Episode 13 - Death on the Nile, film 1978

Ed and Vivi packed their bags and jump on board the SS Karnak to investigate a death on the Nile.

Episode 13 – Published on April 2022

Written by Ed Mac

Spiel 

Whodunit? It’s an age-old, immediately enthralling question, one that gets us intrigued, our thinking caps on, inspired by the challenge of unmasking the bad guy. It’s also a word that immediately conjures a name: Agatha Christie. Even if you’ve never read one of her 66 detective novels or never seen any of the film or television adaptations of her work, chances are that you know the name and what it represents. From a very early age, I knew the name of Agatha Christie because my mum collected her books obsessively. I remember pulling them off the shelves and looking at their covers and reading the back blurbs, wanting to know more about the devious plots, schemes and ill deeds that were contained within. I also wanted to know more about these people that seemed to keep getting mentioned. Who was this Miss Marple character? And what about this other guy with the funny name, Hercule Poyrot?

As it turned out, I never ended up going on any of those adventures, at least in written form. To this day, I have never read a single Christie novel. This has not been through any deliberate choice on my part, and I’m sure that if I made the effort, I would greatly enjoy them. It’s only that I’ve never felt the need. I haven’t given it much thought over the years, but upon consideration, I’m pretty sure that this absence of need to go back to the novels is because I can’t imagine they would be any more entertaining, intriguing or indeed perfect than the 1978 film adaptation of “Death on the Nile.”

I can’t remember when I first saw this film, but it would have been when I became interested in the books as a child. I do remember trying to read one of the novels at some point and really struggled with it, unsurprising as I would have only been 8 or 9 at the time. However, I was aware that there were also movies and TV shows about Miss Marple and Poirot (as my mother was now helping me pronounce) that we could watch instead. In any event, I remember being immediately transported to this exotic place, with glamorous beauties at every turn, scary old women, scheming old men and a funny looking and even funnier sounding rotund detective amongst it all, trying to make some sense of it for me.

David Suchet has become almost as synonymous with Christie’s Belgian detective genius, as Christie herself. However, I’ve always found him to be overly mannered and fastidious. For me, the greatest version of Poirot belongs to Sir Peter Ustinov in his version of Death on the Nile. He is completely genuine and human in this film. His genius is genuine, his sorrow is genuine, and his anger is palpable. But more than anything, this is a genuinely hilarious performance in a genuinely funny film, without a hint of irony. Ustinov’s interactions with Angela Lansbury’s drunken novelist are alone worth your time. But there is so much more: Bette Davis and Maggie Smith are just as delightful in their constant battle of barbs, Jack Warden as a German doctor of questionable repute, Mia Farrow as the tragic and hysterical Jaqueline and David Niven as Poirot’s offsider; these and many more compile an astonishing cast that can’t help but elevate the material, even though it doesn’t need it in the slightest.

There are many ways to create a whodunit, but for me, this is as good as it gets. It’s a simple story told exceedingly well, utilising a superb cast reading from an excellent script, crafted onto beautiful images that are presented through a variety of cinematic techniques that result in a movie that flies by while lingering in the mind. It is a perfect piece of entertainment that engages the brain, dazzles the eyes, delights the ears, tickles the funny bone and leaves you wanting more. If there is anything in addition to this that you can ask for from a movie, I can’t think of what it might be.

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