Robert J. Maxwell I've been trying to figure out why Miss Marple's mysteries tend to be sluggish while Hercule Poirot's are more engaging. Of course, Poirot himself is a more interesting and quirky character, what with his vanity, his gastronomic delicacy, his mustache wax. Poor Miss Marple has only her knitting, and not much of that.That aside, it occurs to me that Miss Marple is more often a passive but keen observer, giving advice. She doesn't do much. And the mystery is dependent on history. With Poirot -- and even in some of Agatha Christie's stories in which there is no obvious protagonist -- the conundrum is not so much "why" but "how"? How, for instance, can an inaccessible house wind up with ten dead people in it and no murderer to be found anywhere? "Sleeping Murder" boasts some fetching scenery. It's talky and dull but at least the talk goes on in some beautiful English gardens. You have never seen so many flowers, or so little action taking place among them.A blond, fair newly married young woman from New Zealand runs across a vacant house in Devonshire and talks her husband into buying it, but she soon begins to have flashbacks involving the house as it was a generation ago -- a hidden door behind the wallpaper, buried steps leading to the sea, a dead body at the bottom of the stairs.It takes the entire movie to unravel all the narrative threads, which I won't bother to describe because they take the plot into the byzantine. The thing could have been written by Dickens in a wanton mood. People stroll around in those gardens, everyone seems to know or have heard of everyone else, each contributes a bit to the story, characters come and go, and when the Big Reveal appears at the climax it comes as a complete surprise to those who have been driven to a mad frenzy like me. Miss Marple explains everything to the young couple. When Miss Marple began to lay out the threads, my clock read 24 minutes past the hour. She was finished at 25 minutes past the hour. Don't miss that final minute.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU Here Agatha Christie nearly becomes Gothic. A young couple comes back to England and buys a house on a fancy from the wife. And it so happens it is the house where she lived when very young before being sent to New Zealand where she spent her whole life. But it is also the house where her stepmother was assassinated just before she left. She is having strange recollections that are rather disturbing. So she decides to find out about her past in spite of the advice given to her by several people, including Miss Marple that the past should not be meddled with. And sure enough that will cost one more life and the capture of a criminal (once again at the cost of some staging). This story is special because these old Tudor houses are known to be built on strange layouts due to the practice in the past to have secret corridors and secret hiding places for religious difficult times that lasted up to the end of the 18th century, if not even later. But no matter how hard Agatha Christie hints at such a possibility in this Hillside house she manages to keep us away from the secret passage to some all the more secret dungeon with or without skeletons. But a body there is for sure, even if we do not see it.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

francyndra What a film! Watching 'Sleeping Murder' scared me more than any other Miss Marple film, mainly due to the suspense. The version with Joan Hickson was much, much better than that with Geraldine McEwan, mainly because the director stuck to the plot and didn't add a silly romance between the protagonist and her aide to supposedly warm the hearts of the audience. I thought that the house used was just right, and the gradual tension brought about by new discoveries (some gruesome) added a thrill to the plot. The main actress came across as a genuine damsel in distress and her husband loyal and devoted. One of the few films to make me frightened.

Lechuguilla Mysteries of the past should be left alone; otherwise, they may awaken danger. Using that well-known idiom, Dame Agatha pens another whodunit, wherein a young married woman's infatuation with an old, stately English house translates into buried secrets and impending murder.Having already read Christie's novel and concluded that this story was not quite as good as some of her other works, I watched the BBC adaptation of "Sleeping Murder", not expecting a lot. The film, like the book, gets off to a slow, tedious start. The plot gets better as it plods along. Toward the end, Director John Davies injects some needed suspense. The screenplay is a bit talky. Acting is adequate. I especially like Joan Hickson as Jane Marple who delightfully meddles in the business of a newlywed couple, and who naturally is a step, or several steps, ahead of everyone else in solving the crime.The story is not dependent on majestic scenery or unusual visual perspective, so that cinematography is fairly unimportant. But sets are important here, and so the filmmakers have given adequate attention to production design and costumes. Overall, they have done a good job with a Christie story that is relatively weak, and thus rendered a film that is reasonably entertaining.