Secret of the Blackbirds (1983)

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Last night, thanks to my friend who sent me the tape, I rewatched "Tayna Choyrnych Drozdov" or "The Secret of the Blackbirds" (1983), the Soviet adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel "A Pocketful of Rye". As usually, in Christie's novel, a rich and arrogant man, the owner of a successful company suddenly dies of unnatural cause, in this case, he was poisoned. Any member of his big dysfunctional family could be responsible for his death and everyone knows more than they would admit. Mr. Fortescue's death was just the beginning of the nightmare. Within next couple of days, his young maid Gladys is strangled and his pretty trophy wife Adele is shot to death in her bedroom. What is that? The gang of killers targeting Fortesque's household or just one devilishly clever murderer with the mysterious plan? Inspector Neel of Scotland Yard begins investigation and reluctantly agrees that old lady Miss Marlpe who arrived to Fortescue's country manor, Yewtree Lodge, for Gladys' funeral may actually help him to identify and arrest the murderer. It was nice to rewatch the movie that I remember fondly. It was especially interesting to see it from the "other side" - first time I saw in Moscow, 1983 when it was released and it was one of the rare opportunities to see "the other life" in the movie. I should give it to Vadim Derbenyov, the director - he had included a lot of real footage of London, its streets, land marks, famous double-deckers, and even the views of the cinema with the posters of the movies that were shown back in the beginning of 80s, "Sophie's choice" and "An Officer and a Gentleman". He even bowed to Dame Agatha by including the poster of her record breaking play "Mousetrap" which has been playing in London's West End, in St. Martin Theater for over 50 years now. As for the movie itself, it was fun - some actors were good, some looked a little out of place as Englishmen. Andrei Kharitonov as Lancelot Fortescue, the estranged younger son of the deceased, was marvelous. Ita Ever as Miss Marple was effective but strangely miscast because she looked too young and pretty for Christie's insightful, sharp but deceivingly grandmotherly character. Actually, the weakest part of the movie was the plot - everything was so obvious from the beginning which is not usually the case for Christie and the charming villain had made too many unforgiving mistakes but I liked the movie anyway and had a good time.