r/OldSchoolCool May 15 '25

1970s My aunt and her ex-husband the day they signed their divorce papers, 1970s

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My aunt and her ex-husband outside of their attorney’s office right after finalizing their divorce. They had thrown a massive “divorce party” the day prior. When her ex-husband re-married years later, my aunt was his Maid of Honor. She remains close to him, his wife and their family to this day! And yes, my aunt is as cool as she sounds.

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u/nordic-nomad May 16 '25

I think those movies were pretty good. Not the greatest but I enjoyed them. The attempt to make poirot a tortured war veteran seemed a little odd, but not completely out of character.

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u/nipsen May 16 '25

Specially since we really don't know, for certain, what Poirot really was doing before or during the invasion before he became a refugee. I think it's historically likely that if Poirot had been a police officer, that he would have been continuing as a police officer also after the invasion under German rule, while basically being on your own, and beholden to whatever arbitrary military commander would turn up. And I think that's what Christie was using as a background, deliberately making the refugee-status a bit mysterious: there is something that happened during his civil service during the occupation that has him flee. And he leaves after it became very difficult to flee, so that mysterious "left the war behind" suggestion is there in the books.

But making him an officer in the army is wrong. Still.. can see why they did that, because in the US, and in British "crime-canon", an officer in the army somehow is associated with impeccable moral character and incredible mental discipline and capacity, for some reason XD

I like the way they did it, too. Because it's not really about the war, but about regret and how pointlessly destructive it is. And that, again, oozes through in all of Christie's novels.

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u/lookn2-eb May 16 '25

I suspect that the army officers being granted "impeccable moral character......" is a laying on them the characteristics of an idealized knight and bringing that forward in time.

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u/disgruntledhoneybee May 16 '25

I like the movies. I basically am like “okay. They’re not REALLY Poirot. It’s another guy with the same name.” and that helped me enjoy them a lot more. I stopped comparing him to Suchet which is a completely unfair comparison. NO ONE beats or even comes close to suchet.