sissoed

My tastes and values in dramas have changed over the years, such that I now value episodes more for the exploration of the psychology of the Crockett and Tubbs targets and witnesses than I used to. The best detective shows - Maigret in France, Montalbano in Italy, for example - use the detective's investigation as a way of presenting us with a portrait of the psychology and character of the people being investigated.

In this episode, the most interesting character is Mary, played by Maryanne Plunkett. She is the girlfriend (most reviews say fiance but there is no evidence of a marital engagement) to an older wealthy man who has a son by a first marriage, the son being much more age-appropriate for her than is the father.

She is cultured and well-educated, clearly comfortable in the father's social class (he is of an old money family). The father can include her in his social world without any embarrassment or discomfort.

But she has to chart the difficult emotional and behavioral path of being attached to the older man, while constantly in the company of the more age-appropriate younger man, the son.

To the father, she is a kind of resuscitation of affection: he will never again have the physical and emotional comfort and enjoyment of such a young woman, with genuine feelings for him, ever again, if he loses her.

Ms. Plunkett plays this just right - showing the son care and affection but never indicating sexual interest in him, saving all of that for the father.

She is thus fundamentally a kind of calculating person - yet she never appears calculating. We wonder: is she playing a game, or is she following genuine feelings?

The vice detectives through a phone tap hear the girlfriend choose a warehouse to receive a shipment of some goods on behalf of the father. She is then caught at the scene of a huge cocaine sale, and it becomes clear that she is handling the father's secret drug business. The father blurts out to a flunky (not recorded) that he has just lost 5 million dollars. But neither she nor the father know about the phone tap, and thus the father thinks there is no evidence connecting the father to the drugs - except, possibly, her own testimony.

Ms. Plunkett's final scene is in the chauffeured limo with the son, coming back from jail after being bailed. She is nervous, but trying to pass it off. She resolutely encourages the son to support the father. Dropping the son at the mansion, the limo leaves, supposedly to take her to her apartment - but then the door-locks slam down on her. The father has ordered her killed.

Her brave-front nervousness, her attempt to maintain her attitude of class while in the limo with the son, is a masterful performance.

At the end, the father breaks down over what he has done - he has killed the last chance at love and affection that he will ever have. He has suddenly realized that his attitude of exalting hardness and determination has caused him to destroy his own love.

This kind of insight into human nature is what makes this an excellent episode.

Reviewer "gerrythree" in 2006 wrote something that I will build on, which is:

"Behind the opening and closing credits are images of ships beached on shore, wrecks that have outlived their usefulness, just like the ship's captain. The real French frigate, the Jaureguiberry, filmed for this movie on its last voyage, gets a mention in the last credit. When you see the ship's bow plowing through high waves in the North Atlantic, you also see the sides of the ship, with rust patches on it. The ship, like some of its passengers, has reached the end of the line. Le Crabe Tambour is not about just the adventures of an errant soldier, but is an attempt to put on screen the meaning of life for career military men at the end of their careers"

My father, a career U.S. Navy officer, commander of nuclear submarines, followed his Navy sea career by becoming U.S. Naval Attache to France - so of course he knew zFrench and French culture, and many French navy officers.

One day years after his retirement (1984) he pulled out a VHS and said "watch this with me." The movie was "The Drummer Crab." He knew French, but I did not, and the movie has no subtitles, so he explained it to me as the movie went on.

It was a very important film to him. When reviewer "gerrythree" said that "The Drummer Crab" "is an attempt to put on screen the meaning of life for career military men at the end of their careers," he is absolutely correct. I was never in the military, but anyone who was, and everyone who has a career-military person in his or her family - especially career Navy - will benefit by watching this film (though most Americans will need to watch it with a French-speaker).

One thing that especially struck me was my father's response to the very end of the film, when the frigate captain brings the warship to the pier for the last time. The captain (skipper) knows that this is the last time he will ever do this. The captain gives very precise commands to rudder and engines, to bring the ship alongside the pier without a tug-boat, and - this is what matters - with the very fewest number of commands. My father explained that among ship-skippers, one of the master-arts is to know how to bring the ship to a dead-stop right on position along the pier, with the fewest number of commands. It is how they test and evaluate each other, and know who is the very best. He had done it himself many times, bringing his submarine alongside the submarine tender-ships after his two-month missile deterrent patrols. His last time was in 1972, in Holy Loch, Scotland - after which he transferred to shore duty for the rest of his career.

I think the feeling must be like a major-league football or baseball player, who knows he is playing in his last game in the big leagues - and the game ends, and the player walks off the field for the last time, never to step-out again in uniform, ready to play. A very bitter-sweet moment - which this film captures for real-life Navy ship-captains, like my father.

The main plot-line of this episode concerns the murder of a young woman, and the opening sequence is quite powerful, as she, alone and naked in a cold large place, at night, struggles up and tries to make her way somewhere -- which turns out to be an apartment building. Development of this story-line takes us through many twists, introducing us to many of the quintessential Sicilian characters that so enrich this series.

As with so many Montalbano episodes, this episode also features a second plot: in this case, a very formally-dressed old man who walks the beach in front of Montalbano's house. He is new to the area, and speaks very little, until Montalbano gets him to open up. Who is he, and why has he come there?

It is this second plot that my review focuses on. The man, Attard, is a retired career judge of criminal cases, and his conscience has driven him to focus on whether he, as a judge, ever allowed his personal feelings and problems of any given moment to affect his judgments in the cases he decided during those times. He calls this "to soil the white page" due to distractions by his own life events. Attard says "The brutality we see in others is actually in ourselves, and comes out in most unexpected ways." In fact he is so obsessed with his that he has spent a fortune to have all the records in all his cases copied, and he has moved to Vigata to take a house and fill it with these files -- the house is packed with them. He spends his days reviewing the record of case after case, keeping in mind what he personally was going through at the time of the case.

Judge Attard quotes to Montalbano from Montaigne's Essay on Vanity (Book III, Chapter 9) "I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece whereon to write a love-letter to his companion's wife. She whom you have but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your hearing, more loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than a Portia would do; and men there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they themselves do not repute so much as faults."

Eventually, Judge Attard finds that he has done what he feared: in a case from 15 years earlier, at a time in his life when, due to personal problems, he was very much not inclined to believe anyone's claims of innocence, Judge Attard rejected the claim of innocence made by a defendant, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. The man died in prison after 12 years. In reviewing the file now, Judge Attard believes that the facts show that the man was innocent, and that Judge Attard, due to allowing his personal problems to affect his professional judgment, inflicted an unjust conviction on the man, condemning him to spend the rest of his life in prison, and dying with his name and character publicly ruined. To atone for this, Judge Attard sets fire to his own house, with himself in it, and so commits suicide, while also destroying his life's work (the records of all his cases).

Every law-court judge should see this episode several times. And all of us who are inclined to judge others, and speak aloud our judgments of others, ought also see this episode.

Spoilers ahead!

I've seen this 1984 Joan Hickson version several times over the years, and I always like it, which is why I give it an "excellent" 10-level rating.

But last night on seeing it again, it struck me: how can it be that the "rock solid" alibi for several characters is that they were in the presence of the murder victim, with many other witnesses seeing all of them together, while the victim was alive? An alibi has to apply to the period of time during which the victim was killed, not earlier, while everyone knew the victim was alive.

Yet this is how the alibi for the eventual killers is described several times by the police.

The real way the alibi worked is that the killers were seen in the presence of the victim while the victim was alive, and then remained in public, visible to many witnesses, continuously for at least an hour after the victim left everyone's presence, right up to and beyond the very latest time that the police later state is the latest moment that the victim (being elsewhere) could have been killed.

Think about this strategy for a moment from the viewpoint of the killers, in planning their murder. They have to get a double, whom they will dress-up to impersonate the victim, and kill the double early enough in the day that when the police find the body and do their estimate of the time-of-death, the latest time-of-death the police will come up with happens to be within the window of time after the real victim leaves public view but while the killers are still in public view. But they also have to wait long enough before killing the double that the moment of the latest time-of-death is after the victim has left public view of the witnesses. That's cutting it pretty fine, and requires the killers to have a very good idea of how the police go about determining a victim's latest time-of-death.

They also have to gamble that one of them will be called to view the body and make the identification (calling the substitute the real victim) and that no one else will be called on to make an identification. Otherwise, the substitution trick fails, and with it, so too fails the determination by the police of the latest time-of-death.

One other interesting point: the killers planned to frame the film-studio man for the murder, leaving the body of the "double" at his house. He foils this temporarily by moving the body to the Bantry home - home of the rich squire of the county. Inadvertently, this saved him from the frame-up -- because it brought in and focused the excellent detectives on this case. It brought in not only Miss Marple, as friend to the Bantrys, but also the regional police Chief, because he was a neighbor to the Bantrys, and because the Chief would give special attention to anything affecting the Squire. Moving the body anywhere else, or leaving it in his own home, would have left the film-studio man at the mercy of the bone-headed detective who fell for the frame-up, because Marple would not have become involved and the Chief would not have given the case so much attention.

Thus the film-man's moving the body to the Squire's house proved to be a disaster for the killers, because it brought in a swarm of detectives along with Miss Marple, all looking to find the killers. The killers certainly never expected that.

The inadvertent lesson for us: if you want a murder to get solved, drag innocent rich people into it -- they'll have the money and insider connections to bring vast resources to bear on finding the real killer, not so much to pursue justice, but to clear their own names.

Spoilers ahead! This episode skillfully interweaves 4 mysteries: 1) German spy lands from submarine -- who and how? 2) items looted from blitzed houses -- who and where is loot hidden? 3) man found shot on beach -- suicide or murder? 4) obnoxious rich American has mysterious British aide -- political games afoot?

