#10 Death on the Nile

January 10, 2021
Death in the Nile (1978) *** 1/2
TCM
Free
Wildcard

I am an Agatha Christie fan from way back. I love all the detectives, I’ll watch anyone play Poirot or Miss Marple. My first Poirot was Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, obviously the longest lasting Poirot was David Suchet in the television series, but the main Poirot of my childhood was Peter Ustinov, and thus he is the one I love best.

I watched this movie on Sunday, and I had no evening dog walks, so I was able to watch a 2h 20m movie without whining of exhaustion because I started at midnight.

I saw it when it was first released in 1978, when I was 14, and I loved it. I believe I’ve seen it on TV a couple of times since, but not for many years, so I remembered the beginning and the end, the inciting incident and the denouement, but none of the middle. I had utterly forgotten Angela Lansbury as the kooky romance novelist, or Bette Davis as the rich old bag. Amusingly, her bitter companion is played by Maggie Smith, who would totally play the Davis part today.

An aside: I just looked up the as yet unreleased remake cast, and the Davis role is played by Jennifer Saunders, with Dawn French as the companion. I get it, but I think they really missed a trick.

Back to 1978, Mia Farrow is dear friends with a very rich, very beautiful, very terrible heiress, to whom she introduces her fiancé. Of course, the heiress steals him, marries him, and goes on the honeymoon to Egypt that he was going to go on with Mia. Mia follows them on their honeymoon, and then they all end up on a trip down the Nile, where every single passenger on the boat, besides Poirot and his old friend David Niven, has an excellent reason for killing that very heiress. I won’t spoil what happens, but not everyone lives through that boat ride. It is Agatha Christie, so no-one should be particularly shocked.

It’s a fun movie, grisly murders aside, and, as a person of Belgian descent, I particularly enjoy Poirot doggedly correcting everyone accusing him of being French throughout the entire film. Such as, “You perfectly foul French upstart!” “Belgian upstart, please, Madame.” Or, “You damn froggy eavesdropper!” “Belgian! Belgian eavesdropper!” Poirot knows where the real insult lies.