Murder She Said (1961)

Murder She Said is a British crime film first released in 1961, directed by George Pollock.  The film is based on a novel by Agatha Christie and stars Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow, James Robertson Justice and Thorley Walters.  It has also been released under the title: Agatha Christie’s ’Murder, She Said’.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Whilst returning to her home village by train one afternoon, Miss Marple witnesses a woman being strangled in a passing train.  When the police refuse to take her seriously, the redoubtable old spinster begins her own investigation, with the help of her old friend Mr Stringer.  Miss Marple soon ascertains where the body of the murdered woman fell after being thrown from the train, and deduces that it must have been collected by somebody living at Ackenthorpe Hall, the grounds of which are adjacent to the railway line.   By exercising her usual guile, Miss Marple arranges to be engaged at the Hall as a housemaid, although she soon takes a dislike to her irritable crippled employer, Luther Ackenthorpe.  Undeterred, the one-woman crime squad sets about her investigation and soon discovers the dead body, concealed in an Egyptian coffin in the stables.  Suspicion falls immediately on Ackenthorpe’s offspring, who each stands to inherit a fortune when the old man dies.  When a member of the household is murdered, it becomes apparent that Miss Marple is up against a dangerous and resourceful killer...

Loosely adapted from Agatha Christie’s novel 4.50 from Paddington, Murder, She Said was the first in a series of four Miss Marple films that were made in the early 1960s with the incomparable Margaret Rutherford cast as the indefatigable amateur sleuth.  Christie reputedly loathed Rutherford’s portrayal, which made Miss Marple a far more proactive and eccentric character than she ever was in her crime novels.  The film may not have pleased Christie but audiences loved it and it remains one of the most popular adaptations of her work, a well-crafted whodunnit with some pleasing shots of humour.

Rutherford is a delight and clearly relishes her role, doing for Miss Marple what Basil Rathbone did for Sherlock Holmes in the 1940s.  Her fierce set-tos with James Robertson Justice are particularly enjoyable to watch and there is a heart-warming touch to her scenes with her real-life husband Stringer Davis.   The cast includes a young Richard Briers at the start of his career and Joan Hickson, who would win recognition as the definitive screen Miss Marple in a long-running BBC television series of Christie adaptations, a quarter of a century later.  Hickson may have made the more authentic Miss Marple, but Rutherford’s interpretation is still just as laudable, and much more fun to watch.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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