Word: finney
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...five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military mustache, air of dignity immense!" Alas, last week Christie announced that the archetypal armchair detective, who had been portrayed on film by Actors Tony Randall, Albert Finney and others, had finally finished his long career. Old, infirm and wheelchair-ridden, he would meet his end in her next novel, Curtain -or Poirot's Last Case. Although Poirot's final exploit was originally written in 1940 and locked away until now, the business-wise author declined...
...Finney, Curator of Education
...central character is Poirot, played by Albert Finney; he's like a chess player who takes on a dozen opponents simultaneously. Finney's performance is the stumbling-block to the film's otherwise smooth accomplishment of its limited purpose. Finney plays Poirot as an affable tailor's dummy of a man, who wears a hairnet and a moustache band to sleep every night, and whose moustache, indeed, doesn't move when he talks. Poirot is not the coolest of detectives; he's always in control of the situation (this is no Chinatown or Maltese Falcon) but he doesn't care...
...fine actors and actresses, you assume they can take care of themselves. Lumet seems to have concentrated on keeping the dialogue sparse, and the characterization quick and neat. The result is like a museum restoration with a very serious curator but subject matter laughably warped out of shape. Is Finney's accent a joke? Why does Wendy Hiller look like a nonagenarian who's aged fifty years since The Lady Vanished...
...word or two about Albert Finney's curious performance. In trying to flesh out Christie's classic caricature, he has slicked down his hair, altered his voice to a sort of petulant croak and overacted stylishly, if not always enjoyably. Ironically, what works best for him are his eyes. They escape the whim of makeup and never play him false. Finney fills them with irony and cunning in a struggle against all the shabby artifice that surrounds his face and smothers this hapless film...