Stills from Massacre on the Nile.
Detective fiction master Agatha Christie's masterpiece Massacre on the Nile was first adapted into a film of the same name in 1978 and became a classic detective film. Recently, the novel has been brought to the big screen again.
Why did Agatha Christie's speculative fiction survive to this day and are frequently favored by film and television adaptations?
This article is reprinted from "New Weekly Hardcore Book Club"
Agatha Christie, one of the three masters of the world's mystery novel, is also the world's most influential female mystery novelist. If twentieth-century speculative fiction is a edifice, Agatha Christie is undoubtedly one of the important founders. She wrote eighty speculative fiction in her lifetime, shaping the two classic characters of Poirot and Miss Marple. After her death, her work has been repeatedly adapted for film and television, from "No One Survives" to "Murder on the Orient Express" to "Massacre on the Nile" and "Sin in the Sun", and discerning readers rarely agree on a single writer, but today, Agatha Christie is recognized as their classic writer.
Wonderful story
Why did Agatha Christie's novel survive to this day? From a literary point of view, where are her novels long and limited, and why have they become regular guests in film and television adaptations? One important reason is that Agatha is the master of the story stream. The so-called story flow is that the core attraction of this novel lies in the story, and the excitement of the story determines the success or failure of the novel.
Readers may mutter, don't novels all rely on stories? Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse," George Perek's "The Puzzle of Life," and Raymond Gnoult's Ninety-Nine Ways to Tell a Story in Style Exercises are not traditional storytelling. And Agatha Christie, she is a master of popular fiction, in her place, we may not see the innovation of language, the revolution of the novel model, but she is a well-deserved master of storytelling, she single-handedly created "Blizzard Villa", "Country House Faction", "Lovers Accomplice" and other types of classic works, so her novel can break the rapid decay, first of all, the quality of the story is excellent.
British detective fiction writer Agatha Christie.
A powerful speculative novelist, cannot escape the fate of being borrowed. For example, Shoji Shimada's "Astrology Killing Magic" was misappropriated by the "Kaneda Ichi Juvenile Incident Book" and "Shonen Bao Qingtian". Agatha Christie's novels are also often borrowed, and her descendants borrow from her again and again, but they can only reflect her subtlety.
For example, "No One Survives", one of the originators of the Blizzard Mountain Villa type, I don't know how many times it has been copied, in the end, it is still Agatha who plays best. Another example is "The Mystery of the Female Corpse in the Library", whose ruse is one of the inspirations for Keigo Higashino's "The Dedication of Suspect X". There is a plot in "The Dedication of Suspect X": the male protagonist kills a tramp who is similar to the body of the deceased, and creates an alibi for the female protagonist and her daughter. This one reminds me of "The Mystery of the Female Corpse in the Library", in order to create an alibi for the accomplice, the perpetrator killed a girl with a similar body to the deceased and burned the body.
Film and television screenwriters lack inspiration, so you may wish to flip through Agatha Christie's novels. She is like a mathematician, rigorously deducing every step. Speculative fiction writer S.S. Van Dine once proposed the Twenty Rules of Speculative Fiction, which was hailed as a creed by later generations of speculative writers, and if we compare them carefully, we will find that Agatha Christie's classic novels often meet these criteria. In The Mystery of the Tomb, Poirot says, "The perfect answer has to explain everything clearly." "That's what Agatha Christie did.
The Mystery of the Tomb
By Agatha Christie, translated by Zhou Li
Nova Press, 2014-6
Benguet reasoning master
Agatha Christie is recognized as "No One Survives", "Massacre on the Nile", "Roger's Doubt", "Crime in the Sun", "Murder on the Orient Express", "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor", "Bottom Card", "Murder on ABC", "Murder Notice", "Tragedy in Three Acts". Through these works, we can know Agatha's following characteristics.
