Roger: Golden Age Adaptations in the Soviet Union

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The utter rejection of the detective genre by the Soviet official culture (which, for a long time, allowed only those examples to appear in translation that could be disguised as children's adventure books) is a topic in itself, but it defined the peculiarities of the Golden Age whodunits when adapted for screen in the Soviet Union. The emergence of these adaptations themselves is directly connected to those first book series, launched in the early 1970's, that started to offer detective novels in translation, primarily from the ideologically similar writers of the Eastern Europe, but including the Western classics as well. The directors were not interested in looking for foreign content on their own, preferring the texts already cleared for publication and existing in Russian, which limited the possible source for adaptations severely. Furthermore, the resulting works were frequently done in the uniquely Soviet genre of "television film," телефильм, containing normally two or three episodes, but more than an hour long each. These "TV films" (which sometimes, when especially low-budget, were even called "TV plays," телеспектакли) included many adaptations of extremely various foreign authors, from the classics of "literary" fiction such as Dickens and Wilde, or "adventure" fiction such as Dumas-père, down to the unmasking political novels of Robert Penn Warren and Irwin Shaw or crime works of Simenon, Dick Francis, and J.H. Chase. They could be all characterized, as formulated by a character in another of these TV films, The Pokrovsky Gate (1982), as attempts for "our people to play French lives." Adaptations of whodunits turned out to be a perfect fit for this system. The decisive factors in the genre's development were, first, the extreme cheapness of such productions, and, second, its great (at least 2.5 hours) total length, allowing to transfer plots of detective novels to screen almost word-for-word. This, however, could backfire in drowsily moving and overextended plots. We note that the Soviet take on the genre remained completely unchanged even after the appearance of the classical American adaptations of Agatha Christie such as Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Death on the Nile (1978), and The Mirror Crack'd (1980), which were screened in the Soviet Union to great success. 

Before moving to the screen, however, it should be mentioned that there is a radio version of Murder on the Orient Express from 1966, including many famous actors (quite comparable to the number of stars in Lumet's version); at least half of the characters had voices recognizable to any Soviet viewer. The format based on multiple separate episodes extending to about five hours in total length allowed to keep Christie's text unchanged and play it with the unhurriedness of old theatre. Hercule Poirot's first voice in the Soviet Union was Vsevolod Yakut, whose most famous role was one of the poet Alexander Pushkin. Yakut played Poirot with Pushkin's careless irony and aristocratic passion, though Suchet's fans would this this Poirot is too hasty and passionate when talking to the suspects. One could only pity that the dubbing of Lumet's version was later done by a much weaker team of actors.

V. Yakut starring in Sergey Lazo (Сергей Лазо, 1967): this could be the face of his Poirot

Apparently, the first Golden Age adaptation in general and of Agatha Christie in particular was the TV play "Sleuths and Ministers" (Сыщики и министры, 1969), based on "The Second Stain" by Doyle and "The Augean Stables" by Christie. It has been lost, as the Soviet television wiped the older recordings for the sake of tape economy, and barely anything remains known of it. The highly critical review in the Literaturnaya Gazeta, which is the only source available without special archival work, does not denounce its quality but rather bemoans the very fact of that such a pointless show could be produced at all, yet the only thing it mentions plot-wise is the fact that Poirot is reciting Icelandic sagas in it. Even the performer of Poirot's role remains unknown.

The key moment for all the following development came when Samson Samsonov, an experienced director and master of adapting Chekhov (The Three Sisters, 1964) and Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, 1973) to screen, staged Cyril Hare's novel An English Murder as Purely English Murder (Чисто английское убийство, 1974). This novel, translated merely four years before, was extremely attractive by combining the extensive exoticism of faraway England (a family castle, lords, unique motive of crime) and a definite political sharpness (the victim's extremely right views), which allowed to produce and adaptation of the persecuted genre as a critique of the "bourgeois society." Peculiarly, due to the policy of state antisemitism prevalent in Soviet Union of the Stagnation, the adaptation excludes any hints as to what nationality does the sleuth protagonist Dr Bottwink belong to. Quite the opposite, Alexey Batalov, known for flawless portrayals of the intelligentsia in Chekhov's and Bulgakov's stories, appears on screen almost as the most English gentleman among the whole cast.

A. Batalov: the Soviet idea of the great detective

In order to increase the political appeal, the action was moved from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, and the characters were made to watch a performance of the popular James Last Orchestra on TV. The satirical line of the aristocratic minister, Sir Julius Warbeck's, socialist views, was also gone: he turned into a typical "bourgeois" politician. Furthermore, according to the general tendency of the Soviet cinema which considered the Baltic actors more "European-looking," some of the roles were automatically given to them (only the exceptional adaptation of Sherlock Holmes stories by Igor Maslennikov managed to break this tradition). Thus, Lady Camilla was portrayed not even by an actress, but a model from Estonia called Faime Jürno. Yet, the adaptation gained a well-deserved popularity due to the exact retention of a complex plot, the meticulousness of the costume-makers and designers, as well as the persuasive acting by the Russian part of the ensemble, especially Batalov and Ivan Pereverzev, who was a star even before Stalin's death and provided a rich portrayal of an unperturbed English butler. The very phrase, "Чисто английское убийство" (purely English murder) became an idiom, and even the Midsomer Murders series is in its Russian run renamed into "Чисто английское убийства" (Purely English Murders). 
 

