Cat among the pigeons was the first AC book I read and therefore holds a special place in my heart. It could have been much more a Tommy and Tuppence's story than a Poirot one.
I love this adaptation! It's one of my favourite Poirot films :) And I do think the film fixes some, shall we say, Orientalist pitfalls the book has... I also love the depiction of Julia and Jennifer's friendship and the school overall in the film. As someone who went to an all-girls school, it just feels so genuine! Thank you for the fun video!
I 100% agree about the Orientalist/colonialist pitfalls. There's still elements of them there, but I feel they're treated more with a tone of "look how the English behaved in those days" rather than a sense over approval.
i grew up in an all girls school, but im a guy, reason was my father was the handyman who maintained the building, its plumbing and other odd jobs, he had a small house on the edge of the grounds to always be near at any hour in case of being needed, and i was raised there, i got taught after hours by some of the teachers, when i hut my teens, i started helping my dad out with the work, my old man passed away 40 years ago, and when he passed, all the girls at the school came to his funeral, my father was respected by the girls for his attitude of not treating the girls like children, he said "this is a school for young ladies, not children, and should be treated with the same respect you would show the teachers" and he was right, some of the girls there hated being treated like children, and my fathers way of talking helped them put up with it
The all girls school reminds me of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers. It also has a strong female character as the headmistress, like Malory Towers. I guess Christie got inspiration from Enid Blyton's works.
This was a good comparison video. The differences in charachters are fun, because it gives both the book and the film their own pase. With that, one can read the book and watch the film close to each other and still enjoy both. Thank you for another amazing video!
3:18 It's early/mid twentieth century, they're upper class, and it's a boarding school. I'm sure the parents couldn't care so long as the kids are out of their hair. Having only seen the film and not read the book, there were some aspects that I had to check because they seemed more Hollywood Action Film than Cozy Murder Mystery; namely Ms. Chatwick's diving to take a bullet and deathbed confession. It really surprised me that that was true to the book. I have a tiny issue with the ending where Julia receives one of the jewels, but it's *much* better than the book's choice IMO. That ending is too Colonial British for my liking: "Yes of course, have the precious jewels stay in England. What else would we do? Return them to the filthy savages in the backwater foreign county where they were mined from?! Utter poppycock!"
I feel like when an author gets successful their books start to fall into one of two camps. 1. "I had this amazing idea." 2. I could use a pool. Cat Among the Pigeons always felt like the latter to me. Not saying the book isn't incredible, but Poirot's absence felt like Christie wanted to do something other than Poirot, but didn't care enough about that to not use the branding. She could call it a Hercule Poirot novel and sell a lot more than if he wasn't in the book it all. He was gone so long from the novel that his presence felt almost forced. And to be clear, I'm not judging Christie for doing this. Not saying she sold out her artistic integrity or what have you. Every so often, you gotta put food on the table and more is better than less. It just leaves the novel feeling a bit off to me.
Well, that is why Big Four and Mystery of the Blue Train exist. She needed money in a hurry because of her divorce. She always called them her least favorite novels.
This movie was my favorite during my chemotherapy sessions. I was shocked to see that it’s gone from RU-vid. Are you able to post the movie? Thank you.
It is a good one! I wish I could post it, but whenever I make one of these videos, any clip longer than nine seconds trips RU-vid's sensors and the whole video gets copyright-blocked. :(
New Poirot fan here, just saw ''Three Act Tragedy'' and I'm wondering if you have any plans to compare the book to the TV adaption if you haven't already.
Miss Chadwick thought she would be the alternative to Miss Vansittart for replacement head but was never possible Head material for Miss Bulstrode. I can go along with leaving out Mr Robinson, but did regret the omission of Miss Vansittart. And one of my favourite parts of the book (very Christielike) was the beginning section and why Miss Bulstrode missed Mrs Upjohn's revelation. Remaking the book with Julia as protagonist would be a golden opportunity to give a large part to the briefly-mentioned Maureen Summerhayes from Mrs McGinty's Dead.
3:44 The real answer to this lady’s question, a sad answer, is that if your ears are tuned to overhearing threats and plots, you uncover them by accident, because they’re going on almost everywhere you go. It happens a lot more often than most people even realize. I think Peter Ustinov’s Poirot doesn’t find them, I think they find him, more or less.
A 2010 TV adaptation, in the Marple series, featuring (a far too young) Julia McKenzie, changes the killer’s identity and motive and unnecessarily inserts aspects of the short story “The Herb of Death” among many other alterations, few for the better.
To be fair, the Agatha Christie adapters did it a few times themselves. The Miss Marple episode "A Caribbean Mystery" has Ian Fleming in the lecture audience and he comes up with James Bond's name from the presenter!
