An absorbing doc about the queen of crime,featuring vintage color footage with Agatha Christie's voice over ; it focuses on her life and only the novels which have a connection with her adventures (she's compared to a female Indiana Jones ) are mentioned .During the war, her work as a volunteer nurse led her to the hospital pharmacy where she discovered the poisons and became an expert in the subject : it spawned "the mysterious affair of Styles " (and many others) ;her ceaseless travels all around the world spawned "murder on the orient express" ; archeaology inspired "death on the Nile " ...
Although she never declared herself a feminist ,she was :a woman who traveled alone in orient in faraway countries (where they knew "the murder of Roger Acroyd"!) ,who was the first woman to practise standing surf ,who took her driving licence to be independent of men, who married her second husband fourteen years her junior,archeaologist Max Mallowan:she financially helped him to carry out excavations ,and she lent a hand ,becoming a respected assistant. The documentary tries to explain her disappearance after her first husband walked out on her, but it will remain a mystery ,the author herself does not mention it in her biography.
They say she had come to hate her Hercule Poirot ,but he followed her throughout her career and it's probably a legend ;as for her work, they point out that the thirties were her heyday,and one can find no fault in this opinion ; her involvement in stage dramas is not passed over in silence :one sees her talking with the director and the actors ; "the mousetrap" has become a must in London ,in the same way as Sherlock Holmes ' flat , Madame Tussaud, Carnaby Street or Abbey Road.
She was made a dame in 1971,three years after her husband ,which made them one of the rare couples to be both knighted.
An excellent documentary ,but perhaps too short (52 min).