A nice thing about the script for this episode is that the supporting characters, Milner and Sam, are not merely errand-runners and "foils" who make the detective voice his thinking aloud. In this episode, each contributes original insights that Foyle did NOT think of.

Milner makes the key observation about the distinctiveness of the items NOT looted as compared to those looted, which leads Foyle to realize where the loot is hidden -- and thus to expose who stole the loot.

Sam makes the key observation about the item the beach-death victim had in his pocket -- she knows what it is, while Foyle does not -- and once Foyle hears this, he understands the connection between the beach-death and the obnoxious rich American.

The German spy also provides the key information that enables Foyle to figure out how the spy got to be landed on that particular beach -- although it was not the spy's intention to reveal that fact.

In none of these three instances did Foyle expect that the particular conversation that led to the information would produce such information -- in each case it is an accident that the information given happens to be relevant to solving a crime. But the information is quite logical to have been mentioned in these conversations, it is not artificially stuffed-into the character's mouth just to move the plot along. This is excellent quality story-craftsmanship and deserves recognition.

As to the actor playing the obnoxious American, I'm a born and 60-years-life-long American who has lived in many parts of the US, and I thought his accent was fine. I thought he was an American actor.

The most interesting part of the episode is the political context -- focused on the mysterious British aide. At the end of the episode he explains to Foyle that the obnoxious American is a key pro-Britain supporter in America, working to get lend-lease and the "50 Ships" -- 50 destroyers -- transferred to Britain. Because of the American's importance to forming the British-American alliance, he must literally be allowed to get away with murder of the man on the beach.

The greatest irony, which is not explored or recognized by the episode, is that it is the testimony of the German spy that gives Foyle the key evidence he needs to realize that this vital American is the murderer. That German spy thus unexpectedly almost gave Hitler the greatest assistance any one human being could possibly have given to Hitler's effort to defeat Britain -- because it was that German, by bringing about the discrediting of the strongly pro-British American, who could have destroyed the American-British alliance from even forming. And Foyle himself, upstanding, honorable Foyle, would have become the means whereby Hitler would accomplish that grand strategic goal. It is similar to the British Colonel in "Bridge Over The River Kwai," who is so focused on his role of keeping his men in good military form, that he overlooks that his efforts will aid the enemy in the broader strategic situation. The mysterious British aide (really an high-level military intelligence agent) is on the scene, however, and prevents this from happening.

One bit of writing that is a bit of a cheat is that at the end, when Foyle confronts the American, Foyle says he has two witnesses, the man who saw sleeping in a car, and a man in a boat. He talks more about the man in the car, but says nothing about the man in the boat. The American would surely have asked about this second witness, and if Foyle had said, honestly, "he is a captured German spy who is about to be shot," the American would have burst out laughing -- no British government prosecutor in war time would put up as a prosecution witness an enemy spy whom the government itself is about to put in front of a firing squad. Foyle would have had to say "I can't tell you who the witness is," and the American would have known from this that there was something fishy about Foyle's case. The screenwriter just dodged all this, which is a little bit of a cheat.

I first saw this yesterday and found out this is the episode I saw filmed, back in fall 1977. This episode is in Venice, LA, where I lived at the time, on Rose Ave. I went for a walk one afternoon and noticed some cameras: Rockford Files was filming a scene. But I did not watch television much in those days, so I never knew what episode the scene was in -- until yesterday.

The part I saw was the car-crash and capture of the bad guys. Rockford tells the bad guys to meet him at "Navy and Lincoln," a real intersection, and there is park "Ozone Park" practically right next to that intersection, and also near Rose Ave. I think it was shot at Ozone Park.

First: the scene as shown is late at night, but it was filmed in a slight overcast afternoon.

Second: James Garner was there, and there was an incident that showed he really is a nice guy. The cameras were set up at Ruth & Dewey, looking northeast up Dewey. The hot-dog stand that the car crashes through was in the park, where google maps street view shows a sandy enclosed play area for little kids, which was not at the filming site. The car was going to speed down Dewey toward the cameras and veer off into the hot-dog stand. Dewey was all cleared and they were about to shoot the action when, on the right, just about where Bernard dead-ends into Dewey, a homeless guy rolled out from under a bush where he had been sleeping all this time, stood up right in the middle of Dewey, and mumbled "Say, wha's going on?"

James Garner, standing beside the camera, happened to be the closest person. Rather than expect somebody else to deal with this, he casually walked over to the guy, put his hand on the guy's shoulder to gently turn him around, and said, with no irritation at all, something like "hey buddy, we're shooting a scene here, could you head off over there," and aimed him down Bernard Ave. The homeless guy sort of wobbled away in that direction, and Garner just walked back to beside the cameras.

While I was there I wandered over to the hot-dog stand and noticed that it was all pre-cut into pieces, like a giant three-dimensional jig-saw puzzle. This was to ensure that pieces would fly everywhere when the car hit it. I also noticed that along the curb, where the car was going to jump the curb and hit the hog-dog stand, they had put a long triangular insert, so that the wheels of the car would have a smooth path, rather than crash hard-on into the curb, and maybe bounce off, or blow-out the tire.

They got the car-crash-into-the-hot-dog stand in one take, and the car screeched to a halt on its mark. Now it was time to shoot the bit where the guy in the hot-dog-stand costume runs over, and Rockford gets out, and they have an exchange over the top of the car while cuffing the bad-guys. Since I knew nothing about the episode, I always assumed that the hot-dog-guy had been working in the stand that got smashed, and that they had already filmed a scene where he jumps clear. Now I know he was working in a fast-food place across the street from the hot-dog stand (but on the real filming site, there was no such place).

Somehow I knew that the hot-dog guy was an undercover friend of Rockford -- maybe somebody mentioned it while we were standing around. But I didn't know he was a cop, and I didn't know he was a regular character in the series. I couldn't figure out how or why Rockford would have a friend, with a gun, disguised and operating a hot-dog stand in Venice. I assumed he was a character just in that episode, played by an actor hired just for that episode.

The hot-dog-stand guy ran over to the far side of the car, Rockford (Garner) got out on the near side of the car, and the hot-dog guy was supposed to say a short line once Garner stood up and turned to look at him across the roof of the car. First take -- the actor blew the line. Cut! Re-set. Garner gets back in the car. Take two: hot-dog-guy runs to the car, Garner gets out -- hot-dog guy blows the line again. Cut! Re-set. Something like five more times, this happens. I felt so sorry for the hot-dog-guy actor. I was thinking, "This poor guy, his career in Hollywood is over. Word's going to get around, he's never going to be hired again." And poor James Garner -- the number of times he had to get out of the car, stand up, turn, and then: blown line from the other actor, Cut, back in the car -- Garner was so patient, he never got angry. Finally the hot-dog guy got it right and they finished the scene. I had no idea, until yesterday, that the hot-dog-guy actor was actually one of the vitally-important series regular actors, Joe Santos, who has had an excellent and long career. I must have just caught him on a bad day.

The Venice scenes in the episode are all real Venice Beach locations; I could have been in the background of any of the outdoor scenes. When they showed the front of an apartment building I thought: I think that's my apartment building (I checked google street view, no it wasn't). The dingy interior hall of the apartment building was a bit worse than my place, but the apartment where the witness lived was a bit bigger and better than mine -- except that my apartment did not come with a dead body in it ....

The screenwriter of this episode, Alan Pater (a prolific and accomplished dramatist who wrote this in his 70s) deserves a lot of credit for this very interesting study of creativity. But first: the story.

A professor of the Romantic Poets (man) and a professor of mathematics/probability (woman) both have a personal susceptibility to gambling and are associated with a kind of "alcoholics anonymous" program, but for gamblers. They become a couple. The literature prof. harbors an ironic resentment of the poets in whom he is an expert, because his life is drab and theirs were exciting. The math professor knows a vivacious, risk-taking art student, Nell, who among other things makes funky-looking necklaces; the math prof. typically wears one of them. Nell is also a performance-artist, who is known around Oxford for leading free "tourist tours" where she tells a series of fantastic lies about various Oxford landmarks and famous people, that tourists only slowly figure out are all fake and silly.

Nell shares a house with several other students, including a painter and drawer with an odd personality: he has excellent ability to paint and draw what he sees, but is unable to make things up -- to imagine. Nell likes to lead him around and tell him to do things, which he complies with; she has the imagination he lacks. One of the clever art projects they do together exploits the painter's talent at antique handwriting; they make obviously fake ancient documents, such as a grant application written by Shakespeare. Nell likes to read Romantic poets aloud, including Shelley. Another house-mate is a math student of the math professor, and he makes extra money by working for a betting-shop.

A down-and-outer engineer, his life ruined by gambling, is reduced to being a book-clerk at the Bodleian Library, which has original Shelley letters and many books from Shelley's time. He calls the "gamblers anonymous" hot-line and gets the math prof., who refers him to her boyfriend the literature prof. The student who part-times at the betting shop also gets to know him, and thus Nell hears of him. The two professors conceive a plan to get rich by taking a big gamble. The down-and-outer steals original Shelley letters and also cuts blank end-papers from books of the time, and passes these to the betting-shop boy, who passes them to Nell. She gets the artist to copy the Shelley letters onto the blank end-papers, and the fakes are then put into the Bodleian in place of the real ones. The math prof. then sells the originals to collectors. The two profs. then get Nell to expand the scheme, so as to "discover" a long-rumored but never-found cache of Shelley letters about his wife's famous novel, Frankenstein. They will sell these letters -- which will all be fakes, but on authentic paper of the day, done by the obedient, uncomplaining artist. When this scheme is in danger of being exposed, the profs kill first the down-and-outer (planting the murder-gun in the painter's room), and then Nell. The betting-shop boy flees in fear of his life. The profs. have no fear of the painter; he is so uncomprehending and detached that he has no idea what documents he has been making or any comprehension that fraud is going on -- he thinks it is all another art project conceived by Nell.

