“Death on the Nile” is now in theaters! I don’t know if you are looking forward to this movie period?
Or, have you seen the previous game “Murder on the Orient Express” and already have a little pre-planning for this sequel?
In any case, as one of Agatha’s most well-known works, the film adaptation will make reasoning fans obediently pay for a ticket.
After all, with such an excellent story, it’s hard to imagine how to make it look bad. Let’s briefly introduce the work of “Death on the Nile” first.
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01″Death on the Nile” is a model for all Agatha’s works
Agatha Christie and “Death on the Nile” – these two terms put together, the gold content no longer needs to be said.
Let’s talk about Agatha Christie first, whether you are a fan of reasoning or not, and whether you have read the mystery novel, you must know the name.
In the whole reasoning world, if the most out-of-the-circle detective is Sherlock Holmes, then the most out-of-the-circle author is Agatha Christie.
She began writing at the age of 26 and died at 85, and published 68 detective novels.
21 anthologies of short and medium stories, 18 plays, 1 autobiography, 2 poetry collections, with a total sales of more than 2 billion copies – only “Scripture” and Shakespeare’s works are above her.
French President Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle is a self-proclaimed “Agatha Christie fan”, and Britain’s Queen Mary also regards reading her novels as her best pleasure.
On Queen Mary’s 80th birthday, BBC radio celebrated the Queen’s birthday, and Queen Mary designated her work to be broadcast.
Even with so many high-quality works, “Death on the Nile” is still a model among all Agatha’s works.
This book was published at the end of 1937, at the time of the “Golden Age” of European and American mystery novels. The Ellery Queen brothers had just completed the “Country Name Series” and “Tragedy Series”, smugly preparing to enter Hollywood.
John Dickson Carr published “The Crooked Hinge” and “THE JUDAS WINDOW” in one breath the following year, establishing the title of “King of the Secret Room” in one fell swoop.
And Agatha, while constantly trying new genres, also writes at the rate of three or four books a year, not forgetting to write the kind of mystery novel that he is best at. What kind of novel is she best at?
The great detective Poirot encounters a murder case in the process of traveling in an exotic country. Everyone is suspected, and there are intricate relationships among these people, including the most eternal theme: love.
The labels of these Agatha-style mystery novels can be summed up in the words Death on the Nile.
02 It has been 18 years since the last revision
The film “Death on the Nile” released this time is the third revision, the first two revisions were the 1978 version and the 2004 version.
In other words, it has been 18 years since the last film and television version.
The 1978 version of “Death on the Nile” was co-produced by Britain, France and Germany. It was 140 minutes long and was an absolute blockbuster at the time.
The cast includes three Oscar winners for Best Actor, two Oscar winners for Best Actress, and one Golden Globe Winner for Best Actress.
Even Jack Warden, who plays the relatively supporting role of Dr Bessner, is a two-time Oscar nominee.
Such a star-studded cast has created this classic suspenseful reasoning film.
I’m sure many of you have watched this version of “Death on the Nile” several times on TV, just like me as a child.
The 2004 version is not a movie, but the third episode of the ninth season of the ITV TV series “Agatha Christie’s Poirot”.
After nine seasons of filming, the audience is already very familiar with Poirot played by David Suchet, and the 2004 version is also an adaptation with relatively minimal changes to the original.
03 This movie version seems to be deliberately creating a “series sense”
Agatha is the only reasoning writer in the world who has created two great detectives, both of whom are world-renowned.
One is the elegant and shrewd little Belgian – Hercule Poirot, and the other is the wise and delicate country lady – Jane Marple.
“Death on the Nile” belongs to the Hercule Poirot series.
There are a total of 34 novels with Poirot as the protagonist, such as “Murder on the Orient Express” “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” “Evil Under the Sun” “The ABC Murders” and other Agatha’s most representative works are Poirot series, it can be seen that Agatha’s preference for this role.
In the whole series, Agatha did not deliberately emphasize the “series sense”. Except for the fixed protagonist Poirot, even his most loyal assistant Hastings did not appear every time.
Of the 34 novels, the “first male supporting character” appeared in only 9 of them, including “Death on the Nile”, in which Poirot went on vacation to Egypt and did not bring Hastings with him.
In its place is Colonel Reiss – a character from “The Man in the Brown Suit” and “Cards on the Table”, who more or less served as Poirot’s assistant during his trip to Egypt.
This time the film version is suspected of deliberately creating a “series sense”. In 2017, the original cast adapted “Murder on the Orient Express”.
Of course, such a series is not abrupt, after all, in the original “Death on the Nile”, “Murder on the Orient Express” is also alluded to.
04 “Closed space” does not equal “secret room”
Enclosed spaces are the type of stage setup that Agatha excels at. Note that “enclosed space” here is not the same as “secret room”.
The so-called secret room in mystery novels refers to the impossible crime that no one can enter or leave the crime scene.
For example, in a room, the victim was assassinated at close range, but the doors and windows were locked. So, how did the murderer escape from the scene after killing people?
The type of secret room reasoning finally points to some kind of trick, that is, the criminal method of breaking the secret room.
The enclosed space does not just refer to the enclosed space in the physical sense. It can be the train that was suspended due to the snowstorm in “Murder on the Orient Express”, the aristocratic manor in “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”, or even the “Murder on the Orient Express”. It is a ship sailing at sea in “Death on the Nile”.
These spaces are not completely enclosed, and criminals can sneak in from outside the train, outside the manor, or while traveling.
But Agatha will use the whole story to bring the “murder motive” to the reader, psychologically isolating the outsiders.
“All the people with motives are inconceivably concentrated here, and the murderers, of course, are among us.”
05 Agatha is best at writing “poisoning” rather than “shooting”
Agatha is not good at using guns or knives as a murder weapon, she is best at poison.
