Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Written by Michael Green and loosely based on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party.
Excellent Cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos, and Music composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir.
The film stars Kyle Allen as Maxime Gérard, Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, Camille Cottin as Olga Seminoff, Jamie Dornan as Dr. Leslie Ferrier, Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver, Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier, Ali Khan as Nicholas Holland, Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland, Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake, Riccardo Scamarcio as Vitale Portfoglio, Michelle Yeoh as Joyce Reynolds.
We were on a vacation recently, visiting relatives and my wife streamed A Haunting in Venice. She likes those English style detective mysteries, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown Mysteries and police procedurals, POLARs, like Midsomer Murders.
I started reading Doyle the same time I got into Chandler and Hammett. I saw the films on TV Hound of the Baskervilles, The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The Maltese Falcon and read all novels. Then on PBS we watched Lord Peter Whimsey, but I honestly more prefer hard boiled P.I. writers and Woolrich style genre fiction. I've seen films based on Poirot and Christie but have never read any of the novels
A Haunting In Venice which is based on Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, which of course I haven't read. So I can't comment on a comparison.
I also know nothing of the Poirot character aside from he's Belgian and sports an unusual moustache. I've seen Death on the Nile with Ustinov playing Poirot, and the Orient Express films, and I barely remember Branagh in his first Poirot film.
The point of all this and the reason for this review is the thing that caught my eye. I wasn't really watching the film. I was expecting the typical lavish sets but a devoid of style type of production with the emphasis on characters and plot instead of atmosphere.
I was working on the laptop and listening to the film. I was halfway through a story I wasn't paying attention to when I looked up and caught a beautiful piece of Noir cinematography and knew right then that I was gonna have to set down an seriously review it.
Story
Fade into a Piazza San Marco in early morning Dutch Angels. Then an awakening city with vignettes of pigeons. gondolas, a bakery, and canals.
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| Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot |
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This segues to an aerial shot of a canal with two gondolas and we get superimposed get superimposed Venice, Italy 1947. Followed by more scenes of an awakening city.
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We cut back to Hercule Poirot who is now retired and living in Venice, happy to spend his days puttering meticulously in his canal side garden. He is happily living a secluded life.
He has a sort of go fer / bodyguard, an ex-police officer named Vitale Portfoglio, who accompanies him when he does his errands in town.
Today he goes to town to pick out his eggs.
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| Bodyguard Vitale taking care of business |
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| Picking out eggs is not a simple process with Poirot |
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Ariadne explains the Rowena has a charity Halloween event that she throws for the local children, but afterwards she is having another séance to contact her dead daughter, Alicia. The reason is that on all Hallows Eve the spirits of the dead are closest. Ariadne wants Poirot to expose the medium, Joyce Reynolds as a charlatan.
Rumor has it that Alicia, committed suicide after her fiancé, Chef Maxim (another celebrity) broke off their engagement.
The Children's Halloween
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| Jude Hill as Leopold Ferrier, |
Once the children's event is done they are all gondola-ed out of the palazzo, and the preparations for the séance commence.
The other attendees to séance besides Rowena Drake, Ariadne Oliver and Poirot, are Chef Maxime, Olga, the Drake housekeeper, Dr Leslie Ferrier, the Drake family physician and his son Leopold Ferrier, Vitale Portfoglio, and Joyce's Romani assistant, Desdemona Holland.
Of course it all starts going Noirsville during the séance and....
<spoilers>
after Poirot is nearly drowned and Joyce Reynolds is impaled upon a statue, Poirot seals up palazzo and it turns into sort a combo haunted house / Ten Little Indian's / sealed room mystery, but filmed in excellent Noir Visual Style.
Noirsville
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| Michelle Yeoh as Joyce Reynolds |
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| Kelly Reilly as Rowena Drake |
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| Jamie Dornan as Dr. Leslie Ferrier |
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| Emma Laird as Desdemona Holland |
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| Riccardo Scamarcio as Vitale Portfoglio |
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| Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver |
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Kenneth Branagh, directed a gorgeous Mystery / Horror / "Continental Garden Detective" Noir. Haris Zambarloukos' jaw dropping cinematography will suck you in right at the get go. These types of stories usually take place in, as Chandler put it, the "vicar's rose garden."
"Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley... Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish." (Raymond Chandler)
This film, derived from Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, subverts that "vicars rose garden" template by setting the tale in dank, dreary, off season Venice. Adding the haunted house, and phony medium angle was brilliant, since it opened the Visual Stylistic possibilities, so kudos to Michael Green.
All the performances are excellent the score compatible. This is first and foremost a visual treat to visually perceptive Film Noir folks. Honestly, acting could have been shit and I would still watch this. A great Noir for Halloween 8/10.
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