December 24, 2021

Teresa Reviews “The Girl in the Train” (1982)

Teresa Peschel Agatha Christie Movies, Teresa's Book and Movie Reviews

Teresa reviews “The Girl in the Train” (1982) and finds it not a patch on the original story.

Fidelity to text: 4 damsels in distress

Significantly expanded over the slight short story, but they flubbed a big part of George’s happy ending.

Quality of movie on its own: 3 1/2 damsels in distress

Too much plot for 52 minutes, and it didn’t sparkle as it should have.

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

You’ll get a tour of the docks in Portsmouth along with Agatha’s grasp of the romance genre. It’s easy to forget how well read she was or that she had a sense of humor because that’s what her story was: a parody of romances found in ladies’ magazine, then and now. Well, not exactly now since ladies’ magazines no longer publish short fiction. But they did and I remember reading this sort of story back in the 1970s.

They were absurd, silly, frothy, and raced along at top speed to keep the reader turning pages, looking at ads, and planning to buy the next issue as soon as it hit the newsstand. Plenty of similar romance is still being written. Visit any used book store (we recommend Cupboard Maker Books in Enola, PA) and look for category romance. You’ll find similar stories by the shelf. Or, go online and discover Kindle Unlimited. There’s every possible permutation of damsels, heroic gentlemen, runaway marriages, secret identities, spies, undercover agents, princes and grand duchesses, annoying relatives, and Mittel-European kingdoms.

All those things appear in the eight pages of The Girl in the Train. They’re all in the film too, with added acerbic cabbies, seen-it-all-before hoteliers, jaundiced executive secretaries, and overworked maids. If something isn’t happening onscreen, wait thirty seconds and it will.

Agatha, as a parodist, threw everything into the fictional blender and pressed frappé. The biggest change she made to this outrageously typical romance format is in the lead character. Romances are typically told from the viewpoint of the heroine — a damsel who may or may not be in distress — but whose point of view is always front and center. It’s her story. She’s the ingenue and the action revolves around what she’s getting up to.

Not here. The ingenue is male.

He’s George Rowland, gentleman, lover of fine tailoring, flower fancier, and man-about-town. He would fit in perfectly with Bertie Wooster’s set. He’s young, he’s good-looking, he’s got prospects thanks to his wealthy uncle, and he’s not very bright. He’d be a member of the Drones Club and be nicknamed “Rowboat.” I suspect Agatha read a lot of P.G. Wodehouse. She’s written characters, particularly in The Seven Dials Mystery, who could have stepped fully-formed from Wodehouse’s pen.

reviews the girl on a train (1982) flower seller

George is very late to work one morning (a late night out on the town). He accepts a sprig of white heather from his favorite flower vendor — for luck — and discovers that his luck has run out with his uncle. He’s soon out on the street as a lazy good-for-nothing. He returns home and discusses his situation with Jeeves, I mean, Rogers, the butler. All prospects look dismal so George riffles through a railway guide and discovers there’s a stop named Rowland Castle. It’s perfect. That’s his last name and the residents are sure to welcome him.

He wants something exciting to happen and seconds later, it does. A hot blonde damsel wearing a red hat shows up, shoves her way into his first-class compartment, and begs him to hide her. As a gentleman seeking adventure, he naturally obliges. Seconds later, a mysterious foreigner shows up hunting said damsel. George handles the situation, the foreigner is hauled off, and the damsel presses a package onto him and gives him instructions to follow that man over there who resembles King George V, who reigned from 1910 to 1936.

The damsel, Elizabeth, then disappears.

George is overwhelmed. He can’t disappoint this fascinating damsel! She needs him! Adventure awaits! Since he can’t get off the train until the man who looks like King George V does, he ends up in Portsmouth at a second-rate hotel catering to commercial travelers on a budget. He has to be told how to sign the hotel ledger by the lady hotelier. He choses to sign in as “Lord Rowland.” More foreigners show up, the King George V look-alike explores the docks by night and leaves a mysterious message in the bathroom, George’s room is broken into, and he rescues a suspicious stranger.

All the while, he’s got no idea what happened to Elizabeth.

Normally in a romance, we know what’s happening to Elizabeth. She’s the star, the main attraction, the center of the action. Not here. George is the innocent ingenue, in over his head and gamely struggling. Then to complicate his life still further (remember, if the action slows down, wait thirty seconds) the suspicious stranger is with Scotland Yard and he’s hot on the heels of a suspected spy and his accomplice, Betty Bright-Eyes. Elizabeth. Betty. They couldn’t be the same person, could they?

George is in a quandary. Could his gorgeous Elizabeth have been … using him? Yep, she sure could. She saw in George what everyone else saw: someone dumb. There’s one, as the cabbie says several times, born every minute. Why, George is so dumb he doesn’t recognize that the flower his favorite flower vendor gives him isn’t white heather like she claimed. Everyone recognizes the sprig in his lapel as erica vagans but him. That’s Cornish heath, by the way. I’ve no idea how the scriptwriter got the term “pale mauve” from that. Common flowers have loads of common names so perhaps that’s the answer.

George ends up back on the train to London after discovering the true identity of Betty Bright-Eyes. His newest shock is learning that the lovely Elizabeth was really a grand duchess who eloped with the second son of Lord so and so. She used him to run off with another man. Except she didn’t because Elizabeth shows up (miraculously finding him on the correct train between Portsmouth and London) and reveals all. Her brother (not the peer-in-waiting) eloped with the grand duchess and she helped them evade the grand duchess’s wicked relatives.

There are two entire novels’ worth of activity going on behind George’s adventures: the elopement and Balkan intrigue, and spies infiltrating the naval defenses of Portsmouth and putting England at risk. Those events swirl around George, he’s barely aware of them, and he never makes it to Rowland Castle. But he’s reunited with lovely, smart, conniving Elizabeth so he’ll get his happy ever after.

Sadly, the film ran out of time and didn’t circle back to George’s financier uncle as the short story did. George is smart enough (in text) to realize that marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Lord so and so, the sister-in-law to a grand duchess, the sister of the next Lord so and so, is exactly what his uncle would want and thus welcome him back to the firm.

The flaw in the film is it didn’t sparkle. It’s got everything needed for the romance of your dreams but the fizz of multiple bottles of champagne.