A Pocket Full of Rye (1985)

A great tape

When a rich man dies under very mysterious circumstances, Miss Marple (played by Joan Hickson) becomes interested. However, when she begins to really follow the details of what has happened, she quickly realizes that more murders are sure to follow. This is a very deep mystery, and only Jane Marple can find out what is really going on and why! [Color, released in 1985, with a running time of 2:33.]

Every once in a while, an actor comes along who not only plays the role of Sherlock Holmes, but actually redefines the role. Well, this has now happened with Agatha Christie's detective, Miss Marple! In 1984, veteran actress Joan Hickson (1906-98) was tapped to play Miss Marple, and the rest, as they say, is history.

This is a great tape, and a great small-screen adaptation of Agatha Christie's excellent book. If you are a fan of great mysteries, then this is for you. Heck, even if you just like high-quality British drama, then you will love this movie. I love this movie, and give it my highest recommendations!
January 29, 2006

A Nursery Rhyme Points to Murder!!

+++++

I watched this movie without reading the 1953 Dame Agatha Christie novel that it was based on. (Christie wrote twelve Miss Marple murder mysteries altogether.) I'm glad I did this! Why? Because it forced me to really watch the movie in order to try and deduce who the murderer was.

This movie begins with a wealthy person dying. The police, led by Detective Inspector Neele (Tom Wilkinson), are called in to investigate. Forensics determines that this person was poisoned and it is found that one of the victim's pockets had seed (later determined to be rye) in it. At this point, a nervous member of the estate that the dead person owned (called "Yew Tree Lodge") writes to Miss Marple (the late Joan Hickson) and tells her of the death. Miss Marple begins an unofficial investigation but not before two more suspicious deaths occur.

The major clue to these deaths, as Miss Marple determines, is a sixteen line children's nursery rhyme:

Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocketful of rye;
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish,
To put before the King?
The King was in the counting house,
Counting out his money;
The Queen was in the Parlor,
Eating bread and honey.
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
When down came a blackbird,
And bit her on the nose.

Eventually, a surprising accidental death occurs.

Who are the people that live at or are associated with this estate? They are as follows:

1. Rex Fotescue, a London financier and the estate's owner (Tim West)
2. Adele, Rex's young wife (Stacy Dorning)
3. Miss "Effie" Henderson, Rex's sister-in-law from his first marriage (Fabia Drake)
4. Vivian Dubois, Adele's "golf partner" (Martyne Stanbridge)
5. Percival Fortescue, Rex's son from his first marriage (Clive Merrison)
6. Jennifer, Percival's wife (Rachel Bell)
7. Lance Fortescue, another son of Rex from his first marriage (Peter Davison)
8. Pat, Lance's wife (Francis Low)
9. Mary Dove, housekeeper and supervisor to the staff working at Rex's estate (Selina Cadell)
10. Mrs. Crump, the estate's cook (Merelina Kendall)
11. Mr. Crump, the cook's husband (Frank Mills)
12. Gladys Martin, the estate's maid and Miss Marple's protégé (Annette Badland)

Joan Hickson (whom Agatha Christie herself wanted to play Miss Marple) captures the essence of the heroine super sleuth in her performance. (Hickson was 79 years old in this movie!)

The cinematography is visually stunning. All costumes are authentic looking. Also, the background music adds to each scene.

Finally, I have noticed in this Miss Marple series that the cassette containers have the wrong still pictures usually on the back of the container. For this movie's container, however, there is a wrong still picture on the front of the container. (This picture is from "Murder at the Vicarage," another good Miss Marple murder mystery.)

In conclusion, this is a fun movie even if you have read the novel it's based on!!

(1985; 100 min; made for TV; closed-captioned; British drama; full screen; color)

+++++
December 4, 2004

Sing a Song of Murder ...

Seemingly innocuous, English nursery rhymes often have a rather sinister origin; and noone knew this better than Agatha Christie, who repeatedly used them as a motif; most famously probably in 1939's "And Then There Were None" (a/k/a "Ten Little Indians"), where the murderer kills his victims, one by one, in the fashion of the "Ten Little Indians" ditty.

"A Pocket Full of Rye" is one of three Christie mysteries based on "Sing a Song of Sixpence;" the others are the short stories "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and "Sing a Song of Sixpence," contained in the collections "Three Blind Mice" and "The Witness For the Prosecution," respectively. The nursery rhyme describes, in coded language, the modus operandi of a feared pirate known as Blackbeard, terror of the high seas between 1716 and 1718, who lured men into his services by promises of lavish pay and rations of rum ("sixpence" and "rye"), and often approached merchant ships under cover of friendly colors, only to have his concealed crewmen ("blackbirds in a pie") emerge at the last moment and assault the other ship, which more often than not resulted in rich takings ("a dainty dish") for Blackbeard ("the king") and his men:

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing.
Now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

