Teresa Reviews “Five Little Pigs” (2003)

Teresa reviews “Five Little Pigs” (2003) and thought it was one of the best of the Poirot adaptations.

Fidelity to text: 4 poison bottles

A more tragic death for Caroline, Philip Blake is gay (but you could make a case for it), we don’t see the painting, and added drama at the climax.

Quality of movie on its own: 5 poison bottles

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Perfectly cast, acted, music, and the story unfolds through flashbacks that visually reflect their era.

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

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.

Five Little Pigs (aka Murder in Retrospect) is a stunning novel. Very little happens in the present day, other than Poirot interviewing witnesses to the sixteen-year-old crime. No new murders occur despite the truth being revealed and old sins having long shadows. Yet every page is riveting, as characters reveal themselves to Poirot through conversation and written recollections. How do you film something that’s almost entirely recalled memories?

They did it with flashbacks. There are two sets, interwoven with the present. The older set shows Amyas, Caroline, Philip, and Meredith as children. That film is blurry, almost black and white, and usually shot at a distance, like far-off memories.

The newer set is sepia-toned and charming, shading into melancholy, as characters recall that fateful summer when Amyas died while painting his masterpiece. They’re jittery and shot from the point of view of the speaker. The flashbacks are framed by Poirot’s meeting with Lucy Crale, Amyas and Caroline’s child seeking the truth behind her father’s death and mother’s execution, and his interviews with the survivors. The modern scenes look harsh and color-drained, particularly compared to the sepia-toned memories.

This is, despite the murder taking place outdoors, a locked-room mystery. Other than Amyas and Caroline, only five people were involved. Poirot interviews each person who’s left alive. The script did a good job condensing the solicitors, barristers, and inspectors he interviewed in the novel. They all agreed: Caroline was the obvious suspect as Amyas’ wife and she had cause. He was an egotistical serial cheat, although he always came home to her. But maybe not this time. He did not, despite what the defense claimed, commit suicide.

Next came interviewing the five pigs of the title. They are Philip Blake (the stockbroker who went to market), Meredith Blake (the older brother who inherited and thus stayed home), Elsa Greer (who got rich and richer when she married a title so she’s eating roast beef), Cecilia Williams (the poverty-stricken governess who has none), and Angela Warren (Caroline’s injured half-sister who cried). Each has different memories of that fateful summer. Each is a fully-drawn human being. Each is still bound by the past, unable to forget.

There is one subtle reference to pigs in the film. In one of the recollections, you’ll see young Lucy with the housekeeper, Mrs. Spriggs. They’re playing with origami pigs from sheets of pink paper.

Philip and Meredith are brothers who grew up with Amyas and Caroline. All three boys adored her but she only had eyes for Amyas. The film made Philip gay, and I suppose there’s some subtext for it if you want to go digging for it. Philip loved Amyas and claimed he loathed Caroline. But did he loathe her because she got Amyas and he didn’t? (The gay interpretation). Or, did he loathe her because of his internal conflict of loving his best friend’s wife and she rejected him out of hand (as in the novel).

The script’s other change was making Philip a heavy drinker, on the verge of being a functioning alcoholic. That worked because he was devastated by his best friend’s murder.

Meredith was equally devastated. He loved Amyas and Caroline and lost them both. He was always shy and retiring. The murder made him sink into himself, becoming more and more isolated. Like Philip, he never married.

Elsa Greer was the muse for the painting. She’s vividly drawn, angry, and sharp. She loved Amyas with a mad passion, despite him being older, married, and a father. She didn’t care about who she hurt; Elsa got what she wanted no matter what. She tells Poirot that she enjoyed the trial. It was exciting! She also turned down Meredith when he asked her to marry him after the trial was over. Meredith wanted to rescue her, but she wasn’t interested in a boring, stodgy stick like him.

Cecilia Williams was the governess. She liked Caroline, liked Angela (her charge), and loathed Amyas as being the epitome of a spoiled, self-centered man. She knew Caroline murdered Amyas but since she wasn’t asked, she didn’t reveal what she saw until Poirot interviewed her. It was her testimony that proved to him that Caroline didn’t poison her husband and was, in fact, protecting someone else.

That someone was Angela, Caroline’s younger half-sister. In a fit of temper, Caroline threw a paperweight at her as a baby, disfiguring her and blinding her in one eye. Angela forgave Caroline long ago, but Caroline never forgave herself. Watch carefully when Angela throws a paperweight at Amyas. It brings back terrible memories to Caroline.

I had two issues. I never understood why Caroline stole the coniine from Meredith’s laboratory. The novel wasn’t clear and the film didn’t do much better. The plot needed her to do it, but I wish there’d been some explanation. Perhaps she was depressed that maybe this time, Amyas would run off with the current mistress? Except that he never did and as Poirot reveals, he never intended to. So why steal the poison?

My other problem was the painting. In the novel, Poirot studies Amyas’ last painting, a portrait of Elsa. It’s his masterpiece. She’s vibrantly alive, young and beautiful with the world hers to command. Although he was feeling ill, in reality slowly dying from coniine poisoning, he finished the painting because he was determined to capture her on canvas forever. After the murder, Meredith took the painting, determined that it would never be seen. Poirot realizes that the painting is also a clue.

“I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim – it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die.”

But we never see the painting! We get glimpses, but it’s never displayed, Poirot never studies it, and never delivers his judgment of what it shows. The Poirot series has gotten bespoke art before. In One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, the studio artist produced a very fine Tamara de Lempicka homage showing the main character and his wife. It’s not as if they couldn’t find an artist to create an appropriate painting. I wanted to see that painting. I was disappointed when I did not, the only disappointment in an otherwise outstanding film.

The ending was enhanced, but it was in keeping with what movies need as opposed to books. Like the other four pigs, Elsa was devastated by Amyas’ death. She, the murderess, had to live with killing her lover because she’d realized he didn’t love her. He was using her, stringing her along because painting her was more important than possessing her. He’d never had any intention of leaving Caroline, and it drove her mad.

That’s why, when Lucy pulls out a pistol (shiny, gold, smuggled in from Canada), Elsa tells her to shoot her. Elsa’s already dead. She died when she poisoned Amyas. He escaped her. So did Caroline. They’re together, where Elsa can’t reach them. She would welcome death as long as someone else pulled the trigger.

But Lucy doesn’t, circling back to a flashback where Lucy and Angela are playing cowboys and indians. Lucy refused to shoot Angela then and she refuses to shoot Elsa now. Unlike Elsa – who destroyed her family out of spite – Lucy is not a murderess.