Teresa Reviews “Sleeping Murder” (2005)

Teresa reviews “Sleeping Murder” (2005), an episode from the anime “Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives” and found it a thin recreation of the great novel.

Fidelity to text: 2½ stranglers

The plot’s there, but seriously simplified to be kid-friendly. Maybelle and her pet duck make it friendlier.

Quality of movie on its own: 2½ stranglers

The animation is seriously static but the plot holds together.

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

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

There are 39 episodes in all in Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple. We’re only watching two stories, one for Poirot and one for Miss Marple. For Poirot, I chose Mystery at End House because it was a novel that had only been adapted once (with David Suchet).

Agatha only wrote twelve Miss Marple novels. All of them have been adapted, both in the Joan Hickson series (1984-1992) and ITV’s Marple (2004-2013) so each novel has been filmed at least twice. In addition, a few of the Miss Marple novels have been filmed with other actresses.

The anime series filmed eight Miss Marple tales in all, six short stories and two novels. One of the two novels was 4.50 From Paddington. That’s been filmed three other times, beginning with Margaret Rutherford’s version in 1961, renamed Murder, She Said.

The other novel in the anime series was Sleeping Murder. That’s only been filmed twice so we chose that. The short stories, while not dramatized elsewhere other than “The Blue Geranium,” didn’t seem to have the interest that a novel would and, being only 24 minutes long, wouldn’t provide as good a showcase for Miss Marple.

So here we are.

What’s also interesting about Sleeping Murder is that it’s so heavily influenced by the Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster (1580-1632). It was first performed in 1613. It echoes down the ages; still performed today and influencing authors.

It was also based on real events. Italian noblewoman Giovanna d’Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi (1478-1510) was married off at age twelve and widowed by age 20. Her two brothers, Luigi d’Aragona (1474-1519) (who was the Cardinal of Aragón) and Carlo, Marquis of Gerace (similar birth and death) didn’t want her to remarry or have children because they’d lose control of her estates and her money. They also didn’t want the stain on the family of her marrying a commoner. Giovanna remarried in secret for love and she chose a man of good character but multiple steps below on the social scale, Antonio Beccadelli of Bologna (1475-1513).

Her brothers conspired to have Giovanna and her children disappeared and most likely murdered. There’s no proof, you understand, but there’s plenty of evidence to say Giovanna and her kids didn’t live long after they were captured. Antonio died a few years later when the brothers caught up to him and had him assassinated.

A friend of Antionio’s, Matteo Bandello (1480-1562), turned the tragedy into a novella which John Webster adapted for the stage. At its heart is a woman trying to chose her own life and path against the wishes of her controlling brothers. By the last act, the stage is littered with bodies, although not too much blood because most of the victims were strangled. There are also poisonings and knifings. The play doesn’t end well for anyone.

Jacobean tragedies were the slasher flicks of their time. They were hugely popular and a moral came wrapped up in the soapy gore about not slaughtering family and friends for money, power, and status because catastrophe would follow shortly.

Fun stuff for the whole family! Take the kids! It’s okay because it’s culture.

As Miss Marple says at the conclusion, if you know the story of the Duchess of Malfi, the murderer should be obvious.

Helen Kennedy’s life mimicked the Duchess. Her half-brother, Dr. Kennedy, is older and hyper-controlling to the point of cutting up her tennis net so she couldn’t play tennis with friends. He’s the one who spreads rumors about her being a man-crazy slut. He’s probably the one who framed Helen’s boyfriend Jackie Afflick and got him fired. He’s the reason she fled to India to marry Walter Fane.

But Helen, like the Duchess of Malfi, had good character. She met Captain Erskine during the sea voyage and fell in love (glossed over in this film) but refused to break up his marriage. She went on to India and broke it off with Walter Fane because she didn’t love him.

On the sea voyage back to England, she met the recently widowed Kelvin Halliday and little Gwenda and fell in love. Notice that Helen and Kelvin married quietly in London, so as to present a fait accompli to her half-brother.

Which, like the Duchess’s brothers, he did not accept. He pretended to and Helen tentatively accepted what he said. But he couldn’t control himself, and she became fearful, fearful enough that she persuaded Kelvin they had to leave Dillmouth. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell hubby the extent of her fears, leading to his being poisoned with hallucinogens by Dr. Kennedy and convinced that he became insane and strangled Helen.

Like the Duchess’s brothers, Dr. Kennedy didn’t just murder Helen and frame someone else. He told everyone she disappeared because she was a whore who’d run off with another man and abandoned Gwenda.

Gwenda doesn’t know any of this, naturally. But she’s already uneasy about the house in Dillmouth that she recently bought. Strange memories are surfacing.

Then she attends the production of The Duchess of Malfi with Maybelle, Raymond West, and Miss Marple and she hears the fateful lines:

“Cover her face,
Mine eyes dazzle,
She died young.”

She remembers seeing someone strangling a blonde woman, cries out, and flees the theater.

Sleeping Murder is a great story, a tragedy for the ages, but this version is considerably cleaned up and simplified for the kiddies. Jackie Afflick becomes a nonentity, Captain Erskine’s jealous wife loses her lines, and Walter Fane disappears into the background.

The novel never addressed it and none of the adaptations have either, but I always felt that Walter fell madly in love with Helen and when she dumped him, he never got over her. It says something about how she drew people to her that none of the men she’d been involved with twenty years ago ever forgot her.

Neither did her half-brother. All the creepy, repressed urges that Dr. Kennedy had for his sister mostly vanished. The novel never states that he laid a hand on his much-younger half-sister and he probably didn’t. Agatha didn’t write that kind of book.

For a novel loaded with drama, this adaptation is flat and without savor. Maybelle takes all of Giles Reed’s lines — he doesn’t show up until the last few minutes — and some of Miss Marple’s, yet she never quite comes to life. Oliver the duck (possibly named after Ariadne Oliver?) was surprisingly muted for a cute animal sidekick. Unlike Mystery at End House, you could remove Oliver from this film and never miss him.

Also flat is the overarching storyline begun in episode one when Maybelle insists on becoming a detective. She’s coming to a better understanding with her father and will write more often. But I don’t know if that’s resolved in episode 39.

I’m not going to watch all 39 episodes and unless you’re introducing young kids to Agatha Christie, I recommend you don’t bother, either.