Teresa Reviews “The Moving Finger” (1985)
Teresa reviews “The Moving Finger” (1985) and found the lack of subtitles an obstacle to enjoying the show.
Fidelity to text: 3 and 1/2 poison bottles.
The most significant change is that in the novel, Miss Marple doesn’t appear until the last few chapters. In this adaptation, she shows up within the first fifteen minutes. The setting is moved to the early 1950’s instead of 1943, when the novel was published. A few characters are combined to simplify the story. A few names are changed, notably the doctor’s sister (from Aimée to Eryl) and the vicar and his wife (from Dane Calthrop to just plain Calthrop).
Quality of film on its own: 3 and 1/2 poison bottles.
It felt truncated and overly condensed. Another ten minutes would have really helped in setting up the murderer’s motivation along with the blackmail attempt. Even after combining several characters, the cast was huge and I couldn’t always tell them apart. No subtitles, a real problem because many of the characters are of the lower classes and they were difficult to understand. The quality of the film itself had degraded over the years and transferring to DVD didn’t improve it.
The Moving Finger was Agatha’s third Miss Marple novel, published in 1943. Interestingly, Agatha chose to keep Miss Marple offstage until very late in the novel, when the vicar’s wife, Mrs. Dane Calthrop, decides the police aren’t doing enough and calls in an expert in wickedness. Miss Marple shows up very early here, soon after the poison-pen letters begin arriving.
The novel is narrated by Jerry Barton, recovering test pilot, and thus suffers from all the usual problems of a first-person narration. He’s got to be there to witness events or he’s got to have someone else explain things. Because Jerry Barton isn’t the star and Jane Marple is, we see Miss Marple in action in scenes where she never appeared. It worked, though. If I didn’t know changes had been made, I wouldn’t have noticed.
The film quality was noticeably poor. The Body in the Library (the first Joan Hickson film) looked and sounded much better. It could have been the DVD itself, but more likely, it was that the original film wasn’t well preserved so be forewarned. There were blurry patches throughout and frequently, the lighting was bad so it’s hard to see what’s going on. Add the mumbling and criminal lack of subtitles and you won’t get the pristine gorgeous quality normally associated with BBC productions.
This two-part TV episode was first aired in February of 1985, so allowances must be made. I’m sure no one back then thought we’d be discussing 35-year-old TV shows and yet here we are. VCRs were just getting popular as their cost came down. Early videotapes were so expensive way back when — about $100 per title — many of us rented them. No one dreamed that people would want to watch old TV episodes. It was movies all the way, dear reader.
Times change.
“Have you ever seen anything so unlike Mr. Pye? So virile and handsome, isn’t it?”
Never let it be said that Agatha can’t be amusingly snarky.
Also pulling a vanishing act was Emily Barton, the sweet and distressed old lady who rented Little Furze to the Burtons. Note the similarity between last names; this is serves as a plot point in both the novel and the film, but in the film, the dialog is so murky, it was hard to catch.
There’s also no real reason in the filmed version for Jerry Burton to fall madly in love with Megan Symmington. She’s clumsy, badly-dressed, rude, and off-putting in the adaptation.
The novel gives her more time to blossom, making it easier for us to accept our hero sweeping Megan off her feet and whisking her away to London for a makeover into an attractive young lady. Even her makeover is truncated, losing this great scene between Jerry and the fancy London dressmaker, Mary Grey:
‘“Oh, I shall enjoy it — apart from the money — and that’s not to be sneezed at in these days — half of my damned brutes of women never pay their bills. But as I say, I shall enjoy it.” Mary Grey shot a quick professional glance at Megan standing a little way off. “She’s got a lovely figure.”
“You must have X-ray eyes,” I said. “She looks completely shapeless to me.”
Mary Grey laughed.
“It’s these schools,” she said. “They seem to take a pride in turning out girls who preen themselves on looking like nothing on earth. They call it being sweet and unsophisticated. Sometimes it takes a whole season before a girl can pull herself together and look human. Don’t worry, leave it all to me.”’
Agatha was a very capable observer of humanity. She also seethed with passion, yet the relationship on screen between Jerry and Megan seems to take place solely because the plot insists on it. The other passionate relationship, between Jerry’s sister Joanna and the Welsh doctor, Owen Griffith, is given even less screen time. Their budding relationship has even less reason to happen in the film. In the novel, the handsome doctor introduces Joanna to a world she never knew existed; important, vital, necessary for life, unlike her previous superficial, London-party-girl existence. All that’s gone.
The doctor’s sister is erased as well, along with her motivation for doing what she did. Similarly, the gloriously beautiful nursery governess, prime plot motivation in the book, serves in the film as lovely, unspeaking scenery. Jerry Burton barely notices her.
If the BBC could devote three TV episodes and almost three hours to The Body in the Library, why couldn’t they do the same for The Moving Finger? The ways of TV producers are inscrutable.
The Moving Finger was enjoyable to watch, but I wouldn’t watch this episode again, unless it was to better decipher what the characters were saying.
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