And Then There Were None
- Thread starter neonwilderness
- Start date
keybored
Well done. You remember cat good.
It reminded me of Cluedo crossed with The Thing.
gosub
~#
Having gone back to the house, and found dead torchwood rapey bloke, Poldark would have known she didn't have the opportunity. Then finding the doctor washed in with the tide......He must have known it wasn't either of them
Reno
The In Kraut
That was rather silly with her (literally) hanging on to listen while trying not to die.
I'd only ever seen the 40s film which used the less downbeat ending taken from the stage version.
The thing with Agatha Christie adaptations I find really boring is that they always end with explaining the plot, which translates poorly to film/TV because it's just a massive info dump and non-visual.
This was alright, they made it as much into a horror film as is possible and the novel had a huge influence on the horror genre.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
I want to know who did the tidying up. The dining room was spick and span the next day.
D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
But with more exploding heads and less uses of the word "nigger"
quimcunx
imprimeo, lamino, distribuo
Despite the subject matter I've never really thought of Agatha Christie's work as so dark. That was definitely dark. I was quite jumpy by the end. Although I never understand in these things why they don't just agree to all stick together even if it means going to the toilet together.
gosub
~#
It was one of the plays the POW's put on to entertain themselves during the war, the central themes of internal personal torment from your actions and not being able to escape justice went down pretty well
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
Inquests?
elbows
Well-Known Member
The idea of deference had not been murdered (oh what a just murder!) back when this story was conceived, so I think we are just supposed to assume that judges have special powers of knowing.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Inquests wouldn't have established what we are asked to accept. For example, an inquest couldn't find that the nanny deliberately engineered the boy's drowning. So if the judge knew, why didn't anyone else and why weren't they prosecuted?
I think elbows is right and we're just supposed to accept it, which annoys me as it introduces a supernatural element ("special powers of knowing") to a story that's not meant to be supernatural.
If they had been incorrectly acquitted or set free because of procedural failures it would've made a bit more sense.
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bi0boy
Power User
Why did she intentionally send poor little Cyril to drown? Was she just an evil governess or did it somehow have to do with her fancying the man in the stripey top?
Didn't you hear the bit about the inheritance?
bimble
floofy
Ah! Thank you.
bi0boy
Power User
I see the book ended with everyone dying and not knowing who the killer was. An epilogue set years later has police finally solve it after a bottle is found at sea with a confession inside.
Why they couldn't have done that on screen idk. Surely better than messing up the hanging scene with an explantion.
Reno
The In Kraut
The way it goes down in the book, with the police unable to solve the case and a lot of time passing till everything gets resolved via a letter is a literary conceit which works on the page but not for a film or TV drama. You can't carry on a drama with all the characters gone. Not saying they found the best solution, but I can see why they've changed it. As I said before, that's a general problem with Christie adaptations. The end never lends itself to visual interpretation.
I recently rewatched several of the 70s/80s star studded blockbusters based on Christie (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun, The Mirror Crack'd) and I struggled to stay awake for the end of each, as the films stop dead while Albert Finney or Peter Ustinov spend seemingly half an hour revealing the murderer, laboriously explaining the plot to the ensembled cast of surviving characters.
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Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Deaths maybe, but not murders, otherwise the perps would have been prosecuted.
How do you find that out without it becoming obvious that as the only person known to all of them, he must be the killer?
Reno
The In Kraut
Don't ask me to justify Christie, I haven't read the novel. I had it all explained by the friend I watched it with on NYE who is a Christie buff. Some of the deaths are far more explicitly murders in the book (Vera) there just has been no proof.
This type of reverse engineered plot, which is rigged with twists and reversals, isn't generally my thing. I don't even like whodunnits much, I prefer more character based stuff (and the why rather than the who), not something where the characters are cogs in a machine made to spring twists on you. My favourite classic detective TV show was always Columbo because you know who the murderer is from the start and then it becomes about the battle of wits between the killer and Columbo (working class Columbo taking down murderous rich people was an added attraction)
I watched this because I heard that this adaptation was more horror film than polite BBC costume drama and I worked on the special effects for it (though I only saw the two shots I worked on)
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Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Yes, the inheritance was for Hugo, the man she fancied, because there was the whole thing about him not having enough money to be able to get married, so she figured if the kid died the money would go to Hugo and he would most assuredly ask her to marry him.
Hate that kind of fucking storyline.
I read most of her books when I was a teenager but she was still alive and writing back then. I always preferred Miss Marple to Poirot but loved them all. They seem very dated now but still good stories
D'wards
IT'S YOUR DECISION DANIEL
Which are the best, would you say?I read most of her books when I was a teenager but she was still alive and writing back then. I always preferred Miss Marple to Poirot but loved them all. They seem very dated now but still good stories
I do find it interesting that historically women have been treated quite badly, yet in this country we have turned out some of the greatest authors known to literature, who happen to be female. I suppose pre-1950 being comfortably well off wouldn't have hurt.
Reno
The In Kraut
This country has indeed produced some great women writers but they still were a tiny minority when compared to male authors (and they still are in a minority). However at least since the 19th century, writing was an art form which was a little more accommodating towards women than other arts like music or painting, where women were even more rare.
One thing that's always interested me is that murder mysteries are hugely popular both with female writers and readers. My three best female friends all love them. The genre my male friends gravitate to the most is science fiction. Of course there are always exception but on the whole that seems tone the case. I wonder why that is.
One thing that's always interested me is that murder mysteries are hugely popular both with female writers and readers. My three best female friends all love them. The genre my male friends gravitate to the most is science fiction. Of course there are always exception but on the whole that seems tone the case. I wonder why that is.
It's a very long time since I was a teenager and I probably can't remember half of them.
Murder at the Vicarage was the first I read. Then The Mirror Cracked form Side to Side, The body in the Library and A Murder is announced were some of the early others I read. I used to read one then go into a book shop and just get really excited about buying another one. It wasn't easy to know much about what was coming out next in those days. As I said earlier, I always preferred Miss Marple but I liked the Poirot too, just not as much.
I can't really critique them, I was very drawn into the country house way of living and wanted to marry a vicar back in those days. Miss Marple sort of took me there
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