Teresa Reviews “Ordeal by Innocence” (2007)

Fidelity to text: 3 blunt instruments.
Miss Marple did not appear in the novel. There were changes to the murder victims, added characters, deleted characters, even to the setting of the house (relocated to an island in a lake). Despite the changes, this adaptation was faithful to the spirit of the novel. Innocent people suffered because a key eyewitness showed up two years too late.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 and 3/4 blunt instruments.
There were a few unclear patches, due mostly to mumbling. Otherwise, what a great film. We were riveted. The changes enhanced the story and made it into Shakespearean tragedy.

Ordeal By Innocence could have been ruined by adding Miss Marple (see my review of The Secret of Chimneys).

Instead, it was enhanced because we got the tragic story of Gwenda Vaughn, devoted secretary to Leo Argyle. Gwenda had little backstory in the novel. In this adaptation, she was an orphan whom Miss Marple trained up as a housemaid. Miss Marple encouraged her to strive for something more out of life, to learn, to grow, to reach her full potential. Thus, Gwenda Vaughn, orphan from the working class, becomes a private secretary to a man of letters.

Two years after the murder of the man’s wife, Gwenda, who has been quietly in love with her boss all along, finally is on the verge of marrying him. She invites Miss Marple to the wedding — the only person she has to invite — and that very night tragedy arrives. Gwenda was so happy. It was the happiest moment of her life; the eve of her wedding to a man she loved and becoming part of a family, like she had always longed to do, and Miss Marple was there to share in her joy.

Then Arthur Calgary, scientist, arrives with the news that Jacko Argyle didn’t murder his mother. His alibi was true all along. That means, if you’ve read the novel, that someone else in the family bashed Rachel in the head.

She had it coming, by the way. A number of flashbacks proved she was a vicious, controlling harridan. One of the daughters even admits to Miss Marple that they were all better off with Rachel dead and Jacko hanged by the Crown.

The family that Gwenda thought loved her instantly turns on her, starting with her fiancé, Leo Argyle. She must have murdered Rachel because she wanted to marry her boss and needed to remove her rival and anyway, she’s not one of us. Notice Leo’s name? There was nothing manly or virtuous about Leo’s behavior, despite his insistence on the importance of character. He shows none and tosses Gwenda to the wolves without a flicker of hesitation. The day before their wedding! He’s a louse, not a lion.

Poor Gwenda. The Argyles turn on her, every last one of them, despite claiming previously that they wanted her. We see her trying on her wedding veil and staring at herself in the mirror, knowing that everything she’d hoped for had turned to ashes in her mouth.

The family continues to tear itself apart, trying to work out which of them did it. Yet, everyone agrees, the most likely person remains Jacko. The crown hung him (an improvement over the novel where he died in prison of pneumonia) and he went to his grave without fingering anyone else.

He even told his twin brother, Bobby, that he was doing what was right, for perhaps the first time in his life. Bobby was an added character and a good one. He’s bent like Jacko but in a different way. His actions, whether or not Arthur Calgary showed up, would have torn the family to shreds when revealed.

Philip and Mary Argyle Durant changed too. In the novel, he’s the investigator, not Gwenda. Like Gwenda, he’s an outsider who married in. Here, Philip and Mary have an unhappy marriage because he’s a philandering dog, even indulging in an affair with his wife’s younger sister. But it worked better to have Gwenda doing the investigation rather than Philip; it helped highlight how dysfunctional this supposed happy family truly was. One piece of weirdness for me was discovering Richard Armitage, the actor playing Philip, was also Thorin Smokenshield from The Hobbit films. Yep, that’s Thorin but without the impressive weapons, even more impressive musculature, and thickets of hair. I did not recognize him at all. But he was beautifully cast.

All the actors felt correctly cast, not something I can normally say. They looked like they could be real people you could actually meet in the real world as opposed to Hollywood glamour. Every one of them lit up when they were onscreen, even in minor parts like the car salesman’s wife who told Arthur Calgary how much of a lying cad Jacko was and how, even after everything that happened, she’d give Jacko anything he wanted again.

Another thing ITV did right with this adaptation was they focused tightly on what was, at heart, a locked room murder. Changing the location of the house was another touch of genius. Sunny Point (terrific name because life inside that house was anything but sunny) is now on an island and everyone has to row across the lake in the family’s collection of row boats. The isolation is intense. You can see why, despite knowing that Rachel kept wads of cash on hand, a burglar was never really suspected of her murder.

We’re told everyone — including in the community at large — knows about the money but to get to it, you’ve got to row across a lake in the dark. Most burglars won’t work that hard and the police know it. So does the family, meaning they know it’s one of them. One of them bashed Rachel’s head in with a blunt instrument; furiously, angrily, to the point of smearing brains across her desk. That’s a lot of anger. Burglars tend to be professionals. A burglar would wait in the shrubbery until Rachel left the office and then they’d rob the place.

No, this was an inside job and everyone knew it.

The ending worked too. Miss Marple would be interested anyway. Gwenda’s fate drives her to discover the murderer. She takes full advantage of gossipy staff (Kirsten the housekeeper), distraught family desperate to unburden themselves, and Arthur Calgary, who’s struggling with his own guilt. He thought he was the hero, riding to the rescue of an innocent man, and discovered he was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Miss Marple unraveled the clues provided by personality, character, and circumstances. The solution did not feel like she pulled it out of her knitting bag. And when she left Sunny Point, the family is left to face what they did to themselves. Leo, in particular, has to face his weak, flawed character and utter spinelessness. Ordeal by Innocence is a tragedy that will take a few more generations to end.

Of the ITV Marple episodes we’ve seen to date, Ordeal By Innocence is the best. Make sure you watch it too.

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