First, she respects the reader, has a crisp narrative, and is good at structure. She doesn't join in the soapy emotional drama in order to make up the word count. In other words, the love in Agatha's novels is mostly closely related to the design of the main line, and she follows Chekhov's "pistol" principle, so that every character and plot is necessary;
Second, she is a master of ben-style reasoning. She can play thrillers and go social, but what she is best at is Benguet reasoning. Logic, structure, rational deliberation, the spiritual rhyme of the classical novel, hidden in the novel of Agatha Christie;
Third, she was a mean and benevolent old lady, and Miss Marple was a clone of hers. She looks at people viciously, but she is kinder and more understanding of other people's situations than many people with moral characters, all of which stem from her insight and respect for human nature.
"No One Survives"
By Agatha Christie, translated by Xia Yang
Nova Press, 2019-5
In addition to these more famous works, I also like her "Five Little Pigs", "The Long Night", and "The Curtain".
"Five Little Pigs" is a classic of the nursery rhyme killing model, the book puts a strong restriction on the detective, the detective in the book to obtain the information, exactly like the reader, the case in the book is a long-hidden mystery, and the detective can only rely on the person's dictation to reason about the murderer and motive.
"The Long Night" is the embodiment of Agatha Christie's literary level, and its trajectory is not the first in Agatha's novel, but in the ability to create atmosphere and render emotions.
The Five Little Pigs
Nova Press, 2014-10
Have to talk about Poirot
As for "The Veil", this is a work that Poirot lovers can't miss, the finale of The Poirot series. The book was published in 1975, but it was written before World War II, because Agatha Christie was worried about her lack of writing in her later years, and the European War was suspicious, and the people in the country were panicked, and it was in this atmosphere that she completed Poirot's closing performance.
Mention Agatha Christie without focusing on Detective Poirot. Poirot first appeared in The Strange Case of Stiles Manor, Agatha's World War I debut. According to Agatha herself, Poirot's prototype is a humble Belgian refugee, and she has long remembered the man's face, so she has the classic image of Poirot in the history of detectives. The writer describes Poirot's appearance in the tone of Captain Hastings:
"Poirot's appearance is very special, less than five feet and four inches tall, but he has a very noble temperament. His head is shaped like an egg and is always tilted to one side. The upper lip has a straight and neat figure-eight beard. The whole body remained spotlessly clean. ”
Stills from "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor", which is the first appearance of Detective Poirot.
Not only that, "because he never exercised, and even the method of investigating the case tried to avoid labor dignity, his physical strength was not good, and he preferred to retain all his energy to the 'small gray brain cells'." ”
Poirot is Belgian, but often mistaken for French, having worked as a police officer in Brussels and later as a private investigator. The biggest impression he gave was that of a short, fat little old man. But it was such a detective who became the protagonist in Agatha Christie's 38 novels.
Poirot's charm lies in the fact that he is a wise man with a sense of life, he is not high-minded, nor obscene, but a pragmatic who has good intentions and adheres to principles, but does not put his mouth on the lips. If Holmes is like a tall and handsome dream lover, Poirot is like a witty and humorous uncle next door, which makes Poirot doomed not to have the popularity of Sherlock Holmes, but for detective fans, Poirot may be closer to the real image of the wise man, and Holmes is a love letter to the detective.
Poirot isn't just Agatha Christie's marionette, in many details we can see the human touch of the character. For example, in "Murder on the Orient Express", when Poirot learns that the deceased is a kidnapper who still tears up a three-year-old girl after receiving the ransom, and 12 people in the carriage are involved in the murder, Poirot decides to provide two versions of the truth for everyone, and this detail reveals Poirot's compassion. In Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie is no longer entangled in binary contrasts of good and evil, but in response to a sentence from the movie version -
"There are no murderers in this car, only souls waiting to be reborn."
Stills from Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot finally discovers that all 12 people in the carriage were involved in the murder.
In the curtain call, Agatha Christie fully shows Poirot's inner torment, his arrogance and vulnerability, and his understanding of the relationship between law and justice. This time, Agatha pushes the reader to the most heartbreaking situation, they watch Poirot cross the legal boundaries, personally execute the villain, in order to punish himself, at this time, Poirot, who is already suffering from heart disease, refuses the drug and is willing to die in a dream.
Poirot's character arc is sublimated in "The Curtain", and the ultimate contradiction tests the texture of human nature. Agatha Christie writes reasoning, and even more writes about the human heart. "Living in the countryside all year round, people can see all kinds of human nature." Miss Marple's words are not the motto of Agatha's novel.
