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Mord im Pfarrhaus
West Germany 1970
produced by Ulrich Kühn for ZDF
directed by Hans Quest
starring Inge Langen, Heinz Bennent, Edith Schneider, Paula Denk, Helga Anders, Paul Neuhaus, Willy Semmelrogge, Fritz Haneke, Ingrid Capelle, Clara Walbröhl, Christian Margulies, Herbert Mensching, Käte Jaenicke
play by Moie Charles, Barbara Toy, based on the novel The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, music by Raimund Rosenberger
Miss Marple
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Colonel Hampton is murdered in the vicarage, at the time the vicar
(Herbert Mensching) was called away on a bogus call. Now the Colonel was
not very well-liked in the community, not by the vicar or his wife
Griselda (Ingrid Capelle), not by his own wife Anne (Edith Schneider) or
daughter Virginia (Helga Anders), but least of all probably by curate
Hawes (Paul Neuhaus), whom he has (correctly, as it will turn out)
suspected of embezzling church money. When inspector Slack (Willy
Semmelrogge) arrives on the scene, he's confronted with not only one but
two confessions, one from the Colonel's wife Anne, the other by artist
Redding (Heinz Bennent), both of their motive being that they had an
affair with one another and needed the Colonel out of the way. However,
both their confessions are easily disproven, the former's because she
didn't carry a weapon when entering the vicarage around the time of the
murder, the latter's because he's quickly provided with a water-proof
alibi. So the investigations go on, and the curate gets more and more
nervous, so much so that he confesses to Redding that he has taken the
church money, and Redding persuades him to write a confession, but then
poisons him when he's only half way through, with the confession than
looking like Hawes is admitting to the murder. Enter Miss Marple (Inge
Langen), a middle-aged busybody, who just like that figures everything
out, including that Anne has killed her husband with a gun Redding had
hidden in the vicarage. Redding naturally threatens to kill Miss Marple,
and pretty much everyone else who arrives on the scene. Anne tries to
disarm him, and he shoots her in the struggle that ensues and is then
easily apprehended. A disappointingly dull adaptation of the
first ever Miss Marple novel by Agatha Christie, which is at
least partly due to the fact that the film isn't directly based on the
novel but on its stage version from 1949, written by Moie Charles and
Barbara Toy, as this TV movie comes across as incredibly stagey, being
confined to just one location, with nothing in terms of interesting
visuals or the like. And thus, also all the characters' appearances seem
unnatural and, well, staged - something you do get away with in theater,
but on film it's jarring and seems forced. And the film's not really
helped by the lack of real suspense, and actually the absence of an actual
lead - especially Miss Marple is only an uninteresting supporting
character most of the time who doesn't come across as very likeable,
actually. And Inge Langen, 46 at the time this was filmed, was quite
simply too young for the role and not able to give her character the
gravitas the script failed to give her. It's still interesting from an
obscurity point of view, but definitely less than good.
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