Search - P.D. James - A Taste for Death on DVD

Strange Bookends

Richard B. Schwartz | Columbia, Missouri USA | 08/22/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"A Taste for Death is one of P.D. James's classics and the plot and characters hold up in this film version. Dalgleish is investigating the death of a Tory M.P. and cabinet appointee whose death is staged to look as if it were a suicide. Curiously, the death occurs in a Paddington church and the M.P. is accompanied (in death) by an alcoholic tramp. Suspects abound. The M.P. had a mistress; his wife has a lover; that lover is sleazy; the wife has an equally sleazy brother; the cook/maid in the family house is angry and bitter; the house driver is an ex-Military man who has maintained his physical strength; the church altar lady is losing her faith; she is accompanied by a young boy who lives mostly on the streets because his mother is a prostitute; Special Branch has been investigating the M.P. and may have tried to put in some sort of fix at CID and, oh yes, the M.P.'s mother is an embittered atheist who long ago lost her husband and her son (who was previously engaged to the M.P.'s wife, who, I should have mentioned earlier, is pregnant). If that's not enough, the priest at the Paddington church thinks that he may have seen evidence of the stigmata on the M.P.'s wrists. Though plausibility is stretched, it all more or less works and the supporting roles are played expertly. Wendy Hiller plays the mother, Simon Ward the sleazy lover and Avril Elgar steals the show as the cook/maid.



Now about those bookends. The story begins with some outside scenes in which the sound is, literally, awful. All of the ambient noise (including the wind blowing into the microphone)drowns out the dialogue. This is amateurish in the extreme. The story ends with a storming-of-the-flat scene in which the British equivalent of a SWAT team converges, clumsily, on the apartment in which the killer is holding two individuals. The team is large enough to attack/defend an entire village, though it doesn't really succeed at its task. When the perp is frog-walked to a police vehicle it looks like three crazed sprinter/drunks trying to run and simultaneously hold each other up. Just prior to that scene Dalgleish mans a megaphone in an attempt to persuade the perp to throw down his arms and give up. The megaphone is held against the door and the resulting sound is ridiculous in the extreme. The overall result is comic and campy and undercuts the seriousness of the narrative.



Still and all, the video is worth watching, particularly for the supporting performances."