The Curtain
By Agatha Christie, translated by Li Yang
Nova Press, 2021-10
"The Mysterious Mirror" tells a sensational story, which was once fully relayed by Wang Anyi in his anthology: "'I' stayed in a friend's guest room, and from the mirror I saw a door in the wall behind me, and a terrifying scene was being staged in the door - the friend's beautiful sister Sylvia, who was strangled by a man's throat, and the man had a scar on the left side of his face, making him look very fierce." 'I' told Sylvia about this vision, and Sylvia dissolved her marriage because her fiancé, like the man in the mirror, had a scar on the left side of her face. Later, Sylvia married 'I', but 'I' was actually a narrow-minded person, and once, jealousy broke out and strangled Sylvia's neck, and it was at this time that 'I' saw in the mirror the illusion of many years ago, and the man with the scar on the left side of the face was 'I', because of the reflection of the mirror, the scar on the left side of the face was actually on the right side of the face, and 'I' was scratched by a bullet on the right side of the war. ”
Relying on curious speculative novels, which are easy to decay quickly, speculative novels written in the depths of human nature can be circulated. When a novel writes about the complexity of human nature, and writes about the darkest part of the human heart, it does not matter what type of novel it is, because in the face of the rust of time, it has established a barrier to resist. Frankly, Agatha Christie isn't a first-rate writer of characters, but a lot of times, you have to admire her understanding of human nature.
I think in my private mind that many people are attracted to Agatha Christie's wonderful case, and that what keeps them in the end is not reversal after reversal, but that she writes about the horrors that we have dreamed or felt, happening nearby, not far away. She is actually writing about the fear of the soul, the fear of the surroundings, not just the terrifying events of the distant hunt.
Jurisprudence and human feelings, generational estrangement, religious practices, domestic violence, inheritance disputes, sexual abuse, love killings, etc., these are all things that ordinary people may experience, in other words, the story described by Agatha Christie does not happen in the distance, it happens nearby, and because of this, it can arouse a moment of fear.
Whether a detective series can be popular, quality and quantity are important. Needless to say, the quality of the Poirot series is surprisingly large, and its quantity is surprising enough. In contrast, there are only 12 novels featuring Miss Marple, and the quality of the Marple series is not inferior to Poirot,but because of the small number, the Poirot series is more famous than the Marple series.
Universal resonance
For comparison, Josephine Tieyi, one of the three great masters of the Golden Age of Reasoning, is unknown in China, which is more or less related to this. Tieyi's text is too close to the region, the reading threshold is relatively high, and compared with her contemporary Agatha Christie, her output is not high, and she only wrote eight speculative novels in her lifetime. She is like a reclusive heroine, occasionally shooting, attracting the praise of the master, and then quickly withdrawing, three or five years away from the hustle and bustle. She pays attention to language, like Virginia Woolf in the world of detective fiction, each novel is meticulously crafted, but today, due to the relative obscurity of the work and the lack of a prolific detective series like Poirot's, her influence is far less than that of Agatha Christie.
Therefore, to determine whether a speculative writer can be widely circulated, quality is very important, quantity is indispensable, and at the same time need to have universal resonance, many writers are very good in their home countries, but because the text is regional and epochal, when the era has passed, the public memory at that time has disappeared, and the dissemination of this text will be correspondingly limited.
Stills from Murder on the Orient Express.
Today, Agatha Christie has fed an industrial chain, and a steady stream of film and television dramas are adapted from her novels, such as the "Poirot Detective" series, the "Miss Marple" series produced by the British ITV, the "No One Survives" directed by Craig Bibelos, the 1978 version of "Massacre on the Nile" dubbed by Shanghai Translation Studio, the 1974 "Murder on the Orient Express" and so on. In recent years, Kenneth Branagh has been addicted to drama and self-directed, but it is not so much that he plays Poirot as the fatter 007 hybrid Sherlock Holmes.
What kind of person was Poirot? He was a fat man who looked a little cunning, cold and humorous, poor and exquisite, and he got along with the three religions and nine streams, and he had a sense of relaxation, like a wise and foolish person. In contrast, Kenneth Branagh played Poirot too correctly, Peter Ustinov was in front, and Poirot in people's minds was still the latter after all.