Thus we have the resentment of the uncreative (the literature prof) for the creative (the poets), the difference between talent without invention (the painter) and inventiveness without talent or judgment (Nell, who only thinks of herself and never of how her actions may upset other people).

When Nell's dead body is discovered, she is washed-up onto a river-bank, young, broken and bedraggled. The ending of the episode is at Shelley's Oxford death-monument, on which is a marble sculpture of him, washed-up on the beach (he died young, by drowning), sprawled in the same posture as Nell was on the river-bank. The painter sits before it, a lost soul -- "I wish I could make things up" he says.

And thus we realize that the literature prof., in killing Nell, was killing one of those Romantic poets of whom he was so jealous, and whom he so hated, yet whom he could not escape, because his livelihood depended on his being an expert on them. The fact that he could get rich only by forging their letters, and not via writings in his own name, further deepened his frustration.

This screenplay was one of Pater's last works, a fitting meditation on the fact that inventive people (as he was) are vitally needed in the world, but they must develop judgment, to sense the effects that their inventiveness may have on those around them. Nell's lack of judgment makes her the unwitting villain of the piece; she treated manipulating the painter as a game, and forging letters as just another art-project lark, but the literature prof knew it was a serious crime -- Nell got herself killed for not realizing in advance that she was playing with real fire.

I should add, I produced avant-garde theater and performance art for ten years, in San Francisco, so I have known some real-life Nells in my time.

I am with the critical reviewers here -- this doesn't have the right feel. We are all so accustomed to seeing Jimmy Stewart as a wonderful actor, but in this, his role doesn't work. The fault lies either with the screenwriter or with Stewart himself, but for a screwball comedy to work, the lead characters have to have a kind of happy zest, a playfulness, even if it is underneath some more obvious motive like getting money or getting one-up on someone who's put you down, and his character just doesn't have it.

Claudette Colbert, by contrast, is wonderful -- just what is needed. The plot, the setting, the other characters, all are excellent for screwball comedy. The problem is Jimmy Stewart -- earnest, annoyed with just about everyone, and no hint of playfulness.

All of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes stories are worth watching, but this particular story is weaker than most -- his goal is to keep a deluded young woman from marrying a dastardly Baron.

The reason I leave this note is to note a clever bit in the beginning. In the first scene that shows the Baron together with the young woman, they are in his study. Over the mantle-piece is an oil portrait of the Baron.

"Who painted it?" asks the woman.

"Claus of Innsbruck" answers the Baron, and he adds, as he strokes a bronze sculpture on the desk, "Claus also did this sculpture."

This is a clever contribution by the screenwriter, because "Claus of Innsbruck," a fictional character, is the painter of the portrait in the famous poem by Browning, "My Last Duchess." The speaker in the poem is a cold-hearted nobleman who crushes the spirit of his wife (the last duchess) because it does not please him that she is so joyful. The speaker mentions that "Claus" not only did the portrait for him, but also a fine bronze sculpture for him. The screenwriter thus shows that the Baron in this episode is a heartless noble on a par with the noble in Browning's poem -- reference that will be caught only by viewers who also know Browning.

In this review I am going to give everything away.

I saw this last night and was surprised -- I usually don't find Poirot very appealing. Too little heart. But in this he is all heart. Where did this come from? I haven't read the book, so I read reviews of it. It is poorly thought of. So I researched the screenwriter, Peter Flannery -- turns out he is a playwright, was writer-in-residence for the Royal Shakespeare Co. Everything good in this adaptation comes from him. He made this a story about the psychological mistreatment of a young girl and Poirot's compassion for her and his outrage at those who mistreated her with such emotional cruelty. Here's Flannery's story:

Norma is the only child of Andrew Restarick and his wife (Mommy), who is heiress to a grand country-house estate. They have a nanny (nanny 1). Andrew's older brother runs a family firm in London. When Norma is about 5, Andrew and 'nanny 1' have an affair. 'Nanny 1' gets pregnant and leaves suddenly, and is replaced by 'nanny 2'.

Then Andrew deserts his wife and Norma, for South Africa to seek fortune. Mommy is so distraught she destroys every picture of Norma's father. One afternoon she decides to get into a warm bath and cut her wrists; her timing indicates that she might be counting on Norma and nanny 2, who are out on an excursion, to be home in time to save her. Mommy has given nanny 2 firm instructions to be home by a particular time. But Norma and nanny 2 pass an ice-cream vendor on the way back, and Norma insists on getting some, which makes them late. 5-year-old Norma gets home, goes happily running upstairs with her ice-cream to see Mommy, and discovers Mommy dying; Mommy's last words to her daughter are "save me" -- but it is too late. Norma blames herself; if only she had not insisted on ice-cream, she would have been there in time to save her mother.

"Nanny 1,' having kept her pregnancy secret, has founded a girls' school, and Norma is sent there. Norma grows up deeply troubled and unhappy. Presumably, Norma's secret half- sister, 5 years younger, and not openly acknowledged by her mother the headmistress, also goes there. The half-sister becomes consumed with jealousy over Norma's vast inheritance, which she feels she could get if Norma were dead.

15 or 20 years pass, during which Andrew never comes back or contacts Norma. 'Nanny 2' has become mostly-unemployed, tending to alcoholism, in a London flat. Then Andrew's older brother dies, and Andrew returns to take over the business. Except it is not really Andrew; Andrew had also died, in South Africa, shortly after his older brother. A friend of his in South Africa, having heard from Andrew that Mommy had destroyed all pictures of Andrew and then killed herself, decides to impersonate Andrew, sell the business quickly, and disappear with the cash. He finds Norma and pretends to be a repentant father. An uncle of Mommy, Sir Roderick, who lives at the estate with Norma, who would have seen the deception, has gone blind, so is not a danger. The fake Andrew finds 'nanny 2,' who might expose the deception, and bribes/threatens her into silence. He also finds the half- sister. But the business turns out to be worthless; it still has an impressive office, and one secretary, but this is an empty front. The fake Andrew starts thinking that if Norma died, he could split the inheritance with the half-sister. The fake Andrew and the secretary start a romance, the secretary thinking he is the real Andrew.

Sir Roderick now takes-up with a younger woman and Norma, excluded, decides to seek lodgings in London, as the 'third girl' sharing a flat. The fake Andrew persuades the secretary to take a flat in the same building as 'nanny 2.' The half- sister (her relationship to Norma still secret from Norma) moves in as the second girl, and Norma the third. Another flat in the building is occupied by an older woman, a famous mystery- novelist, who takes an interest in the girls, who is a friend of Poirot.

The half-sister goes to work on Norma's fragile emotional state, serving ice cream at a party and flirting heavily with Norma's boyfriend. She wants either to drive Norma to suicide, or to get Norma into such a state that it will be easy to make a murder look like suicide. When 'nanny 2' sends a note to the fake Andrew threatening exposure, he tells the half-sister, and the half-sister decides to murder 'nanny 2' in a way that looks like wrist-slitting (the same way Norma's mother died) with Norma so confused that Norma will think she murdered 'nanny 2'. Thus Norma will think herself guilty of two bloody deaths, of her mother and her nanny. Before the death is discovered by anyone else, a distraught Norma asks the mystery-writer for a referral to a detective and Poirot is named. Without an appointment, Norma bursts in on Poirot, then suddenly flees without explaining anything.

This is the story of a child born to utterly self-centered parents, living with a self-centered and thoughtless great-uncle. Their emotional mistreatment of her leaves her vulnerable to be taken advantage of by two unscrupulous deceivers, a false-father and a false-friend. Poirot's goal here is not so much to solve a murder, but to protect an abused girl and give her a chance to restore her emotional well-being -- which he does! Thank-you Peter Flannery for transforming a second-rate novel into a first- rate drama.

I am a longtime fan of the hour-long Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes dramatizations, but the three longer ones I have seen -- this one, The Sign of Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles -- have left me disappointed. I was going to give this one a pretty negative review, until I went on-line and read the original story, Charles Augustus Milverton.

The faults are almost all in the original, which Doyle wrote in 1904 and which feels pretty rushed and mechanical. Holmes does hardly any deducing or reasoning in this, but then he doesn't in the original, either. The dramatists have done an excellent job in creating a new foreground story and interweaving the central blackmail plot from the original story into several other blackmail plots. They have also developed the Watson character much more, and have fleshed-out Holmes' romance-in-disguise with the housemaid (the ever-excellent Sophie Thompson). Robert Hardy gives a masterful performance as the villain.

As to the core scenes of the original story -- they are all here, practically verbatim.

A pet peeve of mine is when dramatists take a classic character from literature and in an attempt to modernize and flesh-out the character, have the character do and say things that contradict the values of the original character. I thought that a bit of that had happened in this version, but again -- the Holmes here is the Holmes in the original story.

It seemed to me that Holmes here was a bit too quick to go along with the lady's desire to hide the embarrassing letters from her about-to-be husband. After all, she wrote the letters, so doesn't the groom have a fair claim, at least, not to be deceived about his future wife? If the letters are really not so embarrassing, but the groom would terminate the wedding anyway, doesn't that tell us that perhaps he isn't so very suitable? That maybe this marriage should not happen? Is she really marrying the man for money and title, and not for love? The Holmes in the earlier stories would at least have given some thought to these questions, and the Doyle who wrote the earlier stories would have re-shaped his plot to answer all these concerns. But not in this story.

While the dramatists did a good job in expanding the story, it would have been even better had they expanded it by developing the moral and romantic issues in the impending marriage that the original story overlooked.

