Teresa Reviews “Magnolia Blossom” (1982)

Teresa reviews “Magnolia Blossom” (1982) from The Agatha Christie Hour and says this early story from Christie’s career too thin to be enjoyed.

Fidelity to text: 2 thieves
The plot remains. Other than the three leads, everyone else onscreen was added.

Quality of film on its own: 1 1/2 thieves
When the other characters were added, the screenwriter neglected to make anyone compelling or provide understandable motivations.

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

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

Over her long career, Agatha wrote many stories that didn’t involve Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. So many that it’s hard to grasp how much she wrote and in how many genres. She’s reliably very good, but not always and “Magnolia Blossom,” a very early story, is a case in point.

In the 1926 short story, you get three characters: the wealthy Theodora, Richard, her shady businessman husband, and Vincent, her would-be lover. No one else. The plot meanders, stranding plot points here and there, including the bombshell complication (not seen in the adaptation) that Vincent is in London not because he’s selling oranges for his South African farmers’ association but because he was asked to investigate Richard’s firm.

He was a bad investigator. When Theo asked him, he handed her the critical documents and the match to burn them with and got exactly zero in exchange. This is after Theo dumped him to run back to Richard in his hour of need.

Theo’s not very bright either. She vacillates between glittering society hostess and lost damsel, swayed by the moment and inconsistent loyalties. She doesn’t love her husband. After spending two weeks in Vincent’s company, she was prepared to desert Richard and the mansion she owns and flee to South Africa with a stranger. Then, she reads an evening newspaper story about Richard being accused of fraud and flees back to him.

Why? Nothing changed, except she felt the bonds of loyalty or guilt. Loyalty or guilt that, mind you, meant nothing that morning when the maid packed her bags for South Africa.

The script tried to address Theo’s vacillations with some guff about duty above all. We get words but nothing to show where she thought her duty lay. To the staff of her grand mansion? Bates, the butler, reminds her that he’s served her family his entire life. I assume other servants have done so as well. Yet she was going to let them down, so that wasn’t it. Was it duty to her family home and the garden she loves? Clearly, no loyalty there. Her family back in Devon? No, they don’t exist. The memory of a beloved nanny exhorting young Theo about the importance of duty to keep the world sane and chugging along? Nope. Is she concerned about what friends, relatives, or the press would say about her pouring salt on Richard’s wounds by fleeing to South Africa with another man? Not that either.

Why is duty suddenly so important? Because the script says so.

Then there’s her garden. Apparently, it wasn’t just love at first sight between Theo and Vincent. They connected over her garden. Since Vincent is an orange farmer in South Africa, he might have wooed Theo while they stood in the conservatory, staring at the typical bleak, rainy, dreary, clammy, cold, gray English day, with tales of gorgeous sunny days on the veldt. No, we don’t get a scene explaining the attraction between two dull, completely chemistry-free people.

What we get is the garden that’s as fake as the romance. It looks like the set designer went down to Hobby Lobby and bought whatever fake flowers looked bright and colorful and cheap, not paying any attention to whether or not a given flower comes in that color or if they bloom at the same time.

I couldn’t stop myself from shouting at the TV. The other colors were bad enough but blue! Those vibrantly blue flowers never existed in nature, even in the minds of copywriters for plant catalogs who lie with gay abandon. Never believe a plant catalog when it tells you a flower is a true, rich, deep blue. It’s a lie. They’re purple. Or gray. Or greenish. If a flower isn’t a bachelor’s button or a Himalayan Blue Poppy, it’s not blue no matter what the advert claims.

To compound the error, the magnolia blossoms the camera panned across not only looked like they were the cheapest polyester fakes glue-gunned to bare twigs, they were blue. Pale, icy blue. Magnolia flowers do not come in blue. They are white, creamy blush, delicate yellows, the palest pinks and the most flamboyant magentas. Not blue. Magnolias bloom in the spring but I’d lay odds that most of the flowers in Theo’s garden were not spring-bloomers. No, they all came from Hobby Lobby where blooming seasons and verisimilitude in plant species color are unimportant.

This is particularly irritating because in England, gardening is a competitive sport! You cannot tell me that the set designer didn’t know better. At least the flowering Clivia looked good. And real.

The other item that looked both good and real was Theo’s dress at the climax. This was a gorgeous knockoff of a Callot Soeurs dress in true magnolia blossom colors: white, creamy blush, the palest of pinks. In the text, Agatha spells it Caillot but Callot Soeurs is probably who she was thinking of. Operated by the Callot sisters, they were one of the great haute couture houses in the 1910s and 1920s.

At least raving about the flowers and Theo’s dress took my mind off the script. In order for the story to work, it needed about six more passes. It also needed to be longer. I can’t believe I’m saying this considering how tedious it was, but at 51 minutes, it felt padded with scenes of sparkling dinner parties crammed with sparkling conversation and fashionable evening wear. Those scenes did nothing to explain why Theo felt such an overpowering sense of duty that she left Richard without a backward glance and then had to return to him.

Those scenes could have set up a heartrending moment when Theo tells Vincent that their dinner guests would eviscerate Richard even more than Scotland Yard will when the fraud department arrives and so she has to rush to his side. Those scenes implied that Richard was enjoying a torrid affair with a hot redhead but again, no follow-through other than Theo saying, “I know you cheated.” But we didn’t watch him carrying on with the redhead so there’s the distinct possibility that Theo lies when it suits her.

There’s also the problem of the elderly Colonel Jaggers. I needed to see either more of him or much less. He’s another reason why Theo would have rushed back to Richard’s side. She clearly liked the old man, but why? Had he helped raise her as a child to always put duty first? As a senior man in Richard’s firm, he would be in deep trouble. Did he need Theo’s aid to defend himself against charges of financial chicanery? She doesn’t say and the script doesn’t tell us. Like Bates, the butler, Colonel Jaggers’ concerns are unimportant.

This could have been so much better if thought had been put into explaining why Theo behaved the way she did. Instead, you’ll get fake flowers and irrational behavior. Skip it and watch something better.

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