Published in 1969, in the last years of his life, Halloween PartyOr The pumpkin festival in French, is one of Agatha Christie’s darkest, even gloomy novels. This perhaps explaining that, the initial reception was lukewarm. Since then, this adventure of detective Hercule Poirot has taken off. And now, after being brought to the big screen Murder on the Orient Express (The crime of the Orient Express) And Death on the Nile (Death on the Nile), two of the most famous titles of the Queen of Crime, Kenneth Branagh set his sights on this little-known title, which he also renamed. Even less faithful than these previous adaptations, A Haunting in Venice (Mystery in Venice) turns out, paradoxically, to be its most successful.
However, we will immediately regret an obvious concern to water down the original plot which, for the record, began with the murder of a child. Nothing like this happens in Branagh’s film, which sticks to adult victims, diluting the psychological impact of the narrative. You should know that at the time, Agatha Christie wanted to show her dismay in the face of an increasingly cruel world.
This is just one of many, many changes made by Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green, already a screenwriter of Murder on the Orient Express. Formerly set in the English manors and gardens dear to the novelist, the plot is transported to Italy in the lagoon city where Hercule Poirot has walled himself in a stubborn retreat.
But here he is who allows himself to be convinced to attend a spiritualist session in a supposedly haunted Venetian residence, and where, as it is said, a first, then a second murder, will be committed. As a storm rages outside, the suspect prisoners of the place apprehend Poirot’s conclusions.
The Tina Fey surprise
Anyone who has read the novel will notice from the outset that entire sections of the original story have been glossed over in favor of new developments. In the same way, several characters have been eliminated and replaced by new variations. It’s more than a shuffling of cards: it’s a complete overhaul (unlike the television adaptation for the series Poirotin 2010).
For many reasons, the result turns out to be very entertaining, even for lovers of Christie’s work (I have been one since childhood). First, Kenneth Branagh, who reprises the role of Hercule Poirot, has wisely put aside his “superheroic” approach (no doubt a vestige of his film Thor at Marvel). No antics or fight scenes for the Belgian detective, and more of his famous “little gray cells”.
In this regard, Poirot’s extraordinary intellectual faculties are never so well highlighted as during his exchanges with his friend Ariadne Oliver, an author of detective novels through whom Agatha Christie made fun of her a little – even.
A left-field choice for this role, Tina Fey (who succeeds the formidable Zoë Wanamaker in the TV series) proves absolutely delightful, her rapid delivery obviously inspired by that of Katharine Hepburn in her comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. She and Branagh share an unexpected chemistry.
Baroque and energetic
Above all, the film is a visual splendor. Abandoning, and we are grateful to him for it, the flashy varnish and the artificially rendered digital imaging panoramas of his two previous adaptations, Branagh films Venice, the real one, with a wonderful sense of the macabre. It is true that before him, Aldo Lado, with Who saw her die?Nicolas Roeg, with Don’t Look Now (Don’t turn around), and Brian De Palma, with Obsessionwere able to show how gloomy the city of bridges can be.
It emerges from each plan of A Haunting in Venice an impression of sinister decay. With their white masks and black robes, the gondoliers seem more inclined to take their passengers to the afterlife than to their destination.
In the once luxurious villa, now decrepit, you can smell the mold and the misfortunes of yesteryear. Faded colors, patinas and trompe l’oeil serve as a backdrop for Poirot’s thoughts (the remarkable sets were built in the legendary Pinewood studios). Exaggerated perspectives, oblique horizon lines, wide-angle close-ups, spectacular low-angle shots, etc. : for once, the filmmaker’s propensity for flashy camera effects seems justified.
Baroque, full of panache, his staging is in tune with his energetic reinterpretation.
A rereading, certainly, free to the point of hardly resembling the source, but which is no less pleasant for the eye and the brain – or rather, for the “little gray cells”.