I've been reading Martin Edwards' Edgar-nominated The Golden Age of Murder, and the section on Agatha Christie's still-mysterious short-term disappearance in 1926 reminded me of this movie. It's based on a novel by Kathleen Tynan, and it's a fictionalized account of that disappearance. Christie is played by Vanessa Redgrave, and Archie, her rotter of a husband, is a pre-James Bond Timothy Dalton. Dustin Hoffman plays an American reporter, Wally Stanton, who tracks Christie down. The Christies are real, but Hoffman's character is the creation of Tynan.Tynan speculates that Christie's disappearance has to do with the fact that her husband is having an affair with his secretary. (In real life, she registered at a hotel using the secretary's last name, and two years later the Christies were divorced and Archie had married his secretary.) Tynan also speculates that Agatha had plans for the secretary, the kind of plans that a mystery writer usually confines to the pages of a book.
When Wally finds Christie, he doesn't rat her out. Instead, he falls for her, and this leads to some nice scenes, especially the one where the quite short Wally and the quite tall Agatha dance together. The plot kind of meanders along for a lot of them movie, but the period details are great, and it's always fun to watch actors like Dalton, Hoffman, and Redgrave do their stuff. They do it very well here.
If you want a kind of fluffy entertainment that has some relation to the truth, whatever that might be, this movie will provide it. But if you want the real skinny on crime fiction's Golden Age, then I highly recommend Edwards' book.
Update: Over at Kevin Tipple's blog today, Earl Staggs writes about Christie's disappearance.
10 comments:
I read somewhere that this was the first movie where a leading man was shown as significantly shorter than his female co-star, which brings to mind all the fancy camera work that had to go into keeping Alan Ladd's height a mystery. I enjoyed this movie, but haven't seen it for years.
This incident was one that Christie rarely addressed although one biography I read said that she probably had what we would term a nervous breakdown: in the space of less than a year she lost the grandmother and great-aunt who had raised her and her husband left her.
Martin Edwards's book is terrific. Agatha Christie's disappearance makes her all the more compelling.
I agree, George.
Deb, I prefer the movie's speculations to whatever the reality is. The movies played those camera tricks for many actors (Paul Newman, for one), and the tricks are still being played for Tom Cruise and others.
Some people speculated at the time that it was a publicity stunt, which even then seemed a stretch. The notoriously shy Christie would never have done that IMHO. I think she just cracked.
It came out earlier but I always associate this movie with Hammett, based on the Joe Gores novel. I think they both hit cable about the same time.
Alan Ladd was always great with Veronica Lake because they were both so short.
Robert Redford is another rather short leading man. The scene set-ups and camera angles aren't quite as obvious as with Alan Ladd, but when you watch his early-to-mid-seventies "heart throb" movies, you can see pains were taken to keep Redford as the tallest person in the frame.
Tom (Midget Man) Cruise is the current avatar, at 5'7" (maybe). (But Kevin Hart is 5'2".)
I remember reading William Goldman's books on "the screen trade" where he said almost every leading man was short. There are always exceptions - John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Selleck are [were in Wayne's case] in the 6'4" range.
Some others:
Brad Garrett is 6'8"
James Cromwell is 6'7"
Tim Robbins (this surprised me), The Rock, Vince Vaughan and The Hoff are 6'5"
Liam Neeson, Steven Seagal, Chris Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum and Jason Segal are 6'4"
A fine piece of work.
I saw it and liked it and maybe should see it again.
Thank you for mentioning Earl's piece today, Bill. Strange timing you both did this at the same time.
I had never heard of this before today. One could not pull it off so easily now with social media.
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