Teresa Reviews “Lord Edgware Dies” (2000)
Teresa reviews “Lord Edgware Dies” (2000) and finds it’s the best of the three versions, with some reservations.
Fidelity to text: 3 ½ daggers
Events are rearranged, Jane Wilkinson impersonates Lady Macbeth, a thieving butler leads our gang on a fatal chase, but almost everything important is there.
Quality of movie on its own: 4 daggers
I’d have given it another half-dagger but with no subtitles, I couldn’t understand some of the witty banter. Otherwise, this movie fired on all cylinders with very few missteps.
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast.
Despite the lengthy hiatus between the first end of the Poirot TV series in 1996 and the start of sporadic movies in 2000, cast, script, director, settings, and music all came together here as though they’d never been separated by the vagaries of TV ratings and running out of money. I’m ignoring the travesty of the first movie bringing back Poirot in 2000: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The world still awaits a decent filmed version of that novel.
After rebooting the series with Roger Ackroyd, the producers next chose to film — for mysterious reasons — Lord Edgware Dies. With a thoughtful script, any of the remaining, unfilmed novels (or the criminally neglected short story “The Lemesurier Inheritance”) could have worked. The various production companies never followed Agatha’s own timeline. Lucky for us, unlike Roger Ackroyd, Edgware’s script by Anthony Horowitz was excellent.
Our man Hastings returned to England because he lost his ranch in Argentina due to his incompetent financial management. Are you surprised? It’s perfectly in keeping with his nature. Sadly, we don’t get to meet Bella again, the woman he met and suspected of murder in Murder on the Links and then married. She’s back in Argentina trying to sell the ranch.
During Poirot’s retirement, Miss Lemon apparently did not open either a secretarial and filing school or a detective agency, both of which she would run efficiently. That’s a pity because Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) has the wattage and acting chops to headline a great TV series about a lady detective in the 1930s. Instead, she stayed home with her adopted Siamese cat (rescued in The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman).
Which showed up the next morning right on schedule. Lord Edgware’s body, to be precise.
Because Horowitz restructured Agatha’s novel, we had already met and disliked Lord Edgware. He sat in his private theater box, watching his estranged wife, Jane Wilkinson, perform as Lady Macbeth. According to everyone who knows Edgware, he’s a nasty piece of work. It was an interesting choice to open with Macbeth. If you made it through English class in high school, you know that Lady Macbeth is a nasty piece of work herself. Was Horowitz’s choice too on the nose?
I’d say no, because every character who knows Jane Wilkinson tells Poirot that she’s a nasty piece of work. And, who’s the most likely person to murder a man? His wife, especially if she’s estranged, desperate to get single, and marry her newly found true love.
Yet poor, maligned, obvious suspect Jane Wilkinson couldn’t have murdered hubby because a dozen unimpeachable witnesses say she was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Agatha threw down that gauntlet for the reader and Horowitz ran with it.
Where the script fell down was in building up motivations. Not enough time was spent deciphering the relationships between Carlotta Adams (professional impersonator), Bryan Martin (Jane’s costar and former lover), Penny Driver (millinery genius and Bryan’s second chance at love), Ronald Marsh (a deeply-in-debt theater impresario and Lord Edgware’s drunken nephew and heir), Geraldine Marsh (Edgware’s only child and my but she hated daddy but she’s got eyes for her alcoholic cousin, Ronald, proving daddy was right that she didn’t inherit any brains), Alton the butler (who’s a thief), Miss Carroll (Edgware’s adoring secretary for no discernible reason), and Donald Ross (Irish playwright and aficionado of Ancient Troy).
These people’s lives are intertwined in the novel but how isn’t made clear in the film. I could have cheerfully dispensed with the unnecessary chase of a minor red herring through the airport if I learned how everyone knew everyone else. There’s clearly bad blood between Jane, Bryan Martin, and Penny Driver.
Yet the script, like the original novel and the other two films, never addressed why a devout Catholic and defender of the faith like the Duke of Merton is chasing after a married actress. Granted, she’s hot and blonde, but she’s an actress! She publicly kisses other men for money! By definition, actresses live louche lifestyles and even in the 1930s when Lord Edgware Dies was written, actresses were not respectable. If the Duke of Merton is serious about his faith, he’d have already married a nice Catholic girl of good family and started fathering lots and lots of children.
Yet he hasn’t. Is it because he doesn’t actually want to marry and father lots and lots of children? If so, another man’s wife — especially another peer like Lord Edgware — is the perfect choice. The Duke of Merton can’t marry Jane. She’s already got a husband. Thus, he can pursue her (chastely because he’s a good Catholic) while at the same time, remain a happy bachelor free from matchmakers. There’s a lot to unpack in the Duke of Merton’s motivations but alas, they remain obscure. He should count himself lucky that Poirot solved the murder, keeping him from making a huge mistake on multiple levels.
The murder weapon got changed too. In the novel, it’s a corn knife, used for home surgery on the feet by someone with very steady hands and nerves of steel. Instead, Jane uses a run-of-the-mill dagger. In the novel, she knows exactly where to insert the corn knife for nearly instant death. We’re not told how Jane learned the correct angle of approach. I wanted to see an actual corn knife in use.
There are great scenes. You’ll love watching Lord and Lady Corner arguing about having thirteen at dinner. Jane’s the unlucky thirteenth diner, so if superstition is correct, she’ll be the next dinner guest to die. There’s Carlotta’s impersonations, including Poirot! An impeccably clad Miss Lemon gets to go detecting!
Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.
