David Denby

“Vanessa Redgrave's conception of Agatha Christie is altogether singular. Boldly decisive at her writing desk, her Agatha is absolutely inarticulate, crushed, and helpless in social and personal situations. A large, awkward woman, miserably self-conscious, she hides under a black cloche (worn like a medieval visor) and stares in terror at the immense, appreciative public that acclaims her on every side. Pathetically, without hope, she clings to her bored upper-class bounder of a husband, Colonel Archibald Christie (Timothy Dalton), making herself so wretchedly unappealing that he demands a divorce and the freedom to marry his mistress (Celia Gregory), a self-confident modern girl. Redgrave, who is built to play heroines, uses her size for all its eloquent gawkiness, ducks her head timidly, smiles, and then apologetically withdraws the smile. Her Agatha is a lioness with the self-confidence of a mouse, and Redgrave achieves an almost Garbo-like pathos in her painful adoration of this handsome but patently unworthy husband…. 

“Behind Stanton's facade there is a tender and scrupulous heart, and we are treated to his delicate, sexless, but rather touching pursuit of Agatha, in which her attempted incognito and desperate schemes finds sympathetic witness in his con man's soul. They are brother-and-sister conspirators, coyly pretending not to be wise to each other. Awkwardly flirting in the dim corners of the grand hotel, Redgrave and Hoffman are gravely funny together. Since she is a full head taller, she must bend at the neck when she consents to kiss him and the effect is of a clumsy goddess yearning to join herself to common flesh; looking upward, he receives her kiss as a benediction.” 

-- David Denby, New York, February 19, 1979