All month long, we're celebrating the Queen of Crime as she and her works appeared on screen, with a grand finale of five Murder on the Orient Expresses the first full week of November. All this week, we've focused on her standalone works, and today is no exception....
Over the course of this series, we've talked about Agatha Christie's reaction to adaptations of her work -
mostly negative,
sometimes mixed, and even
rarely pleased. We've also talked about how Rosalind Hicks managed her mother's legacy after she passed away - open to
wide-ranging television projects, but still
vocally disapproving when necessary. But no matter what happened, whether Miss Marple got a little groovy, Hercule Poirot did slapstick, or (heaven forbid!)
breasts flashed on-screen, there was never any doubt about where it all started: it would always be Agatha Christie's
Murder She Said, Agatha Christie's
The Alphabet Murders, Agatha Christie's
Endless Night.
Except for one adaptation, that so horrified Hicks that she not only demanded her mother's name be removed from the project, she banned any reference to the original work or its characters,
period. But the connection between the film and the source has been an open secret for years, and is even acknowledged on
the official Agatha Christie website. Of course, I'm talking about....
Innocent Lies (1995)
dir: Patrick Dewolf
