Clues from Novel to Screen in the Novel Agatha Christie’s
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Agatha Christie is regarded as the Queen of Crime all over the world. Agatha Christie’s novels are often related to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. In this story we can see an intelligent and famous investigator Hercule Poirot. Poirot is a French private who is world renown for solving some of the perplexing mysteries. Several film and television adaptations of Christie’s books have been made and several actors have been cast as Hercule Poirot. Starting in 1989, the series of Hercule Poirot produced a total of 70 episodes and its final production, the adaptation of Curtain, was broadcast on November 2013 (IMDB). Fans of the detective genre will agree…show more content…
He states that clues are not facts but rather rhetorical figures, and that they “are more often metonymies: associations by contiguity, for which the detective must furnish the missing term. The clue is, therefore, that particular element of the story in which the link between signifier and signified is altered” (146). By analysing how the nature of the clue changes when detective fiction is adapted to the screen, we could gain a better understanding of detective series and the techniques used in new adaptations of old detective classics. It is crucial that the adaptors find a way to visualize the clues that are hidden in the narrative, without giving them away. Clues connect the story of the investigation, “the present”, with the story of the crime, “the past”. Not only do clues have the structural function of providing a link between past and present, subject and fable or crime and investigation, they also have a narrative function since they contain an encrypted reference to the identity of the murderer. Clues should appear in many shapes and forms in detective fiction, especially in Christie’s work: footprints, a fragment of overheard dialogue or certain behaviour by one of the
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Agatha Christie is regarded as the Queen of Crime all over the world. Agatha Christie’s novels are often related to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. In this story we can see an intelligent and famous investigator Hercule Poirot. Poirot is a French private who is world renown for solving some of the perplexing mysteries. Several film and television adaptations of Christie’s books have been made and several actors have been cast as Hercule Poirot. Starting in 1989, the series of Hercule Poirot produced a total of 70 episodes and its final production, the adaptation of Curtain, was broadcast on November 2013 (IMDB). Fans of the detective genre will agree…show more content…
He states that clues are not facts but rather rhetorical figures, and that they “are more often metonymies: associations by contiguity, for which the detective must furnish the missing term. The clue is, therefore, that particular element of the story in which the link between signifier and signified is altered” (146). By analysing how the nature of the clue changes when detective fiction is adapted to the screen, we could gain a better understanding of detective series and the techniques used in new adaptations of old detective classics. It is crucial that the adaptors find a way to visualize the clues that are hidden in the narrative, without giving them away. Clues connect the story of the investigation, “the present”, with the story of the crime, “the past”. Not only do clues have the structural function of providing a link between past and present, subject and fable or crime and investigation, they also have a narrative function since they contain an encrypted reference to the identity of the murderer. Clues should appear in many shapes and forms in detective fiction, especially in Christie’s work: footprints, a fragment of overheard dialogue or certain behaviour by one of the
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