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Murder most tasteful
Alice Thomas Ellis
The film was Ryan's Daughter and it did not hold my attention. This may be why I didn't understand it; also I was simul- taneously reading Agatha Christie — an economical device which means I can watch the same films and read the same books quite frequently since I don't re- member what happened and I get the plots confused. Hercule Poirot running about the coasts of Ireland in his little shiny shoes, and John Mills gibbering around the body in the library. I kept thinking the film
had ended but then the cameraman saw another slot he simply must have, and it went on. At one point I hoped the rather tiresome heroine was going to be tarred and feathered but she only had her hair cut. And was that man with the Irish accent Kirk Douglas or Burt Lancaster or some- body quite else? I was told by a more alert family member who the villains were (this was established by their shooting some- body in the back) but they seemed harm- less enough after that and I couldn't quite see why the heroine was unfaithful to Kirk Lancaster when she'd gone to the lengths of proposing to him.
I am thinking about film-making since it has been suggested that I write one and I don't know how to go about it. Action is called for, and plentiful surprises. It isn't enough to have a number of characters sitting round discussing the meaning of the universe. Horses are called for, pitched battles and passionate scenes in ballrooms; movement and colour and not too much chat; flashbacks, and grist to the mill of the cameraman. One needs to change one's way of looking at things. I suppose if I was really smart I could suggest setting a film in somewhere warm and exotic — India, the Bahamas — but things would still have to happen, and I don't suppose my presence would be essential, so there wouldn't be any point. I might as well set it here.
I've already got into a frightful muddle working out the plot. There are said to be Seven basic ones and I think I've got them all in — plus several ghosts and a mad axeman. The wish not to bore the pants off the public can be taken too far, as in 'Cecil B. de Mille / rather against his will / was Persuaded to leave Moses / out of the Wars of the Roses'. I always thought that rather funny, but now it doesn't seem so amusing. I don't want everybody to be reading Murder at the Vicarage while my epic runs Its course. We want them glued to the screen, laughing, crying and shuddering With terror, don't we?
And then we come to another problem. I Prefer the nasty bits to happen off-stage and to learn from a messenger that some- body has just put his own eyes out, or somebody else has sliced up his sister. I don't want actually to witness these events. Nor do I care to witness people in trans- ports in the bedroom, and the last film I saw was crammed with undressed ladies and gentlemen variously caressing or carv- ing each other up. My approach is not fashionable. I liked those films where every time anybody opened a cupboard a body fell out. Murder had occurred, but we hadn't been constrained to watch it in the process.
If we don't have any flashbacks or spurts of blood or naked flesh will anybody watch? I think it might be safer to write a play about a snooker player and then everybody can just watch the game — Which is what they'd probably be doing anyway.
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