MURDER, SHE WROTE
Agatha Christie is the undisputed queen of murder mysteries—a little bit cozy, a little bit noir. A new film inspired by on one of her books, A Haunting in Venice, reminds us why we love her.
No conversation about mysteries and noir is complete without a nod to Agatha Christie, the author of 75+ stories that inspired 30 movies and counting. With 2 billion copies of her books sold in 103 languages, Christie, who died in 1976 at age 86, remains the bestselling novelist of all time.
“Christie is sort of the patron saint of the cozies,” says TCM’s Eddie Muller, referring to a subgenre of crime fiction in which most sex and violence occur off-screen, the stories take place in a small, contained—“cozy”—setting, and the detective is an amateur sleuth who’s typically female, or a more genteel male. “Because, Miss Marple, you know… and Hercule Poirot, well, they’re not Sam Spade, if you know what I mean,” Muller says, comparing two of Christie’s most popular sleuths to the hardboiled, tough-skinned detective created by writer Dashiell Hammett and popularized by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.
The gender dividing line is a real thing for fans of film noir and crime fiction, says Muller, who points out that traditionally males prefer gritty detective stories and noir written by other males, but women lean more toward “cozies,” like most of Agatha Christie’s tales. And those noir guys “can be very dismissive toward female writers,” he says.
But he thinks it’s time to get over that. “A lot of Agatha Christie’s books are much darker than people give her credit for. She’s written some pretty ‘nasty’ stuff in her day.” Nasty, as in her 1932 short story The Fourth Man, which deals in premonitions, jealousy and death.
As wider audiences discover noir, Muller thinks there might be more appreciation for female writers in general, including Christie. “They still make movies about her books, and her books are still in print. Maybe it’s Agatha Christie’s turn” to become the subject of a serious noir discussion—maybe even one on his Noir Alley shows.
In the meantime, there’s the newest movie adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, A Haunting in Venice, to watch, an upcoming Christie-inspired BBC series called Murder is Easy and plenty of classic Christie books and movies to enjoy. We’ve gathered a few of the best films here—plus some other fun stuff for Christie fans.
1. MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017) Kenneth Branagh donned the movie crown of Christie’s iconic Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, anchoring an ensemble cast alongside Daisy Ridley, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench and Penélope Cruz. An earlier version of Christie’s 1937 novel, in 1974, starred Albert Finney as Poirot, with Jacqueline Bisset, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Hopkins, Michael York…and James Bond! (Well, actually, Sean Connery.)
2. DEATH ON THE NILE (2022) Branagh returned for the recent movie remake of another Christie novel, also another all-star affair with Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Gal (Wonder Woman) Godot and Russell Brand. The previous movie, also based on Christie’s 1937 work of detective fiction, starred Peter Ustinov as Poirot, with Olivia Hussey, Bette Davis, George Kennedy and Angela Lansbury.
3. THE MIRROR CRACK’D (1980) Another Christie character from the 1930s, detective Miss Marple, makes a reappearance (played by Angela Lansbury) in this film, in which a local woman (Maureen Bennett) is poisoned with a spiked cocktail, and everyone thinks a visiting movie star (Elizabeth Taylor) was the intended victim. With Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis and Kim Novak.
4. WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957) Helmed by the sure-handed director Billy Wilder and based on a play adapted by Christie from her own short story, this courtroom classic starred Marlene Dietrich as a woman accused of murder and defended by a dedicated barrister (Charles Laughton). It was so full of socko surprises, the final ten pages of the script were withheld from the cast until the final days of filming.
5. TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1974) This was the title given to a movie remake of an earlier film, And Then There Were None, in 1945, about a group of people invited to a remote hotel—who then start to die, one by one. Can they work together to find the killer before it’s too late? Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Herbert Lom, Orson Welles and Gert Fröbe (he was Goldfinger in Goldfinger!) star. The Christie story on which it’s based, written in 1939, is regarded as the world’s most successful murder mystery, selling more than 100 million copies in multiple languages.