Teresa Reviews Hidden Treasure (1990)

Teresa reviews Hidden Treasure (1990) the Estonian version of the Miss Marple short story Strange Jest, and found it a faithful, dull episode.

(c)2024 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 4 stamps

The plot’s been simplified to allow Miss Marple time to show off her car repair skills.

Quality of film: 2½ stamps

Static, oddly shot at odd angles, and long, lingering scenes of nothing much.

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

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

I don’t expect perfection from a 26-minute-long TV adaptation but the Japanese anime series — despite the addition of Maybelle and Oliver the duck — shows how to do it better using the same 26 minutes.

Miss Marple arrives at the famous actress Jane Helier’s party (Jane gets less than 30 seconds of airtime) via taxi. Time that could have been spent with Jane — her first appearance ever in an adaptation of a Miss Marple story — was spent with the female taxi driver. The taxi stopped dead along some Estonian back road but Miss Marple was able to diagnose the problem. The taxi driver adjusted the wire she pointed out and off they went to the party so Miss Marple could be introduced to Charmian Stroud and Edward Rossiter.

The point of fixing the taxi must have been to prove how skillful Miss Marple is in deducing a solution to an unsolvable problem.

Charmian, wearing an amazingly pink outfit, and Edward have spent months digging up the family home, trying to find Great Uncle Mathew’s treasure he left to them. Without it, they’ll have to sell the place. It’s a big place too but you’ll mainly see Miss Marple exploring the junk-filled attics and the dining room, where Uncle Mathew’s papers are spread out on a table.

Why does Miss Marple need to explore his house and read his papers? Because, in one of many lines of dialog translated directly from the story, she references Mrs. Beeton. If you’re going to make hasenpfeffer, you need to catch your hare first. Similarly, if Miss Marple wants to discover where Uncle Mathew hid the treasure, she must learn how he thinks.

Which, naturally, she does. Once she discovers the second, secret drawer hidden inside the obvious secret drawer, she gently leads Charmian and Edward to see what is right in front of them.

It’s the stamps on the envelopes. But, if you didn’t know that set of stamps was worth thousands, you’d toss those moldy old envelopes into the fire, along with their contents.

It is possible, as Miss Marple knows, to be too clever by half in your efforts to foil thieves.