Kenneth Branagh played Poirot in Massacre on the Nile.
Looking back at the screen, Peter Ustinov is the Poirot of a generation, and David Suche's version of the Poirot series, Geraldine McEwan's Miss Marple detective, is more or less sincere. In adolescence, I like to pass the time with the Poirot and Marple series, while using my mobile phone, while not affecting my computer typing, because the rhythm of these two series is very daily, not that particularly tight, but leisurely strolling, very relaxed.
This sense of relaxation may also be why people like to read Agatha Christie. Loose and meticulous, telling a wonderful story, Agatha could have completed the detective universe herself if she lived today. There is a sense of relaxation in her novels. Not bitter and vengeful, not educating the reader, just telling a story of relaxation.
Agatha is a master storyteller, her arsenal has hundreds of weapons, each novel, is the form of her display of weapons, like a teacher punch, not fancy, each punch is in the right force.
Agatha's novel is a pastime of the city's citizens, she respects people's curiosity about secrets, the elegance of logic, she leads the reader to escape from the heavy reality, temporarily breathes a sigh of relief in the detective world, travels with Poirot and investigates, listens to Miss Marple's little humor and little meanness, and suddenly looks back and finds that Agatha wrote not a crime, but the truth of life, relationships, emotions and people's hearts.
Stills from "No One Survives".
"No One Survives" is a special one in Agatha's novel. The temperament of this novel is like the weather in England, cold and rainy, and the blue sea is desolate moonlight. "No One Survives" is also a model of thriller novels, compared with "Roger's Doubt" and "Tragedy on the Nile", the focus of "No One Survives" is not how to close the logical deduction, but to the creation of a horror atmosphere and the author's insight into interpersonal relationships.
The sublimation of the novel lies in the correspondence of the case to the ancient nursery rhyme, "Ten little soldiers, out to eat." One was choked to death, and there were nine people left. Nine small soldiers, staying up late. One overslept, and there were eight people left. Eight small soldiers, set off for Devon. One to stay, seven people left..."
A murderer is hidden among us, but people are dying one after another, and everyone has a sinful thing, and the burden in their hearts makes them jealous of each other. This suspenseful mode is ancient and fascinating, hitting precisely the icebergs beneath the surface of the sea in our daily lives.
Another example is "Massacre on the Nile", a group of people, with their own motives gathered on the boat, this strange and lie tension, as the narrative progresses, a small doubt is solved, and finally the big sin is exposed to the sun, but there is no heinous bad guy, the murderer's motive is in line with human nature, which is the embodiment of Agatha's respect for the reader's intelligence.
Nowadays, when it comes to emotional flow writing, I often think of Keigo Higashino's "White Night" and "The Dedication of Suspect X", one person guarding another person, trying and failing, I recently read Zheng Zhi's "Raw Swallow", which is also this mode. In fact, as early as a hundred years ago, Agatha explored the way to write this kind of accomplice, and "Massacre on the Nile" is an example.
Female detective
In the end, it has to be mentioned that Agatha Christie was the writer of that era who left a place for female detectives, and in her reasoning world, women are no longer servants, mothers, dancers, geisha, children, women can also be independent detectives, brave defenders of justice.
Stills from the fifth season of "Detective Miss Marple".
Her novels change the common "fairy" image of male detective novels, creating many more three-dimensional female characters, although there are limitations of the times (such as the image of the servant and the dancer is still symbolized), but in Miss Marple, we see a writer's respect for female wisdom.
So, Agatha's trick is to honestly tell a wonderful story and glimpse the truth of life in the story. In this sense, Agatha is the most classical kind of novelist, she inherits the tradition of storytellers and storytellers, her contribution is not in the creation of language and style, but in providing a large number of wonderful story models for detective novels, suspense novels and even horror novels, with textbook case design, providing an excellent frame of reference for future generations of novelists. She was a trailblazer in the genre of fiction and a mountain in front of novelists, and it is no exaggeration to say that everyone who writes speculative fiction after that should thank Agatha Christie.
Today's topic
What's your favorite mystery mystery movie?