Customer Reviews

Ordeal by Innocence (Amazon.com Exclusive) [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is not the usual light mystery associated with Agatha. Here she has called up the more mature dark Victorian style of her English heritage. I like the change and the unbalanced ending (more real-life.)

I want to tell you that this movie was very enjoyable and I will keep on watching it from time to time. Thank you for your service.

I can't recall a music score that has so blighted a film since the rock songs that drown out the dialogue in Hal Ashby's Coming Home, and the last thing a whodunnit needs is distraction. Director Desmond Davis uses the score by Dave Brubeck so unnecessarily that it spoils the odd moment when it is actually effective, and also undermines his interesting use of cross-cutting. Agatha Christie's mysteries are like jigsaw puzzles, and the fun is trying to keep ahead of the investigator, when bodies are piling up and the suspects multiplying. And the setup here of an innocent man convicted and hanged hiding the real killer has an innovative twist. Given genre conventions we're prepared to accept the notion of Donald Sutherland as the dead man's alibi, returning to seek out the truth, even though he isn't a policeman (he's a palentologist ie digging up the past) and even if Sutherland wearing a high coloured coat poses like Dracula. And Davis supplies the thriller cliches - a screaming cat, a near miss gunshot, a murderous chasing car, with filming in Dartmouth England providing smoky locations. The use of flashbacks during a confession (in black and white so we get it) is an attempt to make the material less talking heads, but the repetition of dialogue as memory for emphasis seems odd. The adaptation by Alexander Stuart features a funny exchange - "He didn't do it, he loved her. That's usually a pretty good motive for murder", as the murdered, Faye Dunaway looks very beautiful in flashback, and Sara Miles is fun as a drunk, but the climax as revelation is rather low-key, and the final act denied it's heroic due.

This is actually not a bad film.... but there is one thing that totally destroys the film and makes it nearly unwatchable.... the obnoxious and repetitive tonalities of the old 1960s "Take Five" album by Dave Brubeck played to exhaustion as a substitute for a real soundtrack score. The album played loudly over the dialog in this movie for almost it's entirety. The album was a mildly successful bit of vinyl back when, but what on earth this out-dated American jazz recording has to do with the quiet, moody and haunting vistas in this lovely English film is totally beyond my thinking. John Addison, Mike Batt, Carl Davis or another fine English or American composer would have made this a real gem at the box office and on video.... but all is not lost.... a suggestion......

The film company can remove the ridiculous and clumbsy soundtrack, have a new one composed, and re-release this otherwise fine film with a real orchestral score......or at the very least, have a musician create a lovely and haunting solo piano score for this otherwise fine film and make a new "directors cut"!!!

Incidently, Dunaway, as always is the highlight in this film... she is awesome.... we just need to be able to see and hear her great performance without the afore mentioned loud and inappropriate 60s jazz music in the background.

Ordeal by Innocence was one of Agatha Christie's three favorites. This video was not true to Dame Christie's style. Her books are gentile with fascinating plot twists and mystery. They don't have gore, suspense, violence, bad language, nor nudity. This movie had all those things and none of the Christie charm.

ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE (1984, 1985), based on the surprising novel by Agatha Christie, was one big shock for all the wrong reasons. Starring Donald Sutherland as paleontologist Dr. Arthur Calgary, with a stellar supporting cast, this mystery was more than a bit of a bomb.

I'm not sure if the lovely location (Dartmouth, Devon) or the frankly weird bebop soundtrack (by the Dave Brubeck Quartet) were negligible inducements or liabilities here. In a really quite excellent performance, Sutherland plays the intrepid Dr. Calgary, running around England causing trouble for the Argyle Family. Their son Jack ("Jacko") was hung for a murder he may or may not have committed. Dr. Calgary feels terrible because he was not present as witness for the defence, as Jacko was in the car with him when Jacko's hated mother (Faye Dunaway) was murdered.

This is a sort of Poirot-like mystery in that Dr. Calgary runs all round the place, questioning everyone from the detective of the case to the Argyles. With a cast including Diana Quick, Christopher Plummer, Ian McShane, a very young Phoebe Nicholls, and Sarah Miles, this thing was deemed big enough to receive a Royal Premiere in the presence of the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.

The Royal Couple can't have thought much of it, though no doubt the Queen appreciated the music. Set sometime in the late 1950s, it is a mish-mash of I-go-here-then-I'll-go-there type nonsense, with Sutherland lisping away with dopey questions. Though Dr. Calgary is American, Sutherland is not and his Canadian accent is in full swing here. At times he even sounds British.

It is a dull thing, with a few colorless murders transpiring thanks to Calgary's meddling, and the final reveal of the real killer. If you ever see this available in America on DVD, I would simply ignore it. The waste of talent, time and treasure is such a disgrace - even for the mid-eighties - it's an embarrassment.

RATING: 3 stars because I like all the actors here, and they did work hard.

Ok. I admit that Dave Brubeck's music is a little bewildering in a movie based on a crime novel. It's a bad choice but it could please some viewers. The main problem of the film is however that, instead of masking the lack of depth of the characters, which is unfortunately Agatha Christie's trademark, the film shows only a succession of uninteresting dialogs and flashbacks.