How can that be shown? Only by what the script, director, and cinematographer show, which isn’t easy. No matter what the practitioner secretly believes, the trappings of ritual look the same. Where Hollywood falls down - perhaps because they can’t cope with non-atheists! - is taking the serious people seriously. Agatha doesn’t say and this script never shows the witches again after they’re arrested. Sybil the medium might fall into this category (as in the Marple version of The Pale Horse) but we don’t know. They believe until their faith is tested and then either double-down or become apostates. There’s also a small, in-between contingent. In some novels, like the Tripp sisters in Dumb Witness, the believers are played for laughs. The practitioners are divided between those who are in it for the money and know what they’re doing is fake (here, Thyrza Grey) and those who genuinely believe (Bella the hedge-witch).
In her detective fiction, the supernatural is always used as a distraction from the real, mundane crime. She wrote several short stories where the supernatural is real. The Pale Horse also uses one of Agatha’s favorite tropes which, by the way, she takes seriously although filmmakers can’t seem to. Ariadne provides the vital information near the climax. Ariadne Oliver shows up now and again as does Mrs.
It’s a weirdy invoking characters from past novels (who are always written out of the films), yet being very much its own thing. The three witches of the Pale Horse.I don’t know if Agatha’s actual plot for The Pale Horse will ever be filmed. Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.Īlso, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movies on her podcast. But if you can live with that, the movie works on its own terms instead of Agatha’s. A good witch left most of the plot in place.Ĭhoppy, uneven, murky, no subtitles so poor sound really mattered. Teresa reviews The Pale Horse (1997) and found it enjoyable so long as you never read the book.īad witches transformed the leads into near unrecognizability and removed Ariadne Oliver.
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