The Queen Of Parlor Detection- Agatha Christie’s “Then There Were None”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Then There Were None.

DVD Review

Then There Were None, starring Barry Fitzgerald, directed by Rene Clair, 1945

No question that I like my detective stories to feature hard-boiled, world- wary, world-weary tough guy detectives ready to take a slug or two for some windmill cause, or, better, for some wayward dame, for some two-timing femme fatale who gets her comeuppance (or not) as he keeps that shoulder to the wheel seeking to eke some rough justice out of this wicked old world. Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe come easily, and readily, to mind. As do such films as The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man.

Of course before Hammett and Chandler toughened up the crime-fighting world with their hard-edged windmill seekers of rough justice such heavy lifting was done in parlors, and drawing rooms. Figured out by gallants, professional or not. And the queen of parlor detection was Agatha Christie who spent a life’s career creating such works, such works as the film adaptation of her work under review, Then There Were None.” (And a later film version under the title Ten Little Indians)

Now Ms. Christie never recoiled from piling the corpses high (although usually not in the parlor, or drawing room) and she does not fail us here. Here ten people of various class backgrounds and professions are invited to a seaside English manor house (of course, Ms. Christie was, ah, English and manor houses have lots of rooms to stuff corpses and big parlors too) by a Mr. Owen for some nefarious purpose. What joins the ten together is that all bear various amounts of responsibility for the deaths (murders?) of one or more persons. And while the law was not able to bring them to even rough justice it is soon apparent, as the bodies pile up, that Mr. Owen is seeking to be his own avenger. Except of course one cannot go around committing mass murder by the numbers (literally with a ten, nine..., countdown right on the dinner room table to keep a scorecard tabulation) especially since the villain of the piece (one of the ten) perhaps did not peruse the records as carefully as he/she should have and not everybody is guilty of murder, or anything.

Maybe there are fewer corpses (although sometimes not by much) but give me that windmill-tilting, take a punch for the good of the cause, hard-boiled detective, especially those twisting in the wind over some two-timing frail every time. Agatha, your time has passed.