Teresa Reviews “Ordeal by Innocence” (2018)

Teresa reviews “Ordeal by Innocence” (2018) and decides that Sarah Phelps’ additions made it a good movie, but not Christie’s movie.

Warning: More spoilers here than the nuclear bombs in the 1950s.

Fidelity to text: 2 ½ decanters
The plot remains but the characters are more complex. The murderer changes but it worked.

Quality of film on its own: 4 decanters
Sumptuous locations, great acting, a plot that tied together logically, and a red boat named Anubis!

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

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

Although the title card says “Agatha Christie’s Ordeal By Innocence,” Sarah Phelps wrote the script. You know what that means: she rewrote, replotted, added, subtracted, and by the time she finished, this film should have been titled “Sarah Phelps’ Ordeal By Innocence.” You’ll still recognize Agatha’s story, but she wouldn’t have written it this way. The change to the murderer, however, would have worked for her but that’s because there are enough changes to the other characters and their motivations to make it perfectly plausible.

After all, in Christie World, people murder their spouses all the time. Who is the most likely person to murder a woman? Her husband. And so it proves here, unlike the novel where it was Jacko, manipulating his lover, Kirsten, to murder his mother.

In Phelp’s rewrite, Kirsten is Jack’s mother. He got slightly renamed indicating his personality alteration. But there’s more. Kirsten’s still the overworked, downtrodden housekeeper and the surrogate, loving mother to the five adopted kids (including Jack, adopted by Rachel and no one knows the truth). Except one other person does know the truth and that’s Jack’s father.

Who is, naturally, Leo Argyll. He raped Kirsten when she was a fifteen-year-old orphan, taken in by Rachel to help with baby Mary. Kirsten stayed, Leo apparently kept his hands off her after that, and Rachel adopted three more children.

Why did Leo stay, unable to acknowledge the son he sired? For the money, of course. I’ve read the book and watched three adaptations and each time, Leo is less like his name. He’s a louse, a cad, a dilettante, an unpublished and probably unpublishable writer since he’ll never finish writing the darned book, a man who lives off Rachel because she’s rich and he’s not. That’s her house.

In addition to his other character deficiencies, Leo cheats on Rachel. Everyone in the family knows. In a flashback, Rachel confronts Gwenda over her and Leo’s affair. Gwenda wasn’t Leo’s first bit of sugar on the side and she won’t be the last.

The real question, sadly not answered here despite plenty of time (three hours!) is why Rachel kept Leo around. Agatha didn’t answer the question and neither did any of the screenwriters. Rachel is a complicated woman. She’s rich, she’s intelligent, she has status over and above her money, she’s a philanthropist, and she wants children desperately but since she’s barren, she adopted five of them. Sadly, she’s a bad mother. No warmth, no affection. She’s not evil like Mrs. Boynton in Appointment With Death. But she’s still the kind of mother whose kids end up in lifelong therapy and permanently estranged. She is one stone-cold fish.

Lucky for Rachel, Kirsten stepped in and provided the love and affection the kids craved. She’s the reason they’re capable of empathy with each other.

Rachel has managed to estrange every member of the family. They stay because she’s got tight control over the purse strings and they’ve got no other place to go. Mickey and Tina come closest: Mickey did car repair and joined the army to fight in Korea. Tina got a bedsit in town and works as a librarian.

Mary and Philip might have managed but he’s a bad husband. He’s a losing gambler who broke his spine in a drunken car wreck so he and Mary are trapped. Remind yourself when you watch Philip’s bitterness that he brought it on himself. He doesn’t have to be abusive to Mary and the family but he’s never controlled his appetites and with Leo around as an example, he’s got no reason to improve his behavior. It’s perfectly in keeping with Philip’s character that he urges Arthur Calgary to cause a stink about Jack’s alibi and innocence so Leo pays for silence and they split the money. Money, by the way, that he’d instantly lose gambling and drinking.

The revised plot beautifully sets up why Leo murdered Rachel and blamed Jack. Rachel’s last few days on earth were bad. Jack confronted her with the truth of his birth, something she’d sworn to Kirsten to never reveal. Jack told Rachel about Mickey and Tina’s incestuous affair (they may not be blood relatives but they were raised as brother and sister so I understand Rachel’s disgust and fury). Mary brought Philip home from the hospital on a stretcher, permanently disabled because of his own stupidity. Rachel learned where Hester had been hiding for the last few months; she’d married some low-life in haste and was living in squalor. Rachel drugged Hester, got her to the hospital, and insisted on an obstetrics exam on her unconscious daughter followed by an immediate abortion of her first grandchild. Oh, and Rachel paid off Hester’s squeeze and he, proving Rachel was right, took the £500 and abandoned his pregnant bride. Her day ended when she caught Leo and Gwenda in the act.

At that point, Rachel confronted Leo. He said she wouldn’t divorce him (the scandal!) and she said, “watch me.”

As a divorced man, Leo would be penniless. As a widower, he’d be rich. The choice was easy. He struck Rachel down and got Gwenda to help him cover up the truth.

Why did Leo choose his hidden son, Jack, as his fall guy? Because Jack liked telling unpleasant truths, including the one about Bellamy Gould, Leo’s friend, confidant, and chief constable. Gould agreed because he couldn’t let his perverted secret be revealed and Jack had been screwing his wife.

In case you wonder why Gould, after attempting to run over Arthur Calgary and failing, committed suicide by auto, here’s my answer. As chief constable, Gould faked evidence implicating Jack. If Arthur proves Jack’s alibi, Gould will go to prison himself and not just for corruption and criminal malfeasance. That’s also why Jack — who delights in being difficult — got beaten to death in prison right after stupidly revealing to Leo what he knows.

Of the men in this story, only two show signs of character. Mickey who genuinely wants to protect his sisters and Arthur Calgary. Phelps’ take on Arthur was interesting. He’s the epitome of an unreliable witness because of his own sketchy past. This Arthur is a nuclear scientist who fell apart over guilt about helping to design Fat Man and Little Boy, the atomic bombs used to end the war with Japan. He wasn’t in the Arctic doing research. He was locked up in a nearby loony bin, escaped, and narrowly avoided running over Jack.

Arthur has to redeem himself by proving Jack’s innocence.

The ending wraps around to the beginning and the bomb shelter that Rachel built under the mansion. Leo had Arthur hauled back to the asylum but afterwards, he’s confronted by the kids. They know the truth and force Leo into the same fate he planned for Arthur. A lifetime in a cage.

This is not Agatha’s novel. But if you take it on its own terms, Phelps’ version works. See all three versions and you’ll see what I mean.