Murder, She Said

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Murder, She Said

Directed by	George Pollock
Written by	David D. Osborn (screenplay) Agatha Christie (novel)
Starring	Margaret Rutherford Stringer Davis Arthur Kennedy Bud Tingwell James Robertson Justice
Music by	Ron Goodwin
Distributed by	MGM
Release date(s)	1961
Language	English German
Followed by	Murder at the Gallop
IMDb profile

Murder, She Said is a 1961 film, the first of four made by MGM that was based, or claimed to be based, on novels by Agatha Christie and starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple, Charles Tingwell as Inspector Craddock and Stringer Davis (Rutherford's real-life husband) as Mr Stringer.

It was directed by George Pollock, with David D. Osborn credited with the adaptation. Music was by Ron Goodwin.

It was the only one of the four films to actually be based on a Miss Marple novel. Joan Hickson, who played Mrs. Kidder in this film, went on to play Miss Marple in a British television series in the 1980s.

[edit] Plot

The plot is based on the novel 4.50 From Paddington but changes the action and the characters somewhat. Both Mrs McGillicuddy, who witnesses the murder, and Lucy, who discovers the body, are replaced by Miss Marple herself.

Miss Marple witnesses a woman being strangled on a train but, as no body can be found, the local police don't believe her story. Undaunted, she calculates that the body must have been disposed of in the grounds of Ackenthorpe Hall (Rutherford Hall in the novel), which adjoins the railway line. She contrives to obtain a post as housemaid in the Hall and searches for the body - which she finds while pretending to practice her golf shots.

Miss Marple's sidekick in the film is her friend from the library, Jim Stringer (played by Rutherford's husband, Stringer Davis), and she telephones him to have him report the finding to the police. Schoolboy Alexander (from the book) is here, but his chum, James Stoddard-West, is missing. Alexander functions as Miss Marple's "on-site" sidekick, as it were. The basics of the plot are the same, except that Harold's murder is disguised as a shooting accident. Miss Marple catches the doctor in the end just the same, then she departs for home -- after politely declining a proposal of marriage from Mr. Ackenthorpe.