In Christie's mystery, it is the murderer himself who uses the nursery rhyme to play his ghastly game with the Fortescue family. Soon after ill-tempered, wealthy patriarch Rex Fortescue (Timothy West) has died in his office of a rare poison - and subsequently been found with rye in his pocket - his impossibly young and, shall we say, free-spirited widow Adele (Stacy Dorning) is likewise found dead, in the house's drawing room and after having had tea, which uncharacteristically included a serving of honey. (The nursing rhyme continues "the king was in his counting house counting out his money; the queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey.") But while Detective Inspector Neele (Tom Wilkinson), in one of the few mysteries not featuring Milchester C.I.D.'s Inspector Slack, is still searching for clues and the press is starting to speculate about black magic, Miss Marple instantly zeroes in on the nursery rhyme, and as instantly she is worried: For the ditty ends with the lines "The maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes, when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose" ... and the Fortescues' maid is none other than one of Miss Marple's proteges: impressionable, naive, clumsy and not very bright Gladys Martin (Annette Badland). Unfortunately Miss Marple arrives too late to protect her; and now, of course, the matter becomes personal - and she will not rest until she has found the murderer who, she feels, must be among the surviving members of the Fortescue household; particularly given that an actual pie containing dead and decayed blackbirds has made its appearance in the house a while earlier. Indeed, there are suspects aplenty, including everyone from Rex's unequal sons Percival (Clive Merrison) - heir to the Fortescue business - and Lance (Peter Davison) - recently returned from Africa-, their wives Jennifer (Rachel Bell) and Patricia (Frances Low), Rex's bible-quoting sister in law from his first marriage (Fabia Drake), Adele's shallow "golfing partner" Vivian Dubois (Martyn Stanbridge), the family's perfect housekeeper (or is she?) Miss Dove (Selina Cadell) ... and the as yet unknown heirs of Rex Fortescue's former business partner, who quarreled with him over the rights to a certain Blackbird Mine.

Originally airing on TV in the 1980s, the BBC's adaptations of Agatha Christie's twelve Miss Marple novels featured Joan Hickson in the title role; quickly establishing her as the quintessential Miss Marple even in the view of the grandmother (or rather, grand-aunt) of all village sleuths and "noticing kinds of persons"'s creator, Dame Agatha herself. (After seeing Hickson in an adaptation of her "Appointment With Death," as early as 1946 Christie reportedly sent her a note expressing the hope she would "play my dear Miss Marple.") Prior versions, partly involving rather high-octane casts, had seen as Miss Marple, inter alia, Angela Lansbury and Margaret Rutherford, but had been decidedly less faithful to Christie's books. While Lansbury holds her own fairly well when compared to the character's literary original in 1980's "Hollywood does Christie" version of "The Mirror Crack'd" (and that movie's ageing actresses' showdown featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Kim Novak is a delight to watch) the four movies starring Rutherford are only loosely based on Christie's books: Dame Margaret's Miss Marple, although itself likewise a splendid performance, has about as much to do with Agatha Christie's demure and seemingly scatterbrained village sleuth as Big Ben does with the English countryside, and of the scripts, only "Murder, She Said" is an adaptation of a Miss Marple mystery ("4:50 From Paddington"), whereas two of the others - "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" - are actually Hercule Poirot stories ("After the Funeral" and "Mrs. McGinty's Dead," respectively), and "Murder Ahoy" is based on a completely independent screenplay.

Like all entries in the BBC series produced with great faithfulness to the tone and atmosphere set by Christie's original, "A Pocket Full of Rye" first aired (in three installments) in 1985, a year before the BBC's adaptation of the first Miss Marple novel ("Murder at the Vicarage," 1930 - the first BBC production featuring St. Mary Mead's elderly spinster was 1984's "Body in the Library," based on the second Miss Marple novel, written 1942). As always, Miss Marple finds the solution while the police are still hot on the pursuit of the wrong suspect. And the murderer's motive? "Oh, it was greed ... one knows that, naturally ..."

Also recommended:
Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery (Agatha Christie Collection)
Agatha Christie: Five Complete Miss Marple Novels (Avenel Suspense Classics)
Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories
Marple Classic Mysteries (Caribbean Mystery/4:50 from Paddington/Moving Finger/Nemesis/At Bertram's Hotel/Murder at Vicarage/Sleeping Murder/They Do It with Mirrors/Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side)
Miss Marple - 3 Feature Length Mysteries (The Body in the Library / A Murder Is Announced / A Pocketful of Rye)
The Mirror Crack'd November 7, 2004

Aunt Jane does it again,

Outside of the two Miss Marple collection sets at this time are three videos that are more of a made for television series. This is one "A Pocketful of Rye" ASIN: B00004WG9D Rex Fortescue (Timothy West) is out of character as he arrives at is office. You immediately know something is wrong because this is England and Rex has ordered his tea much too early. Yep mean old nasty Rex is found dead. Thorough detectives have determined that there was some mysterious grain in his pocket. If you remember the nursery rime you can follow the story.

So how does Jane Marple (Joan Hickson) become involved? She trained the maid and is afraid for her safety. Naturally at several places in the mystery Miss Marple points out the obvious to Det. Sergeant Hay (Jon Glover) who realizes and corrects the error of not listening to her. There is only one repugnant scene where you have to watch Rex eat. Other than that it is a thoroughly enjoyable mystery.
August 25, 2001

Incorrect video packages

This is just to say that I have almost all of the Miss Marple videos and several have incorrect pictures on the jackets. For instance "A Pocket Full of Rye"... has a picture of a scene from "Murder At The Vicarage" with Joan Hickson and Paul Eddington. There are a couple of others also. I makes it a little confusing when you go to choose one to watch. Thank you. August 24, 2001

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