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| Miss Marple - bit on a snoop |
Murder
mysteries are always better in black and white.
And (almost) always better during the production code when you couldn’t
be too graphic or disgusted. Very few
raping serial killers in the old black and white movies.
.
The Thin Man
series was breezy. Raymond Chandler’s
series is hard-boiled. Most “famous” sleuths (Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto, The
Saint) are personality driven. But they
all have a certain look and feel. Murder
at the Gallop feels different because it IS different. Made during the 1960s in England, Miss Marple
was a very British invention. Old school
British, she was smarter than those whipper-snappers that hadn’t lived through
the war.
.
She was
forever using pluck and stubbornness to solve the wrongs of the world.
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| With "Mr. Stringer" - Stringer Davis (real name, not character name!) |
.
Normally
Miss Marple is a little old woman, un-assuming and overlooked. And they there is Margaret Rutherford’s Miss
Marple. She is a big woman, easily
offended by the dithering police. It is
also fun to see “police” in 1960s rural England when they rode bikes and
carried nothing more lethal than a whistle.
.
Margaret
Rutherford made a series of Miss Marple movies (Murder at the Gallop, Murder
Most Foul, Murder She Said, and Murder Ahoy – I would avoid Murder Ahoy). Any three of the four could be on this list.
.
Margaret
Rutherford and her bumbling sidekick, Mr. Stringer, solve a murder that the
police don’t think is a murder at all.
To prove it, she usually puts herself in danger. In ..at the Gallop, she dtakes a job at a
Boarding School / Riding Camp to see which of the heirs of a rich old (and
dead) man might a murderer.
.
PS
– The opening music is the same in all of them and drives Ed crazy. Listen and you decide.