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A collage crime movie from the first novel of Agatha Christie. International Premier: Rotterdam International Film Festival, 2023 Hercule Poirot: Pál Mácsai Directed by: Péter Lichter Writer: Bence Kránicz Producer: Fanni Hegyesi Sound Design: Bence Kovács-Vajda Translation: Máté Konkol, Kriszta Csapó 2022 Reviews: “Péter Lichter’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles condenses Agatha Christie’s first novel—which also introduced Hercule Poirot—to just over an hour. Bence Kránicz’s screenplay eliminates the voice of its narrator, Captain Hastings—the Dr. Watson to Poirot’s Holmes, a character Christie eventually got tired of and largely eliminated. Instead, the narrator is Poirot himself, giving a very long version of the detective’s signature drawing-room closing speeches, which run through the case with a TV recapper’s thoroughness before revealing the murderer. Opening shots over a lightbed of film-strips showing Albert Finney as Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express give way to an old desktop’s opening string of commands. That lightbed is a recurring visual palate cleanser between chapters pairing the narration with a variety of film and computer games, those images often three or four layered side by side or on top of each other in variably divided splitscreens. Theoretically, there’s the potential for total overload, especially with the additional layer of subtitles; in practice, the images have such an obvious and literal relation to the plot that it’s easy to keep up. Lichter’s selections from over 100 films are unafraid to use extremely familiar staples of “magic of the movies” montages (Harold Lloyd hanging from clock hands etc.) but also draws upon many deep cuts, as well as PC detective games and architectural layout programs reminiscent of the diagrams of locked rooms offered at the beginning of many Christie novels. This visual bricolage is only mildly engaging but does help create a thought experiment: is the mere outline of a Christie novel still compelling on its own? The answer: pretty much! If Lichter had adapted literally anyone else’s work, even a close peer like Dorothy L. Sayers, I wouldn’t have cared, but this taps into affection for Christie’s work and finds a new way to reformulate its appeal.“ - Filmmaker Magazine “This ingenious Hungarian cut-up job sees cine-alchemist Péter Lichter plundering an archive of over 100 silent film prints and filching any fleeting moments that connect to the plot of Agatha Christine’s first Poirot novel, 1920’s ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’. So as the text is being intoned and subtitled on the screen, we have a cascade of images featuring dastardly cads and tragic dowagers (and there’s added layers of DOS loading screens and 1990s PC games such as Doom thrown into the mix). It’s a fun, clever lark, but would work like gangbusters if you knew Hungarian, as it’s very tough to read the dense subtitles and lavish in the torrent of images at the same time.“ Little White Lies
