed an editor. All the above good points were arranged almost at random, interspersed with reenactments of scenes from Agatha’s autobiography. The reenactments would have been better served by being enlarged upon and turned into a biopic instead of what you get; a scene here, a scene there, and very little connective tissue.

Then you head into even more questionable territory about her disappearance that should have either been expanded upon or dropped. We hear from the wife of the Harrogate spa pianist who identified her, and that was fine.

At the top of the omit list was Kathleen Humphries who was a spiritualist and medium of the time. I guess. There’s no mention of her online. Maybe she was famous in the ’80s. She got to wander down the hallway at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel, pretending she didn’t know which room Agatha booked under the pseudonym of Mrs. Theresa Neele. Which was silly. After Agatha was discovered, every newspaper in the world reported which room she’d stayed in. It’s not a secret. And then to watch the medium pretend — when she selects a door — that she senses Agatha’s presence? Sure. Agatha used the occult and spiritualist practices in her fiction, and they nearly always served as a cover for mundane criminal reality. Like a producer saying, “open that door and do your schtick because we need to fill airtime, and we paid you.”

The other irritant was watching Gwen Robyns, writer and reporter. She wrote The Mystery of Agatha Christie: An Intimate Biography of the First Lady of Crime. She, unlike Janet Morgan, is happy to sensationalize Agatha’s eleven-day disappearance because, by God! Agatha must have planned it to the last detail to extract maximum sensationalism and punish Archie for cheating on her. Ms. Robyns spends precious airtime griping about how Agatha’s friends and relations closed ranks to her prying questions rather than reveal Agatha’s dirty laundry.

My take? Agatha was what she appeared to be: a reserved woman who was a very good friend and listener and who didn’t behave badly to anyone. Since she didn’t get drunk, secretly bear illegitimate children, abuse servants, treat underlings like dirt, embezzle money, indulge in drugs or crime, or in general behave as though she could do whatever she pleased, when she pleased, there’s nothing to say about her! Her friends and family had nothing to dish. Agatha kept their confidences and so they kept hers. Agatha is what she appears to be: A very successful writer who owned numerous homes, spent serious time on archeological digs with her husband, and worked to be the most successful writer and female playwright in the world.

This is not hard to understand. It’s not necessary to live a dissipated and corrupt life to write. It’s better if you don’t. But Ms. Robyns didn’t seem to grasp this concept. One might say that less successful writers who are forgotten today were inspired by envy and their complaints are sour grapes.

The documentary is narrated by Joan Hickson of Miss Marple fame. Her voice is soothing and welcome and familiar, but again, it can be jarring to leap back and forth between Ms. Hickson telling Agatha’s story and then suddenly, a film clip from the Miss Marple TV show appears. The spell breaks and you wonder why you’re not rewatching your collection of Joan Hickson DVDs.

David Suchet, near the beginning of his fame as Hercule Poirot (as Joan Hickson was near the end of her run as Miss Marple) appears on camera as himself and then transforms into Hercule Poirot. The difference is startling and again, a little jarring when you watch a clip of him in character and him in the makeup chair speaking with his natural voice.

It’s amazing how completely he becomes Poirot. And, as with Ms. Hickson, you wonder why you’re not rewatching his films instead of the documentary.

But you should still watch this. It’s only an hour long and if you haven’t immersed yourself in Agatha’s life and read her biographies, you’ll learn more about her as a person. But not too much more. She was very private and private people who don’t live louche lives don’t leave much behind to talk about.