Murder on the Orient Express

a film by Sidney Lumet
based on a novel by Agatha Christie

Curiously, it took exactly forty years from the publication of Christie’s classic novel to make its first adaptation. Of the three films from the cycle Nada es lo que parece, the last one was the one I liked the least. I found its all-star cast including Ingrid Bergman, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins and Vanessa Redgrave rather underwhelming, while Albert Finney portrayed the most annoying Poirot I’ve seen. It is its few comic moments that make this grandiose movie actually enjoyable.

According to Wikipedia,

Christie, who died fourteen months after the release of the film, stated that Murder on the Orient Express and Witness for the Prosecution were the only movie adaptations of her books that she liked although she expressed disappointment with Poirot’s moustache.

Witness for the Prosecution

a film by Billy Wilder
based on a play by Agatha Christie

Another first — this time, the first film adaptation of Christie’s 1953 play. Compared to last week’s feature, Witness for the Prosecution offers much more mystery, even less noir, and plenty of comedy, albeit of a different kind. Of the three main stars, Tyrone Power is unimpressive, Marlene Dietrich is interesting enough, and Charles Laughton is truly splendid. Una O’Connor is great as a 1957 version of Mrs Doyle (eggbeater = Teamaster), and Elsa Lanchester — by then, a spouse of Laughton for nearly three decades — shines as Miss Plimsoll.

Testigo de cargo continues the cycle Nada es lo que parece. 50 años sin Agatha Christie.

And Then There Were None

a film by René Clair
based on a novel by Agatha Christie

To me, this 1945 movie — the first cinematic adaptation of the classic novel — was not as much a mystery, let alone film noir, as a (black) comedy. According to Wikipedia, this is what René Clair wanted to make all along. Jolly good fun throughout.

The film is full of familiar faces; alas, I couldn’t recall where exactly I saw them.

Diez negritos opened the cycle Nada es lo que parece. 50 años sin Agatha Christie organised by Asociación de Cine Vértigo. Curiously, the Spanish title is faithful to the original title of the novel although the film features figurines of Indians (and was released in the UK as Ten Little Indians).

Live music and stuff in Las Palmas and Santander, October 2024

This is what I’ve seen in October:

• 1 October: «Bach & Rameau» @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  Capilla de Santa Anna featuring Vicent Bru (harpsichord), Yurena Darias (viola da gamba) and Anabel Estévez (Baroque violin). The programme included:
  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Sonata in G major for violin and basso continuo BWV 1021
  • Jean-Philippe Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en concerts: III concert
    La Lapoplinière
    La timide: 1er Rondeau, 2e Rondeau
    Premier tambourin, Deuxième tambourin en Rondeau
  • Bach: Sonata in G major for viola da gamba and harpsichord BWV 1027
    Adagio
    Allegro ma non tanto
    Andante
    Allegro moderato
  • Rameau: Pièces de clavecin en concerts: V concert
    La Forqueray: Fugue
    La Cupis
    La Marais

  

• 3 October: «Trayectoria del polvo VII» @ Casa África, Calle Alfonso XIII, 5
  The opening performance of the Masdanza 2024 festival. Featuring Nshoma Nkwabi (dance, vocal) and Anahi Acuña (violin, vocal); directed by Aïda Colmenero Dïaz. The programme included projection of four short films from the cycle Ella Poema directed and choreographed by Dïaz: Éxodo, Abismo, El Quitador de Miedos and Cicatriz de Luz.

• 3—31 October: Exposición de Acuarelas @ La Casa de la Cultura, Villa de Moya, Gran Canaria
  Watercolours by la Asociación Canaria de Acuarelistas, with a work by Tamara.

  

Goodbye Las Palmas, hello, Santander!

• 11 October: Luca Filastro Trio @ El Centro Botín, Muelle de Albareda, Santander
  An evening of stride jazz featuring Luca Filastro (piano, vocals), Vincenzo Florio (double bass) and Andrea Nunzi (drums).

  

This year, I managed to see all (four) plays of the XIV Festival de Teatro Amateur organised by Federación de Grupos de Teatro Aficionado de Cantabria (FETEACAN). As in other years, it took place at Paraninfo de Las Llamas de la Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (Avenida de los Castros, 42).