The victim to be, the suspects, and the sleuth assembled

Samsonov's success could not be replicated by Death Under Sail (Смерть под парусом, 1976), made in Latvia by the exact same pattern as Purely English Murder and adapting an okay-but-nothing-exceptional novel by Charles Percy Snow. The transfer of the plot to the 1970s had completely destroyed the atmosphere of the book, originally set in the world of "bright young things" in the 1920s, and the weak acting of the main cast is completely overshadowed by the secondary characters, the housekeeper and the police sergeant, played by the great Latvian actress Elza Radziņa and Kaljo Kiisk, cinema director from Estonia, respectively. An important factor in the product's final is probably the miscast of an unknown Lithuanian, Antanas Barčas, as Mr Finbow, the sleuth.

The "pleasant people" discover the corpse of one of them

The first screen adaptation of Agatha Christie that survives is, unsurprisingly, a version of Peril at End House, her first book to appear in Russian. The surprising thing is that it was done in 1981 by Lithuanian TV and in Lithuanian. Still, the exact rendering of the plot allows to watch it and follow the events without knowing any Lithuanian word at all. There is an interesting attempt to recreate the suits, dresses, and hats from the 1930s here, but one would be hard pressed to find any additional upsides to this version, and not only due to the extremely low budget, but rather because of the cast, unremarkable even for Lithuania. Vidas Petkevičius as Poirot is especially strange and could claim a place among the least successful Poirots in all existing adaptations. He tries to express the eccentricity of the great detective by combing his hair up, rubbing hands, wearing Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, a plaid suit and a cap. The result barely resembles Poirot and rather reminds of the comic portrayal of Inspector Lestrade in the Soviet Sherlock Holmes adaptations.

Poirot explains to Miss Buckley she is in peril

Since the 1980s, the trends in adapting the foreign detective novels finally fixed on Agatha Christie. The person who contributed the most to such a shift was Vadim Derbenyov, a specialist in putting Western life to Soviet screen, who brought a Soviet Miss Marple to the viewers in The Blackbird Mystery (Тайна Чёрных дроздов, 1983) based on A Pocket Full of Rye. This was not only the first publicly available screen version of Christie in the Soviet Union, but the first among all the projects discussed here to be filmed for cinemas. Despite containing all the typical features of the Soviet adaptations, such as moving the action to modern days and a heavy involvement of the Baltic cast, Derbenyov put an immense effort to depict the English peculiarities, successfully procured elegant costumes and right-hand driving cars, ordered a song in English to the famous rock musician Andrey Makarevich and even got hold of the footage of real London and incorporated those into the film done mostly in Tallinn. Ita Ever from Estonia tried to portray Miss Marple as unassuming as she could and perhaps somewhat overplayed. Still, now, after the appearance of the two English versions, with Joan Hickson and Julia McKenzie, this decent adaptation turned into a mere artifact of its age. 

Miss Marple meets a suspect

The attempt of the same Derbenyov to stage another Peril at End House (Загадка Эндхауза, 1989) was much less successful. The director managed to watch the first season of Agatha Christie's Poirot before filming and tried to force the great Soviet actor Anatoly Ravikovich to imitate Suchet on screen. Quite obviously, Ravikovich rebelled and tried to find a solution of his own, making Poirot into a tragic image of a man with deep emotional trials over the murder and the identity of the victim. The interesting finding of Ravikovich is, however, the only upside of the story as it was supported neither by the uninspired acting of the remaining cast nor the portrayal of Hastings, completely failed by the TV host Dmitry Krylov, to say nothing of the cheap production values of the Perestroika and the quality of the physical film itself that turns the whole piece into a dark spot.

Ravikovich, not Suchet's double

Derbenyov's efforts, both of them, are especially jarring when compared to the effort of the big Soviet director Stanislav Govorukhin and his And Then There Were None (Десять негритят, 1987). Despite an obvious thrillerization, this became an unquestionably best Soviet version of Christie and is yet to be surpassed by any other adaptation of this novel, worldwide. In an attempt to depict the atmosphere of the 1930s and rejecting the Baltic cast, Govorukhin took Lumet's and Guillermin's strategy and invited an ensemble cast of almost all the greatest stars of Soviet cinema, for many of which this film became the best role in their careers.

The charges are being declared

The Soviet attempts to adapt Christie were concluded by our previous acquaintance Samson Samsonov, who, before the very breakup of the Soviet Union, released The Mousetrap (Мышеловка, 1990). This was an homage to Samsonov's friend, director and actor Vladimir Basov, who prepared the screenplay but died before the filming. Basov also produced two screen versions of J.B. Priestley's plays (Priestley was extremely popular in Soviet cinema, getting at least six adaptations), but, despite the obvious detective leanings in Priestley's works, Basov's adaptations are explicitly satiric "comedies of manners." The Mousetrap's screenplay was originally done in the similar vein. Samsonov, however, re-imagined the story into something similar to his own Purely English Murder, once again building a persuasive set of a snowbound mansion and depicting an imaginary England, where the hats and costumes of the 1950s can live together with the modern pop on the radio. Yet the age was now completely different, and what could succeed in the 1970s was in 1990 completely unnoticed, the film was even criticized for the insert of an unnecessary shower scene. Still, though secondary compared to Purely English Murder, The Mousetrap has a winning feature: it is shorter and easier to watch, and the absence of acting highlights is compensated by the effort of the ensemble, quite succeeding in bringing Christie's characters to life exactly as they were written, adding nothing extraneous. Thus, this undeservedly forgotten film drastically surpasses many of the entries previously discussed. Furthermore, as in England the adaptation of the stage play is banned as long as it remains on stage, the Soviet Mousetrap is, and perhaps will for a long time remain, the screen rendition of the story.

The murderer is among them

The final thing to be mentioned here is that the post-Soviet Russian attempts to adapt Christie are limited to the conceptual and extremely original, though with some drawbacks, Poirot's Misfortune (Неудача Пуаро), based on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.