This review is full of SPOILERS and is meant for those who've seen this film.

1. Major plot flaw. The police would have identified the "painters" almost immediately, and this is hidden from the audience by the way in which the interrogation scenes are handled.

The criminals' strategy for escape was to blend in with the other hostages and be unidentifiable. The video surveillance cameras were disabled only 2 minutes before the "painters" entered. By checking the videos the police would see what customers had entered the bank before then and could rule them out as "painters." The police could also rule-out all employees, not only because employees would be on tape, but even if not, the employees would know who of their number was in the bank at the time they were seized.

This means that the "painters" could only be customers, and could only be among those customers who walked in during the two minutes between disabling the cameras and the entry of the "painters." Look at the number of customers already in the bank before the cameras went out -- a lot. Not many came in during those 2 minutes, even if some left during those 2 minutes. At most, let's say that 12 people came in during those 2 minutes, including the "painters."

Then get physical descriptions of the "painters'" height, weight, sex, etc., from all the hostages. Compare those with the physical details of the 12 people. Of the 12 people, how many match each description? If one, the police have spotted a "painter" already. If 2 or 3 or 4, the police have a very small number of people to investigate further to expose which of that small group is a "painter."

Moreover, every customer has to have a reason for being there: either to deal with an existing account, or open a new one. But a person opening a new account would go to an employee to start the process. So the "painters" each had to have already established an individual account with that bank. When did those 12 people open their accounts? The police would look at the time each of the 12 first opened an account. More recent accounts, opened at about the same date, would indicate who the "painters" might be.

Now, why were each of the 12 at that downtown branch at that time, as opposed to a different branch or a different time? It must be, either they work nearby, or live nearby, or are running an errand where the route includes that branch.

What friend or relative saw them in person before they left to go to the branch? How did they get to the branch -- walking, or subway, or taxi? How were they planning to get to their next destination? Where did they plan to go after their errand at the branch was finished? Who was expecting to see them at that place? Did anyone who was expecting to see them later that day wonder what had happened to them, or call the police to ask whether they were among the hostages?

Recently opened accounts, near the date of other accounts, by people who neither live nor work near that branch, or have a plausible errand, who can't tell a plausible tale of how they got there or where they planned to go next, or who was expecting them: these are the prime suspects for "painters."

The police very swiftly will have a very good idea who the "painters" are. Investigate them in detail and they are exposed; then pressure them to reveal the identities of the other criminals.

This is what real police would do, but the movie, by showing the police pursuing a different, useless approach, leads the audience to think the "painter" masquerade would work. This movie operates on the old principle "the criminal plot looks brilliant because the police are made to act like idiots yet look intelligent."

2. Major moral blindness. 50 innocent citizens are terrorized, held hostage, assaulted, battered, for a day, a very significant crime, and yet at the end we are told that because nothing was stolen from the bank, the government and the police are just going to drop the whole affair. But what the criminals did to those people was a far more serious crime than any theft of bank property would have been. This movie passes-off that crime as if it were nothing, nothing at all. The terrorized hostages are pushed off the stage like so many plastic dolls who've served their role in the filmmakers' story. But those characters are human beings. The criminals, supposedly motivated by an idealistic desire to act against a Nazi profiteer, commit a horrific moral injustice on innocent people, whose rights and dignity they are blind to, in the pursuit of their own moral mission. This is a profound moral flaw in this film. The criminals are narcissists, so focused on their own desire for justice in their cause that they are blind to the injustice they inflict on others as they pursue their mission.

3. Unbelievable characters. A billionaire bank president anguished over his past exploitation of the Holocaust, but who is trying to hide his past, by hiring a real estate agent who has a side-line as a high-level "fixer" of rich people's problems, who is herself disgusted by his pro-Nazi past, yet takes his pay-off check anyway, and whose only attempt to "fix" the problem is a short and ineffective conversation with the criminal master-mind? A supposedly smart and honorable police hostage negotiator who is also the chief interrogator of the suspects, and who takes a diamond pay-off from the mastermind with a laugh, and who is completely blind to the serious crime of terrorism and hostage-taking of 50 civilians? None of these characters is believable.

This is a marvelous and touching movie, a work of philosophy really, and it does what it needs to do to be popular and effective. My comments are not really criticisms of it as an effective movie, and would probably make it a less effective movie, but a more interesting work taken as philosophy.

First, it is important and valuable because it teaches that to be a good person, you must be attentive to the feelings going on inside other people, and do what you can to make good people feel better. This is similar to what makes Jane Austen so appealing: the recognition that other people's feelings matter, and that it is a moral good for each of us to recognize that, to do nothing that gratuitously makes people feel worse, and to do things that make people feel better.

Second, by confining all the action to the little town, there is a distinct 1950s nostalgic feel to the whole movie. Everyone Phil encounters is a good person, or at least, a not-bad person, even if annoying in parts. The day he lives over and over is in a town full of celebration over a very antiquated event, a very simplified human environment. The movie would have been more interesting had he been in a more troubled, complex, modern environment.

Third, Phil's existence is in effect that of a very wealthy man. He has money to buy anything he wants, since he starts over each day with all of his expenses restored. He never has to fear bad health or worry about the future or fulfill any responsibility to anyone else. And he never ages. The one thing he can carry-over from day to day is learning and training. He puts that to use almost immediately, as he learns all about the different people in the town, and learns to anticipate what each person is going to do, or to suffer, at a particular point in the day. Then he figures out that he can learn skills as well as information, so he learns piano, ice sculpture, and who knows what else. The endlessly repeating day becomes an opportunity for Phil to embark on the mother of all self-improvement, self-education programs, completely funded by God or fate. I think that he would grow to appreciate this so much that he would not want real life to "restart."

Fourth, I think that Phil's own awareness of his growing knowledge and skills, and comparison with the fact that everyone else in town makes no progress at all, would produce a change in his attitude towards the townspeople, and towards his love-interest. According to several other sources, Phil relives the one day more than 3,652 times (ten years including 2 leap- years). Ten years, every morning he sees the same attractive young woman, and she never changes. In the early period, as he gets to know her, he will grow to love her, but will he really be so lastingly enamored of her that he spends ten years trying to become a person who can evoke her to love him? His dedication to winning her love is a part of the movie-imposed context, similar to the fundamental fact that the day repeats over and over. Somehow, it is just a given that he is driven to win her love, no matter how many days he has to repeat in order to do so.

Fifth, the movie's logic is that Phil earns the right to rejoin the normal world only by becoming a person who evokes in the heart of a good woman her sincere love. In the movie, she functions as a sort of proxy for God; if you earn her love, you have earned God's approval to rejoin the human world. This is a beautiful message and a very important one to make, but it raises the question: if she had not been in the town, could Phil ever have escaped? What if his world had not included anyone whose character was so good and sweet, that she or he functioned as a kind of proxy for God's judgment, because her or his feelings towards him were a proper moral judge of his character? And if we apply the lessons of the movie to our own lives -- which is what makes the movie important -- what if there is no person in our lives who is qualified to serve that role? If we live in a world of scoundrels, is there any way in which we can prove our worth? I would like to see a "Groundhog Day" that occurs to a young man in one of our drug-gang-ridden inner cities, or to an associate in a greedy law firm, to examine this problem.

Sixth, once Phil rejoins the normal world where each day is different, where we age, where the money we spend does not magically reappear in our pockets the next morning, etc., his ten-year sabbatical will have left him almost incapable of dealing with it. Given his detailed knowledge of everyone in the town, it seems that he would set himself up as the most insightful therapist the town had ever seen, with apparently supernatural insight into every person and issue, and that he would run for mayor, be elected in a landslide, and become a famous author -- like the real "Doctor Phil" of TV and publishing fame. All this success would be founded on the ten-years' education he had obtained, absolutely for free, in the space of just one day. Phil is really a very lucky fellow.

This is a fine episode in which a World War I British fighter pilot who took off from his air base (in France) in 1917 found himself in a cloud and then landed -- 42 years later, in 1959, at an American air force base. During his visit to the future, he learns how important it is that he go back and act bravely on that day in 1917.

Here are a few points that may interest history buffs. None are meant as criticisms of the episode, but are just for historical interest.

First, I found it jarring that the American air base was situated in France -- because in 1966, President DeGaulle expelled the US from all such bases when the US refused his demand that the US put them all under French control. Since 1966, unlike in Britain, there have been no US air bases in France. Thus when I was watching the episode, I thought that the air base where the pilot landed must be situated either in Britain or in the US, and I expected one of the American characters in the episode to say as much (as well as explain that the year was 1959). It seemed odd to me that no US character explained the change in location. But then I remembered: when this episode was filmed in 1959, the US still had its own air bases in France.

Second, early in the episode, the British pilot says that he thought he was landing back at his own air base -- whose name I didn't catch -- and the US air force colonel startles at the name. The episode makes nothing more of this, but I suspect that he recognized the name - - and that it was the old name back in the time of World War I for the air base that they were then at. Later in the episode, when the US colonel and the British pilot were together, I thought the colonel would say something along this line, but he did not. Perhaps the editors of the episode cut-out that bit.

Third, the timing of events -- the British pilot says the day is March 4, 1917. Technically, the timing is off by a year -- America did not actually declare war on Germany until April 6, 1917, and US forces did not start arriving in France until months later (the Lafayette Escadrille was earlier, in 1916, but it was a French unit of planes, flown by volunteers from America, which the British pilot would have known). The first American air combat squadron, the 94th, entered service in April, 1918. Technically, the British pilot should have said 1918, not 1917.