Of all her novels, 34 novels (nearly half) use poisoning, and they cover a wide range of poisons.
A researcher has written a book “A is for Arsenic The Poisons of Agatha Christie” to popularize the drugs in his works.
In contrast, there are only a dozen or so other common murder methods, such as shooting, beating, and assassination.
Critics at the time commented that Agatha’s work was too “gentle” and did not even have blood, but Agatha himself did not like bloody and violent crimes.
Like her writing style, speculative fiction should be a light-hearted and comfortable mental enjoyment for her.
The reason why Agatha is so precise and rich in drug knowledge comes largely from her actual experience.
She volunteered at the hospital during World War I, then went to the pharmacy and passed the pharmacist exam.
By World War II, Agatha was again a volunteer pharmacist at the hospital.
These experiences have made her work extremely rich and accurate in the details of the poisoning of victims, and has also been recognized by pharmacology experts.
Generally speaking, Agatha will not easily resort to excessively violent means of murder if there is no necessary reason.
And “Death on the Nile” is about a shooting case, but I believe that after reading the whole story, you will understand why the author has to “shoot and kill”.
06″Death on the Nile” may also be a wonderful travel promo
Compared to other reasoning authors, Agatha is well-informed.
As early as 1922, she traveled the world with her then first husband for the Universal Exposition.
Although she did not set foot in every corner of the earth, and more often just went to the British colonies at that time, her vision has also surpassed the people at that time.
The broadened horizons have also brought more inspiration to her works. In her subsequent works, she has written many stories from her travels into novels, and even moved the stage background of the story abroad.
For example, “The Man in the Brown Suit” is about a British woman who ventures to Cape Town, South Africa, and “Murder on the Orient Express” is directly inspired by her travels on the Orient Express.
The stage for the “Death on the Nile” story is not in the United Kingdom. Most of the time, it is not on a luxury cruise ship, or in the beautiful scenery of Egypt.
This is why Agatha’s works are also very popular in film and television adaptations.
The audience can not only feel the ingenuity of the detective queen in designing criminal schemes, but also enjoy the scenery and beauty of various places at the same time.
If you haven’t traveled to Egypt yet, “Death on the Nile” should be a great travel promo.
07 Hardcore “alibi” tricks
Agatha is a genius of trickery, and reasoning writers often write one or two novels of super trickery in their lifetime, which is enough to leave a name in the history of reasoning.
The reason why Agatha is unique is that she has created countless classic types of tricks. Just following her creative footprint is enough to allow later writers to write many excellent works.
One of the most typical cases is “And Then There Were None”, where ten strangers are invited to an isolated island. Along with the horrific nursery rhyme, people die one by one, leaving no one left at the end.
Then there is a reversal, telling you that this is not a curse, everything is man-made.
In addition, the murderer settings of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” and “Murder on the Orient Express”, the murder motive of “The ABC Murders”, etc., are also original and novel tricks.
And the tricks used in “Death on the Nile” are the most delicate and bold of all Agatha’s tricks.
Relying on the emotion of constant cutting and chaos, coupled with the hard-core “alibi” trick.
This model has not only been used for reference by later writers, but even Agatha himself loved it and used it again in one of his subsequent works.
08 Unique Female Perspectives That Male Writers Don’t Have
Love is the eternal theme and the theme that Agatha is best at.
As a female writer, she has an imagination and an open world view that is not weaker than that of male writers. At the same time, she also has a unique female perspective that other male writers do not have.
Although Agatha was born in 1890, in her works, female characters are not flat characters attached to her, but adventurers who dare to love and hate, and are full of adventurous spirit.
Many of the female characters in her works, even today, are still at the forefront of fashion, and they are dashing girls with charming charm.
This of course also has something to do with her own values, Agatha herself is a very adventurous woman.
She is said to be one of the first women ever recorded to stand up surfing, an intriguing story that happened during a trip around the world in 1922.
In her autobiography, she also documents her surfing experience in Hawaii.
But the so-called love is wonderful, even if it is a new-age woman with an independent personality.
Even a gentleman who is calm in the face of all difficulties, once he falls in love, he will become another person, and his fate will be out of his control from this moment.
Such characters can be seen everywhere in Agatha’s work.
The main story of “Death on the Nile” is a love triangle in which the three young people are quite good individuals.
But when they become entangled with each other, dangerous things can happen.
When it comes to independent adventure, Agatha is richer than anyone else. She also had personal feelings about the lessons of love.
It is for this reason that emotional relationships become the most representative and unique element of her work.
09 “Death on the Nile” still has a strong cast
Having said so much about Agatha’s story, of course this adaptation cannot be weak on the board.
In this film version, the heroine Linnet is played by Gal Gadot. As the first goddess of Israel, the image of Wonder Woman played by Gal Gadot is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
As an audience, we have a natural sense of substitution for her to play the heroine of “Death on the Nile”.
In the original work, the heroine Linnet is a favorite of thousands. She is young, beautiful, rich, and very smart.
These images are consistent with our first impression of Gal Gadot – a flawless woman.
But what if such a woman fell in love and embarked on a trip to the Nile?
The director of the film is the same as the previous film “Murder on the Orient Express”, is Shakespeare master Kenneth Branagh, he is not only the director, but also plays the most important role Poirot.
Kenneth Branagh has seven Oscar nominations for acting, directing, and screenwriting. He is an all-around filmmaker.
Meanwhile, four-time Oscar-nominated Annette Bening plays another female lead. “Game of Thrones” Rose Leslie, French beautiful girl Emma Mackey and other new generations will also join forces to contribute wonderful shows.
Such a lineup is reminiscent of the old version in 1978, the same big production, the same excellent director and actors.
But what’s different about “Death on the Nile” this time?
When you sit in the movie theater, you know the answer.
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