Agatha - About The Actual Mystery...

Agatha Christie.

Agatha is a mystery-romance which fictionally solves a mystery which actually took place - the bizarre disappearance of author Agatha Christie.

During the fall of 1926, Mrs Christie's 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd' became a London literary sensation. Its controversial climax stunned critics and delighted readers while its dapper dectective, Hercule Poirot, joined the elite ranks of Sherlock Holmes.

But Mrs. Christie could not enjoy her new-found fame. A sensitive, painfully shy woman - who had begun writing whodunits six years before on the challenge of an older sister - she was preoccupied with personal matters. Her mother had recently died and her 'idyllic' marriage to World War I flying ace Colonel Archibald Christie was on the verge of collapse.

The stage was set for the greatest manhunt in English history. At 9:45 PM, on the evening of Friday, December 4, 1926, Mrs. Christie left her home in Sunningdale, outside London, drove off in her car - and disappeared. The vehicle was found abandoned in a wooded glen early the next morning. Inside was a fur coat, a pile of rumpled clothes and a brief case containing personal papers. Nearby were a badly scuffed shoe and scarf.

Suddenly, it seemed, the whole world was searching for Agatha Christie. Fifteen thousand police and volunteers, including boy scouts, dog handlers, monoplane pilots and mystic diviners, combed the Berkshire countryside near her home. Newspapers raced to print the lurid tales of kidnap, murder and intrigue, fueled by the police chief's dark prediction that Mrs. Christie would be found "somewhere in these woods" while his men dragged a small lake nearby.

The London Daily News offered a staggering reward for the "first" information leading to the discovery of the where abouts of Mrs. Christie, if alive. A competing newspaper printed front-page photos of how she might appear in disguises inspired by her books.

Eleven days passed.

Then, as suddenly and mysteriously as she had vanished, Agatha Christie reappeared at a fashionable health spa, the Hydro Hotel, in the Yorkshire city of Harrogate. She had registered there as Mrs. Neele, the name of her husband's mistress.

Timothy as Colonel Archibald Christie in Agatha.

Colonel Christie issue a flat statement to the press. His wife was suffering from amnesia, brought on by overwork and a suspected concussion. No, he assured reporters, there was no truth in the rumors of marital discord.

Within three years, the Christies were divorced.

Poster for Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap.

Later, she would marry renowned British archeologist Sir Max Mallowan. She would write books which would literally launch an industry - the paperback - and sell hundreds of millions of copies. She would author twelve plays, one of which would run continuously for 26 years. (Titled 'The Mousetrap,' it is still playing in London, to packed houses, setting a new record with every performance.)

She would become one of the world's greatest experts on such diverse subjects as English antiques and obscure poisons. And with her death in 1976, she would leave behind a mystery as baffling as any that ever challenged Hercule Poirot. What actually happened during the eleven days that Mrs. Christie was missing?

About The Motion Picture...

Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate.

Under the direction of Michael Apted, Agatha began filming in Harrogate where the mystery had been played out. Apted was delighted to discover that the Hydro Hotel was still standing, rechristened "The Old Swan."

Its interior was less satisfying.

"The magnificent 'Winter Gardens' Ballroom had been turned into a pseudo-modern restaurant" Apted recalls. "Its elegant glass facade and cast-iron colums were hidden behind a false wall. And the furniture was garage sale modern."

Apted and production designer Shirley Russell - wife of director Ken Russell - received permission to restore the hotel to its 1920s grandeur. "By the time we finished repainting and refurbishing the place, the owners liked it so much, they decided to keep it that way," Apted reports.

Unlike the "Old Swan," other Harrogate landmarks had succumbed to progress. Since the town's railroad station was now a gleaming edifice of glass and steel, the cast and crew moved to the ancient Victorian terminal at York, where they were welcomed by the "Flying Scotsman." The only remaining steam locomotive of its kind in the world.

The Flying Scotsman, this photograph was taken in Derbyshire in August 2000. Please click on photograph above for a bigger copy of it.

Timothy Dalton, a lifelong "train buff," who plays Colonel Christie, filled his fellow actors in on the locomotive's illustrious past.

"There were 79 of these beauties built up to 1922," he said, but they scrapped 78 of them when the system was electrified. Then someone realized that it was like killing off an endangered species, and the 'Scotsman' was retired to the Steamtown Railway Museum at Carnforth and restored to mint condition.

The Royal Bath House in Harogate posed a unique problem. Its imposing gothic facade was unchanged. Director Apted persuaded the city council to remove five modern lamp posts from the entrance, then parked $150,000 worth of vintage cars and horse-drawn hansoms in front, and time marched backward. But inside - where wealthy vacationers once allowed themselves to be pummeled, steamed, massaged and electrically jolted for the sake of good health - there was now a concert hall. A few hundred miles away in Bath, however, ancient Roman baths remain a powerful tourist lure. There, in a rabbit warren of corridors, treatment rooms and plunge pools, Apted installed the strange therapeutic devices which play a pivotal role in the story.

"There was hardly any room inside for our lights and cameras," he adds. "And by the time they came in, the atmosphere - for the actors - was claustrophobic."

Finally, the Roman baths gave way to the rolling downs outside the city where the manhunt was re-staged on a cold December Sunday. Newspaper ads brought out 1500 extras, "all of whom had to be dressed in period costume," Apted points out.

"The precise attention to detail," says Apted, "is vital to the mystery."

"To understand what happened to Mrs. Christie in 1926, you have to see her as she was . . . a repressed, romantic, old world kind of person, from a small village where values of marriage and family were very strong."

"Yet, as a brilliant mystery writer, she enjoyed a very active fantasy life."

"Perhaps, in a moment of crisis, those existences overlapped - it's happened to other writers before - and she cast herself as the focal character in a thriller of her own invention."

Agatha starring Dustin Hoffman, Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Dalton, was directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft, based on a story by Ms. Tynan.

The film was produced by Jarvis Astaire and Gavrik Losey with cinermatography by Vittorio Storaro, A.I.C.

It is a First Artists Presentation of a SweetWall Production in association with Cassablanca FilmWorks for Warner Bros. release.

Production Notes for Agatha © Copyright Warner Bros. 1979. All Rights Reserved.