Fourth, the British pilot expresses just mild surprise that the US airplanes are so technically advanced -- reacting as if he were merely interested to learn of it, rather than that it contradicted anything he knew before. Of course, for the dramatic purposes of the episode, the writers would not have the pilot react as such a man really would react to seeing jet aircraft (with stupefaction) since the purpose of the episode is not wonder at technical advancement, but facing up to the consequences of cowardice and determining to be brave. But it is worth noting that while Americans in 1959 (and today) are accustomed to having the most advanced technology, in 1917 America was actually far behind Britain and France in aircraft design and production. The 94th, for example, flew French-made planes.

In the mid-1990s I followed the "Shakespeare authorship question." One of the "doubters" of the traditional "Man from Stratford" was one of the stars of this movie, Leslie Howard (Prof. Higgins).

One of the "authorship" arguments is how could a commoner from the country, in a society when the noble elite were so closed-off against such people, have known so much about the inner life of the noble class as to be able to present -- to an audience of nobles -- noble characters that convinced them that the characters were authentic.

In 1938's "Pygmalion" Prof. Henry Higgins takes a lower-class cockney girl, Eliza Doolittle, and transforms her into a young woman who can pass so convincingly as a member of the upper class that she can fool a ballroom full of real nobles at an embassy reception.

What Henry Higgins is doing is creating a fictional noblewoman whom real noblemen and women will accept as one of themselves.

Which is exactly what Shakespeare was doing: creating fictional noble characters whom, when presented to an audience of real nobles, would be accepted by those nobles as one of themselves.

And what was the most difficult problem Higgins faced? Stripping away from Eliza errors born of ignorance of how members of that class act in their private encounters: actions and words and behaviors erroneous for a person born and bred to a status of nobility.

There is a scene in which Higgins introduces Eliza to a social group of the upper class for the very first time. It is a tea afternoon hosted by his mother. It is soon apparent that while Eliza has learned vocabulary and diction, the subjects she introduces to speak about, and the facts of her life and relatives that she reports, expose her as not of the upper class. It is her errors that expose her.

Higgins thereupon embarks on a detailed program of teaching her the proper substance and content of what it is to be upper class. Watch Higgins as he teaches Eliza how to curtsy and dance without errors, as he orders the right hair-dressers and the right dress-makers and rents the right jewelry. He makes no errors that expose the fiction. He knows how to curtsy and dance and the hair and clothes and jewels because he was born to the class in which people curtsy and dance. This is the key point: he is able to do this only because he himself is a born member of that class. Only a born member of the class will have the innate, instinctive, detailed knowledge to identify every single moment when Eliza goes off-character and does or says something, or does or says it in a particular way, that will expose her as a false, fictional character, not noble, not even upper class.

This is what Shakespeare knew. Shakespeare presented dozens of noble major characters (and including minor characters, hundreds) to an audience of real nobles. He did, dozens and dozens of times, what Henry Higgins in Pygmalion did but once. And his noble characters had no betraying errors, were always accepted by nobles as authentic nobles. Not once did he present a noble character who rang false. Shakespeare never did this with lower-class characters; they are all caricatures. He had to have been born to the noble class in order to create fictional nobles whom real nobles would accept as real.

Writers who try to create fictional characters who are part of the same real-world social class or group as the intended readers of the novel, or audience members of the play, are acutely aware of the danger of ignorantly including in the character elements that make the character ring false, as not really being part of the intended class or group that comprises the readership or audience. They fear making errors such as did Eliza Doolittle in her tea with Henry Higgins' mother. Professors and others who have never attempted to create a fictional character who can pass as real in an elite milieu do not realize the difficulty and danger of humiliating failure in this effort.

The problem is particularly insurmountable when the real-world group of which the fictional character is supposed to be a part happens to be, in the real world, socially exclusive and closed-off to outsiders. In the world of Henry Higgins, the upper-class Higgins is able to conduct research among the lower-classes because the lower-classes are exposed, in public, in the streets. But a lower-class person could never do the reverse, and conduct research among the upper-classes, because the upper-classes are protected by buildings and servants. A lower-class person cannot get any proximity to them to observe them as they speak and behave, unless voluntarily admitted by an upper-class person, and even then that access will be limited by the boundaries set by the upper-class person who has given admittance.

A writer who presents -- to an audience of earls and dukes -- a private conversation between an earl and a duke, must be a writer who knows what things are NOT said and NOT done in such conversations, in order to present a conversation that convinces real earls and dukes. That is what it takes to pass-off an Eliza Doolittle to nobles as a noble herself -- as portrayed in the grand climatic ball.

Now when I watch the ball scene, and see Eliza enter the room, ascend the stairs, and convince real duchesses and nobles that she is, in fact, a Hungarian royal princess, under the escort and gaze of Henry Higgins, I feel I am seeing Shakespeare escorting and watching one of his own fictional nobles advance into the gaze and evaluation of real nobles, there to find acceptance by them as one of their own.

The same sort of simplifying/shallowing treatment of characters (and their moral character) that marred several of the 2007/2008 Jane Austen adaptations also mars this version of Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian Flyte in the book, and the 1980s miniseries, is charming, witty, and possessed of a certain spirit and response to life, as well as needy, but here he is just needy -- without any special qualities that would motivate someone to try to fulfill his needs. This isn't due to the shorter amount of screen-time available in a movie vs. a miniseries, because we get longer-than-needed scenes of Sebastian and Charles Ryder drinking and cavorting, time that could have been spent showing Sebastian being charming and imaginative.

Charles Ryder, in the book and the miniseries, is a man who isn't just a lower-middle-class fellow suddenly introduced to the upper-class; he is a man without a real emotional soul, who knows it and seeks to replace it by soaking-it-up from Sebastian. This tension between Sebastian and Charles makes the interaction between the two young men in the book and miniseries interesting and intriguing.

Here, Sebastian is attracted to Charles Ryder because Charles has a goal in life -- to paint -- and Sebastian has no idea of what to do with his own life. Sebastian's unhappiness is said to be due to his oppressive mother, yet we never see her oppress him, except for trying to get him to stop drinking, so basically we have a gay man frustrated by convention and family trying to seduce a heterosexual man. Sebastian gets Charles to pay attention to him by bringing Charles to Brideshead, sensing that Charles' real attraction is to the building, the art, the grounds. But Charles is really smitten with the beautiful and intriguing sister, Julia Flyte. The predictable happens, Sebastian is devastated: end of a friendship that never really was a friendship at all. None of this is as interesting, insightful, or thought-provoking about human nature as are the conflicts in the book and the miniseries.

A key change in the portrayal of Charles is the kind of art he does. In the book and miniseries, his success comes in paintings of great houses and buildings -- stonework, hard structures, man-made things -- not emotional subjects. In this film he gains fame painting jungle scenes, has spent two years in the South American jungles -- the lack of civilization being the essence of passion. The script could have developed the idea that Charles chose the jungle precisely because he was seeking to infuse emotion into the gap that is his own emotionless soul, but since here he has a reasonably emotional soul, this idea can't be developed.

Julia and her mother are the most interesting characters. First, the mother's very strong and strict version of Catholicism is presented as the problem that drove away her husband (father of Sebastian and Julia) and ruined her children's' lives, yet in this portrayal it is clear that she has not hypocritically chosen this form of religion as a means of imposing power on others, but that she genuinely believes the doctrines and principles are true and vital to life. Thus she is no villain. In fact, she deeply loves her son, and is really the only character in the film who strongly loves another person; everyone else is pretty much using the people they think they love, in order to fill certain emotional needs within themselves.

Second, as becomes clear at the end, Julia has imbibed the core doctrines of her mother's faith (but not the unforgiving strictness) and, as she experiences her father's death, has found them deeply comforting and essential to the core of her being. (Might the mother's death some years earlier, which is not shown in the film, had a similar effect on Julia?)

Julia is by far the most complex and interesting character -- and is wonderfully performed here -- because she genuinely feels the tension between these old religious feelings, and the modern world. As a great beauty who is also rich, and not very closely supervised, she has every freedom to forget religion and family and indulge herself; yet it is clear that she is hardly tempted to do so. It is only when Charles Ryder sees this in her, at the very end of the film, that he gets an inkling that the human character can have a lot more depth and complexity than he has previously imagined it could have.

One scene that particularly bothered me (spoiler coming) for being implausible is aboard an ocean liner, where Charles (with his wife) has taken a salon to display his paintings (a wine- and-cheese art reception, basically), and a large group of wealthy art patrons are there, many interested in buying. Charles sees his old love, Julia, apparently fleeing the salon upon discovering that the artist is Charles, and he leaves the reception, follows Julia who leads him to her stateroom, where they make love and stay into the very late hours. I could accept that he might abandon his own reception, had only his dealer and not his wife been there -- but the wife was there. We have not been given any reason to think that the wife deserves to be abandoned, or that she might welcome being abandoned. Surely she would come looking for him, and would be very hurt by his disappearance. For Charles to abandon her, and for Julia to go along with his abandoning her, not only was very bad behavior reflecting on both of them, it was also totally implausible. The screenwriter could easily have managed it that Charles' wife was not at the reception (sick in her cabin perhaps, or not on the ship at all), or that Charles would quickly arrange a second rendezvous with Julia, then go back to the reception, and then carry-out the second clandestine meeting.

This episode is special because of the character of Joe Christie, Monk's last police partner before Monk's wife's death, and the admiration Christie has for Monk despite the fact that Monk, Stottlemeyer, and the others came to think that Christie was a "bad" cop, getting Christie fired, so that Christie ends up a security guard in the department store that is the setting for this episode. I am new to the Monk show this year (2008) so I did not see this episode "in order," but it seems to me that Christie should have been a recurring character. The way the actor plays him is very warm and affecting and you get the sense that he might well be intended to re-appear in later episodes -- but he does not. However, the actor got a regular part on another series (Veronica Mars) that same year, so perhaps what happened is that he had to choose between series and chose the Mars series.