• 19 October: «La Visita»
  A play by Javier García-Mauriño performed by Carpe Diem Teatro (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real); directed by Miguel Ángel Berlanga.

• 20 October: «La Ratonera»
  Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap (with a twist!) performed by Itxartu Antzerki Taldea (Getxo).
• 26 October: «Los locos de Valencia»
  A rather silly farce by Lope de Vega, performed by UGTeatro (Murcia). Directed by David Terol and Mariángeles Rodríguez.

• 27 October: «Pluto. Dios de la riqueza»
  A comedy by Aristophanes, performed by Teatro Kumen (Asturias). Directed by José Ramon López Menéndez.

  

More exhibitions in Santander:

• 11 May — 20 October: «Silvia Bächli: Partitura» @ El Centro Botín, Santander
  Works by Silvia Bächli (1956, Baden, Switzerland).

  

• 5 October 2024 — 9 March 2025: «Shimabuku: Pulpo, cítrico, humano» @ El Centro Botín
  Works by Shimabuku (1969, Kobe, Japan).

  

• 10 October — 7 November: «Colores del mundo» @ Plaza Porticada
  Open-air exhibition of large-format images from the National Geographic archives.

  

• 11 October — 7 December 2024: «De Orallo a Okuda: un diálogo intergeneracional» @ Balta Gallery, Calle Lope de Vega, 29
  Works by Roberto Orallo and Óscar San Miguel aka Okuda.

  

And that was it for October.

39 very short films

Thirty-nine? You must be kidding me. Not ten, not fifteen, but 39 short films selected from, wait for it, 58 submitted to the competition. The competition in question is called Visionaria, but I’m afraid this year’s jury had a very vague idea what “selection” is. Judging from what I’ve seen yesterday, the remaining 19 films (33%) must have been pretty unimpressive. The screening was held in Teatro Guiniguada which was packed — with Rabbit’s friends and relations, I suppose. Short films are not that popular otherwise.

The complete programme is available here — I can’t be bothered to list all films in this post. I liked Femme by Javier González and Still Live by María Sanz Esteve. My favourite, however, and the one I voted for, was Agatha Christie estuvo aquí by Cayetana H. Cuyás which, to my delight, has won the first prize.

All the films are available at YouTube.

The great danger of the metric system

First published 15 September 2020 @ low-throughput

A few fact(oid)s about Dame Agatha Christie I haven’t been aware until now.

• Pharmacy and toxicology were among Christie’s many interests. During the the First World War, she took some time off her work as a nurse to study for the Apothecaries Hall Examination. She wrote in her autobiography:

  To be introduced suddenly to the periodic table, atomic weight, and the ramifications of coal-tar derivatives was apt to result in bewilderment. However, I found my feet, mastered the simpler facts, and after we had blown up our Cona coffee machine in the process of practising Marsh’s test for arsenic our progress was well on the way. <...>

  A chemist’s shop, the first time that you go behind the scenes, is a revelation. Being amateurs in our hospital work, we measured every bottle of medicine with the utmost accuracy. When the doctor prescribed twenty grains of bismuth carbonate to a dose, exactly twenty grains the patient got. Since we were amateurs, I think this was a good thing, but I imagine that any chemist who has done his five years, and got his minor pharmaceutical degree, knows his stuff in the same way as a good cook knows hers. He tosses in portions from the various stock bottles with the utmost confidence, without bothering to measure or weigh at all. He measures his poisons or dangerous drugs carefully, of course, but the harmless stuff goes in in the approximate dollops. Colouring and flavouring are added in much the same way. This sometimes results in the patients coming back and complaining that their medicine is a different colour from last time. <...>

  During the course of my pharmaceutical instruction on Sunday afternoons, I was faced with a problem. It was incumbent upon the entrants to the examination to deal with both the ordinary system and the metric system of measurements. My pharmacist gave me practice in making up preparations to the metric formula. Neither doctors nor chemists like the metrical system in operation. One of our doctors at the hospital never learned what ‘containing 0.1’ really meant, and would say, ‘Now let me see, is this solution one in a hundred or one in a thousand?’ The great danger of the metric system is that if you go wrong you go ten times wrong. <...>

  It was while I was working in the dispensary that I first conceived the idea of writing a detective story.

