26 Jun Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1994)

Clive’s Drama

One precious thing about Christie is that she’ll give a wholly coherent narrative with some unresolved bits — a narrative if you will where we actually accomplish some of the things we do in absorbing a narrative. Then at the end of essentially all the Poirot mysteries at least, she convenes a higher level play. The suspects are gathered and the detective rewrites what you previously correlated with the author. That last bit sits in a space between writer and reader in a more intimate space than the first part.

The mechanisms between these two narratives are delicately coordinated in the novels. It is not as delicious as Shakespeare where the local use of the language as it unfolds expands the narrative on rereading. In some way this is better, because we get to revisit the souls of those we thought we understood.

So years ago when I saw these as new, if bothered me that someone had changed the narrative construction. Most of the bits are still there, but that elaborate initial weaving and the later unweaving are largely erased. Instead, we have conventional cinematic engagement with a slightly more interesting story than usual, but engaging characters and environments.

Clive Exton is the adapter responsible for this, which I took as a personal theft. I still mourn. It is still an affront to undue the useful soul of a work of art.

I’m making these remarks on this particular adaptation for no particular reason. Exton made 20 such adaptations, all enjoyable in a light visual way. But this does seem more egregious in this case, with relevant history presented first. We have only one imposter rather than two, but those are just examples of accomplished tradecraft in the service of disassembling the precious.

Posted in 2025

Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

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