Hickson's Miss Marple has always struck me as very authentic, and this adaptation captures the tone and feel of the book very well, cutting-out some of the complexities (Marina Gregg's first husband, events concerning the butler) that burdened the book with unhelpful and implausible complexities.

But one key observation in the book, about the flaw in Heather Badcock's nature that led to her death, made this book my favorite Christie, and it ought not to have been cut.

In Miss Marple's first meeting with her, Badcock's conversation causes Miss Marple to recognize a similarity between Badcock and an old acquaintance of Miss Marple, Alison Wilde. At the end of the book, Miss Marple explains (SPOILER coming):

'Quite so,' said Miss Marple, '(Marina Gregg) never knew (who gave her the German Measles that crippled her baby) until one afternoon here when a perfectly strange woman came up those stairs and told her the fact - told her, what was more - with a great deal of pleasure! With an air of being proud of what she'd done! She thought she'd been resourceful and brave and shown a lot of spirit in getting up from her bed, covering her face with make-up, and going along to meet the actress on whom she had such a crush and obtaining her autograph. It's a thing she has boasted of all through her life. Heather Badcock meant no harm. She never did mean harm but there is no doubt that people like Heather Badcock (and like my old friend Alison Wilde), are capable of doing a lot of harm because they lack not kindness, they have kindness - but any real consideration for the way their actions may affect other people. She thought always of what an action meant to her, never sparing a thought to what it might mean to somebody else.'

The whole book thus is driven not by greed for money, or lust, or fear of exposure, or blackmail -- the typical drivers of murder mysteries -- but by the devastating effects of self- centered thoughtlessness by a person who never meant anyone any harm. It is a book with a moral message: that it is incumbent on all of us not merely to be free of any overt desire to do harm to another person, but to take thought as to how our plans and proposed actions may nevertheless hurt others.

This aspect of The Mirror Cracked raises it above all the other Christie novels that I've read (and I've by no means read all that many) by giving it a subtlety that others do not have. It is a shame that Miss Marple does not say in this adaptation the lines she says in the book that make this theme clear.

As a mystery, the adaptation has a fundamental flaw: in reality, the police would have focused on Marina Gregg's drink, from the moment she gave it to Heather all the way back to the waitress's tray and to the bar before that, examining in detail everyone who was near it, and the police would almost certainly have ascertained within an hour or two after the party that only Marina could have poisoned it. Who could have not only gotten access to the drug, but known it was poisonous, and gotten it into Marina's own glass? Members of the household might know about the drug and might have gotten a dose in advance, but when might they get access to the glass during the party and yet escape detection? Outsiders would not know about the drug. Moreover, the police would certainly have questioned the waitress and cleared-up the bit about who jogged Badcock's arm.

This adaptation thus depends entirely on the trick of making us not notice the fact that the police have failed to do what any police department would have done immediately. What makes Christie's technique particularly clever is that she gives us a police detective (Craddock) who is so calm, thoughtful, and intelligent, and yet burdened with a nasty fault-finding boss who surely will spot any incompetence by Craddock, we naturally assume that the police, as we see them in the story, are doing as competent a job as any police force could do -- when in fact the police (Craddock especially) are quite incompetent. And the last touch, by the casting director, is to cast an actor whom most women viewers will find especially attractive, so that they are even more inclined to want to believe that he is doing everything that a competent police detective would do.

I was very impressed by this film when it was broadcast in the 1980s, and have watched it many times since buying it on DVD. Robert Hardy's portrayal of Churchill is masterful, passionate, convincing, and authentic.

But what especially makes this one of the best-ever historical dramatizations are the performances of the other key actors: the men who portray Churchill's political colleagues and competitors. Edward Woodward, portraying Samuel Hoare, presents such a mixture of personal ambition, policy idealism, and jealousy that you feel you are experiencing a real human being, not a caricature that is simply performing a role to make a dramatic conflict with the main character.

The same is true of the other key roles. Peter Barkworth as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin presents a calculating but tactful politician. Eric Porter as Neville Chamberlain is a compelling performance of a man so focused on the pursuit of peace and economic well- being at home that he deceives himself as to Hitler and the Nazis' true character.

Without exception, there are no stereotypes, no simplistic characters, presented here. All of Churchill's opponents are good men, dedicated to the peace and prosperity of the British people, whose flaw is that they are so dedicated to that cause that they deceive themselves regarding the character of Hitler.

Indeed, in many ways, after researching the history of the subjects covered, I grew to like Churchill's opponents almost as much as I like Churchill. A major sequence in this film focuses on India – where the supposed "villain," Samuel Hoare, is working overtime to achieve a reform bill for India that gives greater freedom and self-government to the Indian people, in part by removing a restrictive trade law that gave Manchester cotton-men a guaranteed market in India. The testimony Hoare suppressed – and that Churchill is so keen to expose – was in favor of perpetuating protectionism that raised the prices paid by poor Indians. This film ignores this, because it reveals Churchill to be a reactionary anti-free- trade protectionist on this issue. The India bill that Churchill opposed, and that Hoare, Baldwin, and Ramsey Macdonald (also one of the Prime Ministers portrayed) supported was a visionary bill that did honor to the British people, and it has been forgotten only because World War II, and the subsequent Indian independence movement, have buried it under the weight of more significant history. Then later, Hoare becomes one of those who realizes the true character of Hitler, and it is he, not Churchill, who forces Chamberlain to act after the Nazi invasion of Poland. If I were the ghost of Sir Samuel Hoare, I would find this film to be a great vindication.

Churchill as presented here – and, I think, in real life – was a feeling, but not a calculating, man. Again and again in this film, Churchill due to his good nature is tricked by the deceits of his opponents, to the point that he comes across almost as unintelligent. As Stanley Baldwin puts it at a key point in this film, if Britain went to war, Churchill would be the best choice for Wartime Prime Minister, but in peace, never. There is a fair amount of Churchill idolatry on the conservative side of the American political spectrum, which ought to be tempered with the recognition that a rational and calculating mind is usually what is needed to run a government.

In 1940, after the disaster at Dunkirk, a trio of journalists writing under the pen-name Cato produced a short book, "Guilty Men," that blamed Chamberlain, Baldwin, Hoare, and others for misjudgments and self-interest that led to the "appeasement" policy. The book was hugely popular and has colored the public and academic-historical understanding of the "Wilderness Years" ever since. This film follows the same line, as does the 2007 book "Troublesome Young Men" by Lynne Olson. But as reviewer Andrew Stuttaford wrote in the New York Sun, this view "spared the rest of the British people the embarrassment of asking themselves what exactly they had been doing while the threat from the Third Reich grew. It was, after all, a period in which Britons in their millions had not only participated in 1935's unofficial 'Peace Ballot' (collective security, 'effective' sanctions, you know how it goes), but had also, after three more years of Hitler, taken to the streets to celebrate the deal Chamberlain cut at Munich." And as Evan Thomas wrote in Newsweek (23 June 2008), Franklin Roosevelt's response to Chamberlain's Munich deal was a telegram to Chamberlain saying "good man," and FDR wrote the US ambassador to Italy "I am not a bit upset over the final result."

The lesson of this film is that many of us, when we set out on a career and identify goals that we want to achieve to make great reputations for ourselves, have a tendency to see the other people we encounter in life as having personalities and motivations that will facilitate our getting what we want. As presented here, Baldwin wanted peace and prosperity for Britain, and so he seized on the idea that while Hitler was warlike, Hitler wanted war only with the Soviets, not with the West, so Britain need not fear. His successor, Chamberlain, also wanted peace and prosperity, and knew that he would be thwarted if Hitler really was all-out for war; so he saw Hitler as also being a man who wanted peace and prosperity. Both men gambled on Hitler, and Germany, being a leader and nation that would, due to their own interests and preferences, act in ways that would make it possible for Baldwin and Chamberlain to achieve their own ends. The lesson here for us today is to separate-out from our assessments of foreign leaders the way we hope those leaders are if we are to achieve our own goals.

One of the essentially unique and appealing aspects of Jane Austen is that the hallmark of a good person is constant awareness of the feelings others are experiencing, and the desire never to cause those feelings to be painful or embarrassing. Part I of this new "Sense and Sensibility" fails to capture this important quality: there are several instances in which each of the "good" characters are profoundly insensitive to the feelings they are triggering in others. This version doesn't realize that in Austen, good manners have moral significance, because they protect feelings. Part II is better, and avoids this problem.

The first problematic moment in Part I is Edward Ferrars' abortive "non-proposal" scene with Elinor. In this scene, Edward clearly creates a moment that he must know will cause Elinor to feel she is about to receive a proposal -- and yet he disappoints her. The key error is that Margaret is in the room when he enters, and she scoots out when it appears he has come to propose. The fact that Edward lets her leave without stopping her is what ruins it: by so doing he allows not only Elinor, but also Margaret, to think a proposal is coming. By letting Margaret think this, it is inevitable that Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood will know. Thus Edward has compounded his error by making it impossible for Elinor to decide to keep the entire encounter a secret. It is inevitable that his rejection of her will be known to her mother and sisters, thereby aggravating her discomfort.

In the book there is no such scene at all, and in the 1995 film the analogous scene occurs as Edward approaches Elinor in the stable, where she is saying good-bye to a favorite horse. In that scene, just at the moment where he might be expected to indicate he is about to propose, he instead raises the subject of his education in Plymouth -- baffling, but very clearly not the beginning of a proposal.

