Ordeal By Innocence
(1984)
Director: Desmond Davis
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Christopher Plummer, Faye Dunaway
It's
interesting to think about activities that the public feels should only
be done by certain individuals. Take policemen for example,
specifically the members of the boys in blue that don't just patrol and
protect the citizens of a specific populous. I am talking about
policemen who are detectives. If they live in a sizable and heavily
populated area, the chance is that they have a lot of unsolved crimes
on their hands, crimes from theft to homicide. I can only imagine what
stress they go through not only going step by step in their
investigation, but making sure that they don't screw up and then having
an innocent person arrested, or finding the guilty party but then
having to let them go because you screwed up. Or maybe the
investigation ends up being unsolved, like many crimes. But I am very
sure that when a crime is properly solved and the guilty party gets
punished, the detectives get a great deal of satisfaction in knowing
that they have properly served their community and get appropriate
appreciation from the public. The public also knows that police
detectives go through a lot of training, so there's usually no
objections to the detectives' work. There's another kind of detective I
want to talk about that I have no problems with for the most part, that
being private investigators. I know that their work is usually not as
glamorous as it is on TV or in movies - they mostly just gather
evidence that a spouse of a client is cheating on them, or they track
down missing people. But when they solve their cases to their clients'
satisfaction, I am sure the private investigators get satisfaction as
well. Sure, private investigators have somewhat of a sleaze factor to
them, but they are providing a legal and regulated service that often
the police can't or won't do, and have to go through training so they
can do their job properly.
So
clearly, I have no objections to policemen and private
investigators getting involved with detective work, at least as long as
they have been trained properly and follow the law exactly. However, I
do have a problem with individuals who, despite not having gone through
enough official training in detective work, decide all the same to
deeply investigate some sort of criminal activity that's happened. I
often think that is extremely insane behavior for a number of reasons.
It frequently shows arrogance and contempt for trained and regulated
detectives. Also, since the person has not been trained, there is a
high probability of the wannabe detective making some sort of mistake
that could destroy the possibility of the eventually revealed culprit
being officially punished by the law. The wannabe detective, for that
matter, could quickly find him or herself in a very sticky situation
that would be risky for their lives, or the lives of other people for
that matter. I'm sure you can think of other issues surrounding the
issue of ordinary Joes doing their own detective work. Whenever I have
indulged in fiction that concerns this premise, I've always found it a
little difficult to believe that no problems seem to come up. As a
child, I enjoyed the Encyclopedia
Brown
stories for kids, but even at my tender age I couldn't believe the
title character didn't have his detective work stopped by his police
chief father. Years later, I watched the TV show Elementary.
Now, I really enjoyed the show (I saw every episode), but all the same
I couldn't believe that Sherlock Holmes and his partner Joan Watson
were allowed by the police to have a free run on serious criminal
cases, especially since they often broke the law in doing so.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds it hard to
believe in fiction when an ordinary person does his or her own
investigation on a murder or some other major crime. Why has this
premise then been used many times in books, television, and movies?
Well, I think the main reason is that the premise still has some
appeal, that being it comes from the fact that the wannabe detective
often seems more relatable than a true and trained detective. We want
to see someone like us succeed so our lowly selves can share in the
satisfaction of that person struggling yet managing to show the
authorities that they accomplished something they were unable to do. I
admit that to a degree I like seeing that, despite the theme in general
being very unlikely to happen in real life. All the same, when I got my
hands on the murder mystery Ordeal By Innocence,
I had to prepare to suspend my belief, though it was made easier by
knowing the movie was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of
Cannon Films; I had a feeling the end results would be... interesting,
enough to compensate for any disbelief. The wannabe detective in this
1950s-set story is one Dr. Arthur Calgary (Sutherland, Gas),
who at the beginning of the movie has returned to England after a
two-year expedition in Antarctica. He first sets off to return an
address book that was accidently left in his car by a man named Jacko
Argyle (Billy McCole) that he gave a ride to just a short time before
leaving for Antarctica. Arthur finds the Argyle mansion, but is told by
the man of the Argyle mansion, one Leo Argyle (Plummer, Shadow
Dancing), that Jacko murdered his mother (who was also Leo's
wife, played by Dunaway of Mommie Dearest),
and was executed. Arthur quickly figures out that when Jocko was with
him two years earlier, he couldn't have murdered his mother at the time
it was claimed to have happened. However, Leo doesn't seem to want the
case to be reopened, Jacko's sister Mary (Sarah Miles, Venom)
and her husband Philip (Ian McShane of the John Wick
series) also don't want that, and Jacko's secretary Gwenda (Diana
Quick, The Death
Of Stalin) also isn't interested. Even the local police
inspector Huish (Michael Elphick, O Lucky Man!) is
reluctant to reopen the case. Confused by all this, Arthur decides to
make his own investigation.
