The interior in the style of an English house of the 30s of the 20th century: scenery for the film "Poirot's Failure"

Passing the gallery

A photo: Evgeny Luchin

Text: Pavel Portnov

Magazine: N1 (57) 2002

The interior in the theater and cinema, it would seem, is not the interior at all. In fact, it is mainly props, scenery, the world of imaginary things. Art is known to have a game. The interior in art is also subject to the ancient stage law. But in reality there are deviations from the universal theatrical convention Poirot's Failure, a film shot by Sergei Ursulyak, The Wrong Movie. The picture - it is this old-fashioned word best suited - is a film adaptation of the novel by Agatha Christie. Screen adaptation is a genre that imposes certain obligations ... on the interior. This is not just a background - it is the key to the atmosphere of the era. The viewer is as easily involved in the world of Agatha Christie, as the reader - with an exciting reading. “Genuinely” smoldering logs in an improvised, “cardboard” fireplace are pertinent in Andersen's fairy tale, but not in an English detective story. In the world of Dickens and Christie, the fire must necessarily have a temperature of 451o Fahrenheit! Therefore, all fireplaces - acting. Time itself appears, it seems, in the painting on the walls, graphics, photographs ... "We achieved what we wanted," Grigory Shirokov notes with professional pride. "This pleasure is comparable to the work of an actor on the always-desired role Hamlet." For the art director this picture is real luck.