The second is the loss of an opportunity to show that Marianne is sensitive to the feelings of Elinor. This is done in the 1995 film at the dinner at the Middletons, in which Sir John and his mother-in-law are teasing Elinor over having a beau whose name begins with F. In the film Marianne is acutely sensitive to Elinor's discomfort, and defuses the situation by abruptly offering to play music. This scene has the slenderest foundation in the book, a mere line or two in chapter 7, but it works well in the 1995 film. The Marianne in this version never shows such concern, nor demonstrates an appropriate and mature way of protecting Elinor's feelings, as does the Marianne in the 1995 film.

The third, and by far the worst, incident, is where the Dashwoods are at their cottage and Col. Brandon is seen coming up to the house. Marianne jumps up, drags Margaret out, and goes for a long walk, leaving Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood to cover for her. We are shown Col. Brandon sitting for what appears to be hours, waiting for Marianne to return, while Elinor and Mrs. Dashwood presumably tell white lies about her absence. Brandon is thus subjected to embarrassment and disrespect, as it must be very clear to him that he is being snubbed, and the other women are all dragged into aiding this. Eventually Brandon gives up and leaves. We might expect that on Marianne's return, Elinor would reprove her -- as, in Jane Austen's novel "Emma," Mr. Knightly reproves Emma for her insult to Miss Bates during the picnic on Box Hill. But in this version, Marianne's twisted ankle, and the appearance of Willoughby, are tacked onto the end of her overland excursion to avoid Brandon, so that Marianne re-enters the cottage in Willoughby's arms, and all the focus is on the new romantic young man. Marianne's misconduct to Brandon never gets reproved by Elinor or by Mrs. Dashwood, nor do either Elinor or Mrs. Dashwood complain that Marianne has not only treated Brandon badly, but also themselves, by putting them in a position where they had to pretend, falsely, that her absence was merely a coincidence.

Finally, as regards the character of Edward, the version presented here (excepting the "non- proposal" scene discussed above) is pretty much the character Austen wrote; but I have to say, that the character as presented in the 1995 film is far superior to the one in the book and in this version. In the 1995 film, from his very first entrance, Edward is acutely aware that the Dashwood girls have lost their father and must be grieving; and he is also aware of his sister's grasping, insensitive character, and he does what he can to make amends for it, by such actions (which are not in the book) as declining to take a room that is one of the girls', and by helping to restore the spirits of Margaret.

In favor of this version, the casting, the acting, and the production values are all excellent. The people are very believable. The problem is that the good people are not nearly as admirable as the people Austen created. Judging from Part I only, this version takes characters who are genuinely concerned for the feelings of others, and reduces them to people who pretty much just care for themselves, with an overlay of thinking that good manners must be performed because, well, that is the done thing.

In Part II, the characters are consistent with the way Austen wrote them, but several key scenes are cut and the feel is a bit rushed. The proposal scene at the end is very well done. Overall I recommend it but this version doesn't present the characters with the richness Austen offers.

With the title "The Hustler," we expect a character study of Paul Newman's pool hustler Eddie Felson. But it is also a character study of Sara (Piper Laurie); of Bert (George C. Scott); and of Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Of the four, Sara is the most profound.

The first step comes after Eddie has lost to Fats. Eddie has great talent, but Bert tells him that Fats has more character -- and character is vital. It is interesting that Bert, a brutal, greedy, immoral man, has this insight into human nature -- in movies the greedy men usually aren't the ones who recognize such things. But Bert doesn't see that buried inside, Eddie has character that just needs to be awakened.

Then Eddie meets Sara (Piper Laurie). He talks about the beauty of the game, and the quality of talent -- it is clear that he loves and respects excellence, and loves and respects the game, the way an artist does. Sara sees that Eddie is not just a hustler -- not just a man who uses his talent to take money from others. In fact deep down he isn't really a hustler, he is a man who hustles in order to get the money to keep on doing his art, to try to be the best at his art. At no time in the movie does Eddie show any interest in extravagances -- he doesn't even really mind living out of a bus station locker. In this, "The Hustler" is similar to another of my favorite films, "Babette's Feast." Both movies focus on a very talented person seeking the opportunity to do his or her very best.

Sara is a very sad woman. She has a limp, which she explains as the result of a car crash, and says her source of money (she doesn't work) is regular payments from an ex-lover. But eventually she reveals that her limp came from childhood polio, and her payments come from her father (who, contrary to another commenter, isn't dead) who abandoned her and her mother. Her father's rejection of her, and her polio-withered leg, have meant that from an early age she has felt unattractive to men, a feeling that has only been reinforced by a succession of men she mentions who always end up leaving her. She sees Eddie as her last chance. She loves him for the character she sees in him, and sets out to awaken it.

But Eddie, needing a financial backer to get another shot at Fats, partners with Bert, who says they'll have to go on the road. When Eddie tells Sara over dinner at a fine restaurant, she sees that he is going to slip away from her like all the other men have; but Eddie doesn't want to lose her, so he decides that she should come with him and Bert. Bert and Sara, meeting, instantly sense that they are in a battle over Eddie: Bert, who wants to control Eddie, and Sara, who wants to free him to focus on the art and talent he has. Sara exposes Bert as a man who is so jealous of people with real talent -- talent Bert hasn't got -- that he wants to exploit and destroy those who do have the talent. This reveals the source of Bert's twisted character: bitterness over the talent he wishes he had, but does not.

Ultimately, Sara decides to sacrifice herself in order to expose, for Eddie, the evil that is at the heart of Bert's character, and thus free Eddie from Bert and trigger Eddie's true character to grow. At the cost of her own life, she succeeds. I doubt whether Eddie was really so significant a person to justify Sara sacrificing herself; she was the more insightful, altruistic, loving person. But she devalued herself, due to the careless and selfish treatment of her by other men, including Eddie; she never had anyone come into her life to tell her they recognized these good things in her. Her sacrifice causes Eddie to realize these things about her, and the tragedy is that it is too late to tell her he sees.

With this sacrifice, Eddie's character finally develops into what it can and should be. He goes back to Fats's regular pool hall, challenges him, and quickly beats him. But Bert is there, and Bert demands a cut of Eddie's winnings. Eddie refuses, and Bert signals that some of the other men in the pool hall will beat him up if Eddie doesn't pay.

And here is where we learn something about Fats. Fats just sits in his usual spot when Bert delivers this threat, and he advises Eddie that he'd better pay. And now we know that Fats is a man who surrendered to Bert. Fats's regular pool hall is controlled by Bert, some of the men in it are enforcers in Bert's employ, and Fats is the talent who attracts people to the hall. That's why Fats shows up every night at 8 PM, regularly. It's part of the arrangement he has fallen into with Bert. Bert is hoping that Eddie will take Fats' place, and keep the business going for another decade or two. And it is to help Eddie escape this kind of fate that Sara sacrificed herself.

Eddie faces down Bert, and leaves. He and Fats acknowledge each other's talent as Eddie leaves. Sara's sacrifice has been successful. Eddie will be his own man, not a tool of a greedy soulless man like Bert.

And this is why "The Hustler" is really about Piper Laurie's Sara: a good woman dealt an unfair hand by life, trying to do some good in the world by causing a man to become a better man -- and she succeeds.

I have the 10th Anniversary DVD edition with Myst, Riven, and Exile, and just played Exile on my intel core duo mac (Myst and Riven would not play). Here's how I did it:

1. On your internal hard drive, within the Applications folder, created a new folder, "Exile"

2. Insert DVD of Exile

3. Open DVD window and manually copy the "M3Data" folder into the Exile folder, and then copy the English folder (or if you want a different language, copy that), and then copy all the other files (except the foreign-language folders you do not need, and DirectX for PC) into the Exile folder you made.

4. If you play Exile as-is, the sound will be choppy. This is because you are running two processors ("core duo"). You can fix the sound problem by turning off one processor. How? Log on to developer.apple.com, and look around for downloads -- the one you want is "CHUD tools" where CHUD is an acronym for Computer Hardware Understanding Development. Download it, then follow the instructions to install it on your hard drive. It includes a number of programs. The one you care about is "processor." When installed you can access it by going to the "apple," and clicking "system preferences" -- it shows up as a green-edged square at the end of the "hardware" items. When it gives you the option to put a "processor" icon in the icon bar, do so -- a gray square will show up, with a 2 in a circle, next to your icons for airport, bluetooth, etc. To turn off a processor, just click on this and choose the option for 1 processor. The 2 in a circle in the icon goes away. You are now running on one processor. You should now be able to play the game fine. When you're done, and exit the game, if you want to run on two processors again, just click on the gray square icon and choose 2 processors.

Now, as to some possible "glitches" you may encounter, see below.

5. You may have been tempted to try to get another Myst game (Myst II Riven) to run by doing for it the kind of process I just described for Exile (copying files from the Riven DVD to a new Riven folder on your hard drive). If you did this, Riven still won't work, and on top of that, it will screw up the sound and other elements of Exile. Drag your new Riven folder to the trash and your Exile experience should work fine.

6. While you are playing Exile, you may find that suddenly the screen blacks out, as if you had triggered a screensaver "hot corner." Guess what -- you did. Underneath the Exile game and its cursor, the computer apparently has an image of the "real," arrow cursor, and it is not always "under" the game "hand" cursor. Sometimes as you are moving the game's "hand" cursor, this invisible (to you) "real" cursor hits a corner of the screen. If you have enabled one or more "hot corners" for your screensaver, this will trigger your screensaver to come on -- blacking out your game screen. You will need to save the game, exit, and change your screensaver preferences to disable all "hot corners."

