{"id":18114,"date":"2014-07-21T11:07:25","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T16:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/?p=18114"},"modified":"2023-11-14T22:54:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T04:54:33","slug":"evil-under-the-sun-poirot-comes-to-life-in-peter-ustinovs-1982-portrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/evil-under-the-sun-poirot-comes-to-life-in-peter-ustinovs-1982-portrayal\/","title":{"rendered":"“Evil Under the Sun” – Poirot Comes to Life in Peter Ustinov’s 1982 Portrayal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Agatha<\/a> \"\"A while back I wrote about the series of shows starring David Suchet as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot<\/a>. I said then that all of the actors in those shows portraying Christie’s characters “‘became’ the characters they portrayed….” I still believe that Suchet’s portrayal of the little Belgian detective (who was Agatha Christie’s most popular detective) is definitive, and I might say the “last word.”<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I \u00a0recently watched the 1982 version of \u00a0Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0in which Peter Ustinov played Poirot, and I must say\u00a0I thoroughly enjoyed the acting and the movie – I was quite pleasantly surprised. I guess I was especially surprised because I remembered having seen Ustinov’s Poirot in other movies (he played Poirot a total of six times between 1978 and 1986) and, although I remember enjoying the movies, I didn’t remember his Poirot as completely hitting the mark. Now I think he does a perfect job. Ustinov is able to give Hercule a certain (dare I say it!) normalcy of sorts, and also plays Hercule with a twinkle in his eye. I truly enjoyed him in this movie.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was something about this production – Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>– that caused me to see Ustinov’s Poirot in a different and better light. The story takes place in a fictional island off the coast of Albania. \u00a0The movie is set in a\u00a0beautiful location (it was actually filmed on location in Spain’s Majorca)\u00a0and has a high quality cast – Maggie Smith, James Mason, Roddy McDowall and Diana Rigg (among others) each performing splendidly in the idyllic setting of a hotel\/villa overlooking the sea.<\/p>\n

The film is filled with gorgeous costumes – beautiful colors surround the wonderful acting by this veteran cast. \u00a0It just leaps off the screen that the actors were having a good time together. To cap it all off, the use of Cole Porter songs as (mostly) background music was a brilliant stroke. The setting, the cast, the costumes, the music, the period, and of course Agatha Christie’s classic story beautifully told make for a great couple of hours of movie watching.<\/p>\n

P.S. Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun<\/em><\/strong> is available on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while back I wrote about the series of shows starring David Suchet as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. I said then that all of the actors in those shows portraying Christie’s characters “‘became’ the characters they portrayed….” I still believe that Suchet’s portrayal of the little Belgian detective (who was Agatha Christie’s most popular detective) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,18,19,24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-british-moviestv-shows","7":"category-movies","8":"category-moviestv-shows","9":"category-tv","10":"entry","11":"override"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pI0sr-4Ia","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18114"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41706,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18114\/revisions\/41706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}