Teresa Reviews “At Bertram’s Hotel” (2008)

Fidelity to text: one- and one-half guns.

The overall plot of Mickey Gorman’s death and motive for his death remain. Otherwise, ch-ch-ch-changes galore. Characters vanish while new ones arise to fill their places, motivations change, and the major subplot involving a gang of thieves operating out of the hotel is replaced with fleeing Nazis. Even Elvira Blake’s flaxen hair vanishes: she’s now a brunette.

Quality of movie on its own: two guns.

It looks great, but then ITV puts money into its productions even when they skimp on scripts. In this case, they didn’t skimp on the script. They skimped on rewrites. They had far too much script crammed into 93 minutes so entire portions of the film blurred by at top speed.

At Bertram’s Hotel was always a Miss Marple novel. Some genius at ITV decided that if one Miss Marple was good, then two must be better! And thus, we get the added character of Jane Cooper, chambermaid, following in Miss Marple’s wake and snooping in places where Miss Marple can’t go.

It makes sense because while staff is rarely noticed, they observe everything. Jane Cooper deduces, spies on the guests, and reports her findings to Miss Marple. She shows off her deducting chops for the nice police inspector, Larry Bird. This leads to a truly idiotic scene at the end demonstrating how little ITV’s screenwriters know about the 1950s or the history of policing in England.

Inspector Bird tells Jane Cooper that the force is getting ready to open its doors to women officers. The British police force didn’t wait until the 1950’s. There were female prison matrons as early as 1883. By the turn of the century, socially prominent women had been pointing out for years that women criminals needed women arresting them for propriety’s sake. And so, in 1915, Edith Smith became a constable who could make arrests. Other women police officers followed. Moving up the hierarchy was glacial and the women were kept separate, but English policewomen existed decades before Inspector Bird told Jane Cooper about the possibility.

Then, to compound this historical inaccuracy, Jane Cooper joyously tells Miss Marple that she and Inspector Bird were going to live together without benefit of marriage! In the early 1950s! Well, no. They would not have done this. Inspector Bird, who comes across as a sharp character, would not willingly jeopardize his career. He and Jane Cooper would date and marry in the socially and culturally approved fashion of the times. The wedding might be sudden if she became pregnant, but they wouldn’t move in together without being married.

Not if he wanted a career and not if she did either. Living in sin was not acceptable for police officers. They were supposed to be moral exemplars for the community.

Then there’s the entire Nazi subplot, taking the place of the novel’s subplot of a gang of super-thieves operating out of Bertram’s Hotel and using doppelgangers of famous people to defray suspicion. The time period is correct for Nazis fleeing Europe for South America. After that, the plot has more holes than Swiss cheese.

First, Jane Cooper, girl detective. She is aware of the weirdness of guests hiding in suite 123 for weeks on end, not coming out of their room, checking in and checking out in the dead of night. Yet she doesn’t question it, despite the torrent of news, books, and movies that talked about escaping Nazis. Miss Marple would have noticed but we’ll give Jane Cooper the benefit of the doubt. She doesn’t know that she can be more than a mere chambermaid, not yet.

Then there’s the Blake family. This gets convoluted so let’s take the characters one by one.

Bess Sedgwick, adventuress, was married to Lord Blake. She dumped him and their daughter, Elvira, years before. She fought in the French Resistance. I think she’s helping hunt Nazis but the dialog was so unclear, I can’t be sure. But Bess Sedgwick, adventuress, should recognize when something’s out of kilter. She’s spent time at Bertram’s Hotel before. Yet she doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

Her former husband is Lord Blake, millionaire and owner of Blake Airlines. He’s been missing for seven years after his plane crashed at sea and has been declared legally dead so Bess and Elvira are at Bertram’s for the reading of the will. Ready? The mystery hotel guests are referred to as Blake guests, brought in from Europe on Blake Airlines! Yet Bess Sedgwick —adventuress, French Resistance fighter, and regular guest of the hotel — doesn’t make the connection.

These mystery guests arrive at Bertram’s Hotel via Blake Airlines and then pay their tab with stolen art. No one notices large wooden crates coming into and out of the hotel either. Even a small painting, if it’s valuable, isn’t going to be moved across continents wrapped in a sheet. It’s going to get a custom-built wooden crate with plenty of padding to protect it. No one notices. No one notices the rotating art on the walls either as paintings arrive and are sold and then get replaced.

We are told that Lord Blake disappeared at sea in a plane crash. Maybe he’s enjoying his ill-gotten gains in Argentina but that loose end is left a-dangling for someone writing Miss Marple fanfiction.

I could not wrap my head around this subplot. We’ve got Herr Mutti, elderly Jewish victim of the Nazis and Ladislaus Malinowski, much younger concentration camp survivor (and sometime lover of Bess Sedgwick? It was unclear) working with Bess to capture escaped Nazis, yet the Blake connection entirely passes them by. Why did the scriptwriter use the same name for the fleeing Nazi guests and Elvira Blake’s dad if there’s no connection? This is basic writing: don’t use confusing or similar names if characters or events aren’t connected.

Elvira Blake gets changed, too, over and above her hair dyed brunette. She’s sort of carrying on with Ladislaus, but not really. Her real interest is dear, dear friend, Brigit Milford, whom she feels deeply guilty over. Elvira’s insistence on swimming in polluted water exposed Brigit to polio, crippling her right hand. Then, after practically shoving Brigit into the dirty Italian river, our Elvira refuses to swim. She’s guilty and she knows it, which is supposed to explain her motivations. None of this explains Brigit’s motivations, other than she’s a gold-digger, a very smart girl with a long-range and far-fetched revenge plan, or a total doormat.

I got the distinct impression our Elvira takes after both her parents: mum who does whatever she wants and damn the consequences and dad who provides sanctuary for fleeing war criminals in exchange for stolen fine art.

Throw in blackmailing chambermaids (not our Jane Cooper), matching hats, lying solicitors, Lady Selena Hazy’s own troubles, and twin safecrackers and you’ve got a script that needs more than 93 minutes. Dropping the twin safecrackers would have allowed more time spent on the escaping Nazis.

Oh, and did I mention Louis Armstrong showing up to play jazz for the guests along with his band?

He brings along jazz singer, Amelia Walker (very good by the way). Ms. Walker has her own troubles. Bess Sedgwick stole her husband and then Ms. Walker buys fine art stolen by the Nazis.

This is a jam-packed movie. It’s much faster paced than the Joan Hickson version but it doesn’t make as much sense. If you must watch it, enjoy the sets, the jazz band, and the clothes, but don’t watch if you want to skip reading At Bertram’s Hotel but still want to be able to discuss the novel at a dinner party. You’ll get every detail wrong other than the name of the hotel and a few characters.

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