7. The invisible "real" cursor also, apparently, can sweep over the gray "processor" icon square and, unbeknownst to you, re-activate the second processor. You won't have a clue that this happened, except that suddenly you start experiencing sound problems. Specifically, you lose the actors' voices and certain sound effects such as doors opening and closing, and the sounds of being on various high-speed rides. If you save game, exit, and decide to do other things with your computer, and go to the gray icon box to turn-on both processors, you are surprised to see that both are already active! It is a surprise because the little 2 in a circle is not on the icon, yet when you click on the icon, the check-mark indicates that you have 2 processors running. That is the first time you realize that the sound problems you started experiencing during game play probably were because of inadvertently re-activating the second processor. I don't know why the 2 in the circle didn't pop up when the second processor was activated; perhaps the program for the icon is written in such a way that because the game screen was covering the icon, the 2 in the circle would not be triggered to appear.

8. You need the DVD in the drive to play the game, and it gets hot. I don't know if the heat can cause glitches.

REVIEW: the graphics on the big mac screen are awesome! This is a great game for its immersive 3D full-pan environment, sound, music, and the acting of Brad Dourif as Saavedro.

Although this episode is titled "feud," it really is about little Wednesday and her first beau, and features one of the cutest sequences I've seen in TV or movies.

The story, in brief: prominent socialite Abigail Addams is in a feud with the Gomez Addams branch of the family, and is threatening to sue Gomez for his millions. Meanwhile, little Wednesday has met a boy her age, Robespierre Courtney, and wants him to be her boyfriend. The boy's mother, Mrs. Courtney, a social climber who knows nothing of the Abigail-Gomez feud, thinks that Wednesday is Abigail's granddaughter, and is eager to have tea with the Addams family, expecting to meet Abigail. When the Addams family invites Robespierre and parents to tea so that Wednesday can play with Robespierre, she eagerly accepts.

Then comes the best part of the episode, as each member of the Addams family, in the morning before the scheduled tea with the Courtneys, takes turns coaching Wednesday in how to catch Robespierre's heart. First we see little Wednesday fitted out in her own miniature version of Morticia's slinky black dress, with tendrils for feet, and her mother Morticia tells Wednesday that to catch Robespierre, Wednesday must learn how to curtsy. "In this dress??" responds Wednesday, for of course, curtsying is impossible in the tight dress. "I see your point," says Morticia, who then says, "if that doesn't work, try this," and gives Wednesday a bear-trap. Next, Wednesday is with her father Gomez, who dances the tango with her. The image of suave John Astin dancing the tango with this little girl, as his daughter, to teach her to dance, is priceless. Then he says, "if that doesn't work, try this," and gives her a big coiled bull-whip. Loaded down with the trap and the bull-whip, Wednesday shuffles off in the Morticia dress, dutifully going to the next family member for advice. After sequences with Uncle Fester and Grandmama that leave her loaded down with even more odd items, she goes to Lurch and asks him if he has any advice -- to which Lurch offers only his patented groan, Urrrg. Wednesday drops everything and hugs him, in gratitude that he hasn't given her yet another item to lug around.

Then Robespierre and his parents arrive, and after Wednesday's startling greeting the two children go off to play while the adult Addamses and Courtneys socialize, with the usual disastrous (for the Courtneys) results. The Addamses think that the Courtneys are spies for Abigail in connection with the feud, and suddenly become very suspicious of the Courtneys. The Courtneys, discovering that they are not going to meet Abigail, leave, and Wednesday reports that she has lost interest in Robespierre, because he refused to play with Pugsley's octopus.

This episode is special for the prominent role given to Wedneday, who must be only about 8 years old, and the marvelously serious way the actress (Lisa Loring) carries it off, and the love shown her by all the other members of the Addams family as they give her tips on how to win a man. In the DVD copies of the show, in commentary to a different episode ("Morticia, the Matchmaker," DVD volume 1, disk 2, side A), Lisa Loring talks about wearing her child-size "Morticia dress" and other memories of this episode. A real treat.

I saw Ragtime back in the early 80s and it made a powerful impression. But seeing it again some 25 years later reveals a few weaknesses.

The sequences with Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit are as effective as ever, but other sequences don't hold up as well. For example, Coalhouse Walker is introduced as a poor movie-theater pianist who gets a job as a member of a band, which gives him enough income to marry the woman whom he got pregnant. Yet in short order, he has a fancy car, and then after his humiliation by the bigoted Irish firemen, suddenly he has a gang of violent henchmen, and then he has an expensive supply of rifles, pistols, and dynamite. His gang and his armaments just appear; in reality there is no way a mere band piano player, however talented, would have these. And the scenario for his wife's fatal injury -- yelling in the midst of a presidential campaign crowd to get the vice-President's attention -- isn't convincing; police officers wouldn't fatally beat a slightly- built, well-dressed African-American woman just because she was shouting in the midst of a noisy crowd gathered around a campaigning politician. The film could easily have found a more plausible scenario in which police would over-react and hurt her fatally. Thus, the provocation that leads Coalhouse to conduct his reign of terror -- horse manure on his car, followed by official indifference, followed by his wife being fatally injured by police -- isn't the kind of action that would motivate a gang to unite around him. It is not all that hard to imagine a more convincing set-up for Coalhouse's rampage, so it is puzzling why the film seems to go out of its way to develop an implausible set-up. The extraordinary performance by Rollins in the role does a lot to correct this implausibility, but it is tantalizing to think of just how powerful a performance it could have been had the story been stronger.

One strength of the film is that all of the characters are morally complex. Tateh, the immigrant who becomes a movie director, is outraged when he catches his wife cheating on him, but later, he is quite willing to romance a woman whom he knows is married and tempt her to leave her husband. The 'father' character is priggish and formal, yet shows himself the most truly courageous and idealistic person in the film.The 'mother' character is presented as the most moral person, caring for the abandoned baby and his mother despite their being African-American (a big issue for most whites in 1906) -- positions which her husband always supports, although after initial hesitation -- yet she leaves him without a qualm to go off with the movie director.

One minor factual tid-bit for those who are interested: in the film, Evelyn Nesbit's husband Thaw is outraged because it is thought that a nude statue of the Greek goddess Diana the hunter ("Diana of the Tower") that adorns the top of Madison Square Garden is Evelyn's body as the model; Thaw finds it humiliating that all of New York can gawk at his wife's nakedness. While this works very well as drama, sadly, factually is it wrong. Nesbit was born in 1884 and never came to New York until 1901. The first version of the statue (18 feet high) went up on the top of the tower in 1891, but was too large; a second version, more lithe and fleet (13 feet high), went up in 1893. Evelyn was 7 when the first version went up, 9 when the second, and when she arrived in New York the second version had already been up for 8 years. The model for the body was Julia 'Dudie" Baird, a well-known artist model born in 1872 -- 12 years older than Nesbit. The model for the face was a different woman, Davida, also active in New York modeling circles, who was the sculptor's mistress.

Other commenters here have covered just about all other issues, but one not covered concerns basic plot implausibilities which I will summarize here, concerning the ending sequences of the film.

First, just as the aunt is about to tell the heroine who the mastermind is, the aunt is shot dead. OK, this is standard film fare: kill the witness who is about to expose the real bad guy. We wonder: "who did the shooting?" Well, it turns out, it is the very man the aunt was about to expose. Who, of course, has just exposed himself as a villain, by stepping forth and revealing himself as the shooter. But that contradicts the whole motivation for the shooting, and, indeed, he immediately confesses to the heroine anyway, and then kidnaps her. The squire already knows, before he shoots, that the lawman has escaped, so he knows that his own identity as the mastermind is going to be known to the authorities, so there is no need to silence the aunt. Instead, the squire should leave the aunt alive and tell the heroine that unless the heroine cooperates, the squire will order his henchmen to kill the aunt. That threat would serve to keep the heroine submissive to him as he kidnaps her.

Second, the squire and the kidnapped heroine escape the inn in his carriage, the cut-throat crew arriving just as they slip off, and then a few minutes later a troop of soldiers led by the lawman arrive at the inn to capture the cut-throats. Given the barren coast, the few and desolate roads, and the short time between the departure of the squire from the inn and the arrival of the soldiers at the inn, the soldiers would almost certainly have encountered the squire, or at least seen his carriage, before they got to the inn.

Third, earlier, when the squire was leaving his own house, he would not have told his staff honestly where he was going (to the south coast port to take ship for France), since that would merely provide the means for the law to track him down. He would have lied to his staff and said he was going north, or inland, or something else.

Fourth, when the squire arrives at port to take the ship to go to France, he could not have had an advance reservation, since he had only just decided to leave an hour or so before, and there was no way to get word to the ship in advance. Thus his arrival and request for a room would be quite unexpected to the ship captain, yet there is no great surprise shown.

Fifth, the ship is, of course, a sailing ship, and its departure from the pier would be a very slow matter, and would almost certainly await daylight. And even if it got underway before the good guys arrived, they could have sent a fast smaller ship to catch it and order it to return. The attempt to manufacture tension at the end thus fails; it is like saying: will they catch that turtle that is crawling off?

The tension at the end should have been entirely different: (a) the squire, after having left his own house to make his escape, should have shot his own coachman on a desolate stretch of road, before arriving at the Inn (to remove the coachman as a witness to where the squire really would be going), (b) the squire, with the kidnapped heroine, should have arrived quietly in the port, left his carriage, slipped quietly aboard the ship, bribed the captain to keep silent, and been in hiding; (c) the good guys, ignorant of where the squire went, should have been searching fruitlessly to find him until at last someone reported seeing the squire's abandoned carriage in the port; (d) this report should have been the news that brought the good guys to the port, where by some accident or an action by the kidnapped heroine, they find the squire, who could then ascend the mast and dramatically jump to his death as in the existing film. That kind of suspenseful ending would have been more plausible and more like a real Hitchcock film; the film as shot is not.