• It was not until 1920 that her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, saw the light of day. The corresponding episode of Poirot was released 30 years ago on occasion of Christie’s 100^th birthday. Now, to mark the centenary of Styles, the Royal Mint issued the new £2 coins featuring the author’s signature, a jigsaw puzzle and some instruments of murder.
  

• I visited Ayuntamiento de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on many a bureaucracy-related occasion without knowing that its (pretty ugly) headquarters occupy the place of the former Quiney’s Hotel Metropole where Agatha Christie stayed in 1927.

  Las Palmas is still my ideal of the place to go in the winter months. I believe nowadays it is a tourist resort and has lost its early charm. Then it was quiet and peaceful. Very few people came there except those who stayed for a month or two in winter and preferred it to Madeira. It had two perfect beaches. The temperature was perfect too: the average was about 70, which is, to my mind, what a summer temperature should be.

  Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
  

• The Mousetrap was not only the longest-running West End show but it had the longest initial run of any play in history. It premiered in 1952 and ran continuously until March 2020 until it was rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hickory Dickory Dock

a film by Andrew Grieve

I first saw this episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot back in mid-1990s. Until I watched it again a few days ago, I couldn’t remember anything at all apart from its glorious finale. The rest of the movie, as I discover now, is not bad either, although the mouse (that ran up the clock) is really annoying.

Hercule Poirot. It is most kind of you to invite me here, Chief Inspector.
Chief Inspector Japp. After staying with you for a whole week, Poirot, the least I could do is offer you a spot of lunch, wean you away from that... well, let you taste some proper English cooking.
Poirot. And the good Madam Japp, it is today that she returns?
Japp. Yes, about three o’clock. There. Now that is what I call food. That’s your mashed potato. This is your peas.
Poirot. Oui.
Japp. Mushy peas, we call ’em. You’ll love ’em. And this, the pièce de résistance... faggots.
Poirot. Faggots?
Japp. Faggots. And there’s spotted dick for afters.
Poirot. Dick?
Japp. Yes, it’s called that because...
Poirot. This is tragic, Chief Inspector.
Japp. No, no, it’s fine.
Poirot. I can eat none of this wonderful food.
Japp. What? Why?
Poirot. Because... I have an allergy of the faggot.
Japp. An allergy?
Poirot. Oui. I do not know how you say it in English but in Belgian it is known as... le phobie de faggot.
Japp. I’ve never heard of that.
Poirot. I am so sorry, Chief Inspector, I should have warned you.
Japp. Well, this is a blessed upset, I must say. Still, you can have some spotted dick. You don’t have a phobie de dick, have you?
Poirot. Non... Some cheese?
Japp. I’ll have a look.
Poirot. Some brie perhaps? Bon.
Japp. Nothing like a nice bit of mouse trap.

Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

a film by Hettie MacDonald

Tonight, Yle has treated us to the final episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. What?! How could it be? I thought Hercule Poirot is immortal. But here he was, old, ill, wheelchair-bound... as always, expertly portrayed by David Suchet. The rest of cast are great too. Aidan McArdle is excellent (scary!) as Norton, and Hugh Fraser returns as trusty Hastings.

In spite of the overall gloom, quite a few moments made me chuckle — like Poirot confessing (from beyond the grave) that his moustache were fake. I knew it!

Valentine’s Day

introduced by Alice Thomas Ellis

This book was an unwanted gift for, well, Valentine’s Day. You would think that neither subtitle (Women Against Men: Stories of Revenge) nor cover art (the famous Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi) are particularly suitable for a Valentine’s Day gift, but here you go. When I was found engrossed in the book, the owners (i.e. recipients of an unwanted gift) gladly parted with it. So in the end everybody was happy.

I wish all the stories in the book were really about revenge of women on men (Accident by Agatha Christie, Beware the Gentle Wife by Deborah Bosley, Stitch and Bitch by Jane Barker Wright and Widow’s Peak by Sylvia Petter are perfect examples), not just intention or desire of revenge. Even so, I enjoyed most of the stories. The French Boy by Amanda Craig is one of the happiest tales, although here men mostly escape unharmed. Instead, Mrs Stevens exerts sort of revenge on her teenage daughters and gets a “French Boy” for herself. The book is concluded with Set in Stone by Pat Knight, the diary of a prehistoric woman (“unfortunately pen and paper not yet invented so have to hack words onto cave walls with flint”).