Miss Marple: 4:50 from Paddington - Blockbuster New Releases Information

This is a good tv film.the actors were good.Miss Marple was very good.This movie had lots of suspence.This is also a cozy film.This is ideal to settle down with on a winter night.Dont miss this good film in the series.

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Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) –

  

… so I’ll ignore what you just said. After all, we may both be involved in this business at a later date. When *one* of us is clever enough to find the body.”

There she sits: A white-haired elderly spinster, dressed in tweeds and a pair of knitting needles in her lap, seemingly more interested in village gossip than in the goings-on of the world at large. But when told by Milchester C.I.D. Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) that no further investigation is to take place into her friend Elspeth McGillicuddy’s (Mona Bruce’s) report of having witnessed a murder in a passing train, because there doesn’t seem to be any corpse to substantiate that report, and that in fact any insistence on further police action will bring her close to charges for “wasting police time,” Miss Marple’s answer (quoted above) quickly reveals that her placid appearance conceals not only an incredibly sharp mind but also, on occasion, an equally sharp tongue. “Miss Marple is a white-haired old lady with a gentle, appealing manner – Miss Wetherby is a mixture of vinegar and gush. Of the two Miss Marple is the more dangerous,” already observes Vicar Clement, the narrator of her first adventure, 1930′s “Murder at the Vicarage.”

And of course Mrs. McGillicuddy was *not* wrong, and Miss Marple knows her friend too well not to realize this at once and initiate an investigation of her own. (“She saw what she saw,” she insists vis-a-vis Inspector Slack.) Realizing that the dead body must have been thrown from the train onto the grounds of the nearby Crackenthorpe family estate of Rutherford Hall, she convinces another friend, young professional housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow (Jill Meager) to seek a position with the Crackenthorpe family and thus become her eyes and ears. But Lucy quickly shows that she is much more than that – not only doesn’t it take her long to discover the body; she also provides much-needed assistance to beleaguered Emma Crackenthorpe (Joanna David) in organizing the household in general and an upcoming family gathering in particular, and she gains the respect of cranky old pater familias Luther Crackenthorpe (Maurice Denham) and the particular attention of one of his sons, philandering Cedric Crackenthorpe (John Hallam) *and* Luther’s widowed son in law, former Royal Air Force pilot Bryan Eastley (David Beams). And while Inspector Slack, as always when he chooses to disregard Miss Marple’s “ramblings,” is hot on the pursuit of the wrong suspect(s), St. Mary Mead’s elderly spinster and her friend Lucy find the solution – relying on Lucy’s observations as much as on Miss Marple’s ever-unfailing “village parallels;” those seemingly innocuous incidents of village life that make up the sum of her knowledge of human nature, and to which she routinely turns in unmasking even the cleverest killer.

Originally airing on TV in the 1980s, the BBC’s adaptations of Agatha Christie’s twelve Miss Marple novels featured Joan Hickson in the title role; quickly establishing her as the quintessential Miss Marple even in the view of the grandmother (or rather, grand-aunt) of all village sleuths and “noticing kinds of persons”‘s creator, Dame Agatha herself. (After seeing Hickson in an adaptation of her “Appointment With Death,” as early as 1946 Christie reportedly sent her a note expressing the hope she would “play my dear Miss Marple.”) Prior versions, partly involving rather high-octane casts, had seen as Miss Marple, inter alia, Angela Lansbury and Margaret Rutherford, but had been decidedly less faithful to Christie’s books. While Lansbury holds her own fairly well when compared to the character’s literary original in 1980′s “Hollywood does Christie” version of “The Mirror Crack’d” (and that movie’s ageing actresses’ showdown featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak is a delight to watch) the four movies starring Rutherford are only loosely based on Christie’s books: Dame Margaret’s Miss Marple, although itself likewise a splendid performance, has about as much to do with Agatha Christie’s demure and seemingly scatterbrained village sleuth as Big Ben does with the English countryside, and of the scripts, only “Murder, She Said” is an adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery (“4:50 From Paddington”), whereas two of the others – “Murder at the Gallop” and “Murder Most Foul” – are actually Hercule Poirot stories (“After the Funeral” and “Mrs. McGinty’s Dead,” respectively), and “Murder Ahoy” is based on a completely independent screenplay.

Following the rule that ever since Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade every great private detective needs a policeman he can outwit, the creators of the BBC series inserted the character of Inspector Slack (David Horovitch) into almost all of the storylines; including this 1987 adaptation of “4:50 From Paddington” (a/k/a “What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!,” written 1957), which actually features a Scotland Yard Inspector named Craddock (who in turn also…

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P. Falcioni “Ducatisti” (Central Oregon, United States) –

  

  

Large, expensive productions of Agatha Christie mysteries never come off properly. American versions always try to expand on the original book, creating “real” characters from the basic types that Christie wrote. Unfortunately, the story loses it’s charm when this happens. Characters made too real create a more real sense of horror when they are killed off or removed to jail, and the threads of the storyline get twisted and lost amongst the “real people”.

Christie is at her best when played true to the original story, flat characters and all. Good actors who can work within these strict and frankly boring guidelines are rare, but BBC seems to find them and use them to perfection in this series.

Joan Hickson is a gem. Playing Miss Marple to ramrod-straight-backed understated perfection. The countryside, the manor homes, Miss Marple’s own cottage, the tiny hamlet of St. Mary Mead, these are the real stars of the show, described to perfection by Christie and well-represented here on film. Seeing a British upper-cruster purchasing a paper with the headline “Russia wins Space Race”, then hopping on a steam train for a weekend in the country shows how the world of Miss Marple and her counterparts is quickly slipping away no matter how hard they try and keep it unchanged.

So deliciously British, so perfectly played. Shows like this present a bygone era with such solemn sentiment it gives us a precise window in to how things were, giving us a few hours of wonderful entertainment without making us feel an urge to go back there in person.

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