Ordeal
By Innocence
happens to be based on a novel written by Agatha Christie, and was the
first of three Christie film adaptations by Cannon Films (the others
being Appointment
With Death and Ten Little Indians).
The only Christie I'd seen before this movie was a stage presentation
of The Mousetrap, the two Murder On The Orient
Express movies, and Evil Under The Sun.
So I had an inkling that Ordeal By Innocence
would have Christie's unique style to some degree. The most interesting
touch of this Christie story is that the movie is that after some time,
it is questioned several times if the investigating Arthur is doing the
right thing with his private investigation, especially when things turn
darker (guess how). At the end of the movie, this question really hangs
in the air and makes you think, which is much different than endings
from your typical murder mystery. (Though I wish Arthur expressed more
about the issue than he actually did.) Thinking back to the beginning,
however, it's easy to see why Arthur did get involved - he saw a great
injustice that he felt had to be righted, probably close to what one of
us would think in his shoes. When he starts his investigation, it's
actually kind of compelling, since we see the indifference expressed by
everyone around Arthur; we want to know why this is happening. As well,
things at this part of the movie unfold layer by layer in a manner that
is pretty easy to follow and keeps us in the audience interested.
However, a little more than halfway through the movie, things start to
get pretty confusing, because by then we have met a lot more suspects.
Each suspect has their own stories, opinions, and motivations, and it
was hard for me to keep things straight. I feel I should mention that
quite often I get confused while watching a mystery movie such as this,
so this particular quibble might just be for people like me who can
only process so much important detail in a movie at a time.
On the other hand, the script has some other issues that
I think most other people would agree with me are problems, such as the
fact that there are no particularly compelling characters. That is
sometimes a problem during the adaptation of a novel to the silver
screen, because a story in novel form can get into the heads of the
characters, which is harder to do in a movie. All the characters in Ordeal By Innocence
just seem to be written to do the bare minimum their characters have to
do to advance the story. We don't really get to know how the Argyle
family members really think about the fact that their relative was
executed for something he didn't do. The police inspector just goes by
the book despite the implications of an innocent man executed, no
personal feelings are expressed. The Arthur character is hardly
expanded upon further than the revelations that he is divorced and a
paleontologist. Such weakly written characters would be a challenge for
any actor to bring to life. The only actors who manage to bring in some
color are Elphick as the police inspector and McShane
as the crippled husband of the Sarah Miles character; each manages to
be lively with just a few minutes of screen time. While the rest of the
cast includes professional and seasoned actors like Sutherland,
Plummer, and Dunaway, there is a remarkable feeling of going through
the motions coming from them. Since he has to carry the burden of the
movie, the award for worst performance goes to Sutherland. He actually
seems to be in physical pain in most of his scenes judging from his
facial expressions, his body frequently seems to be stiffened up, he
talks very slowly, and even worse is when he combines all three of
those kinds of uncomfortable body languages together in the same scene.
While the director of a movie also has to share blame for lacklustre
performances by his cast, reports state that credited director Desmond
Davis (Clash Of
The Titans)
had his cut of the movie significantly changed by extensive reshoots by
uncredited director Alan Birkinshaw, who later directed Cannon's Ten Little Indians.
I can't say who shot which scenes, but whoever did, the movie not only
has a remarkable uniform display of the aforementioned poor acting, but
also a uniform dreary look and feel. True, the events of the movie are
taking place in a coastal English village during the colder part of the
year, but either director could have displayed this backdrop in a way
that would have given the movie a mysterious and haunting feeing, which
would have made for some great atmosphere. It instead just feels dirty
and sleep-inducing. What makes this backdrop even worse to sit through
is the studio-imposed musical score by Dave Brubeck. Brubeck was well
known for his jazz and classical music, but the music he composed for Ordeal By Innocence
is completely inappropriate for a movie such as this. It's a purely
jazz score, believe it or not, with clarinets, pianos, trumpets, and
other jazz instruments. From the first note, it clashes so badly with
what we are seeing that the movie is extremely irritating to watch, and
I am not sure if that feeling is better than the pure boredom that
viewers would have experienced even had the movie been scored with more
fitting music. It's no surprise then that Golan and Globus barely
released the finished results to theaters. The blurb on the back of the
DVD case states, "Ordeal
By Innocence is one ordeal you're sure to enjoy!" Yes, if you
are a masochist.
BONUS: Cinematographer
Billy Williams talks about his experiences on the Ordeal By Innocence
shoot - click
here to watch the video!
(Posted May 19, 2021)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
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Check for availability on Amazon (Blu-Ray)
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Check Amazon for availability of original
novel by Agatha Christie
See also: Brigham City, That Championship Season, Unman,
Wittering, and Zigo
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