In his previous outings as Hercule Poirot, Kenneth Branagh has given us the classics: Murder on the Orient Express and then Death on the Nile. As star and director, in collaboration with writer Michael Green, his reading of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective has been a pleasing combination of the familiar and the new, seasoning the satisfying formula and big characters with some psychological intrigue and proper production values from cast to costume and onto location.
This time around, he’s turned his attention to a more obscure source, but given it the same scope. For A Haunting in Venice, we find Poirot living a quiet life of retirement in the glorious surroundings of Italy where, protected by a bodyguard (Riccardo Scamarcio), he has sworn off investigations in favour of gardening and strolling. Then, the arrival of old friend Ariadne Oliver (the wonderful Tina Fey, in a role based on Agatha Christie herself) tempts him back, via a séance conducted by medium Mrs Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), to exercise the little grey cells in pursuit of a killer.
Gathered in a classic big-house setting is a cast of suspects that includes more star players: Jamie Dornan as the troubled Dr Ferrier, Kelly Reilly as opera singer Rowena Drake, Camille Cottin of Call My Agent and Killing Eve as housekeeper Olga, and more.
And then, of course, there is Venice itself. While Christie’s source novel, 1969’s Hallowe’en Party, was set in the English village of Woodleigh Common, Branagh generously takes us to one of the most spectacular cities in the world and swaps the country house for a dilapidated palazzo, complete with damp dungeons, dark corridors and some rather temperamental chandeliers.
Why Venice? Well, as the actor-director told Empire, “It’s exotic, and it’s gothic, it’s mysterious.” The city’s splendour has been used to similar ends before – in Nicolas Roeg’s spine-chilling Don’t Look Now and Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, for example – even if we’re more used to enjoying it as a lavish backdrop, as in 2006’s Casino Royale or Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie vehicle The Tourist.
Either way, its capacity to amaze endures, so Branagh’s choice is to our benefit – even if not everything we see is as it seems. Here’s our guide to some of the highlights of Poirot’s new hometown.
The palazzo
Most of the action in A Haunting in Venice takes place in the murky, canalside palazzo owned by tragic singer Rowena Drake. Although this looks the part in every way, it is in fact 100 per cent stage set, constructed from scratch at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, UK.
Branagh and production designer John Paul Kelly toured Venice in search of a house they could use but came up short – in part, Branagh claimed to Empire, because locals insisted that all the palazzos were cursed: “They would say, ‘Because it’s haunted. No, but really – it's haunted, and the last 12 owners of this palazzo have died, all of suicide.’ That's enough in that city to make you a little nervous when somebody then invites you to a seance.”
Instead, Kelly created a full set that connected up like a real house, complete with a canal, as well as a third-scale version of the exterior. That way, they could house all the demands of an intricate haunted-house tale: “The story is full of tricks,” Kelly explained to Filmfare.com. “It’s full of chandeliers dropping, doors swinging open, water pouring down walls, and it’s very, very specific in terms of who has to be where, and who’s in the library when somebody else is on the stairs, and so on.” And if that sounds a bit technical, try Tina Fey’s reading: “The sets felt as if you’d gone into the most beautiful, expensive, perfect dark ride at Disneyland and had been allowed to get out of the car.”
Venice
San Giorgio Maggiore
Outside of the palazzo, all is shot in very real Venice. One of the primary locations is the Laguna and the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. Here, in the churchyard of the 16th-century basilica designed by Andrea Palladio, we see Poirot enjoying his retirement with some shopping at a market complete with stalls and straw baskets.
The Grand Canal
When not trapped in their haunted house, Poirot and co naturally take to the waters, and we see them in a variety of vaporetti and gondolas along the canals. On the Grand Canal, he takes in the Palazzo Malipiero on Campo San Samuele, a Byzantine-style construction known for its gardens. There’s also the Rio di Palazzo and Bridge of Sighs, the Rio dei Medicanti, and the Rio del Pestrin and its wrought-iron Ponte dei Conzafelzi, also featured in the recent Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.
Scala Contarini del Bovolo
We also visit this attention-grabbing spiral staircase that makes up part of the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo, designed in the 15th century by Giovanni Candi. With 80 steps winding up an open tower to an arcade, it takes its name from a combination of the palazzo’s first owners, the Contarini family, and the Italian for a snail. Film buffs will spot it as a major attraction in Orson Welles’s 1952 adaptation of Othello.
Palazzo Pisani
Close to the Scala Contarini del Bovolo, in Campo Santo Stefano in the sestiere of San Marco, this palazzo was built in 1614 and is now home to the music school Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello. It’s just one of several buildings in the city named after the once fabulously wealthy Pisani family, hence its lavish scale and near-overwhelming splendour, which still divides taste four centuries later.
Santa Maria dei Miracoli
In the sestiere of Cannaregio, to the north-east, this is another of Venice’s splendours shared with us onscreen, built in the 1480s by Pietro Lombardo, and decorated with coloured marble in the Renaissance style. Though small, it’s revered not only for its intricately masoned exterior but also for the vaulted ceiling inside, covered with paintings of saints.
Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio
Also featured is another church, equally unique if on a rather less grand scale. Dating back to 1225, San Giacomo dell’Orio features a series of cylindrical towers and columns said to have been brought back from the Crusades. The large square to which it gives its name is known as a local hangout, rare in a city that’s always teeming with visitors.
Piazza San Marco
The most famous place in one of the world’s most famous cities also makes an appearance. Here, we find Poirot at the magnificent Torre dell’Orologio, the 15th-century clocktower decorated with gilded figures and the signs of the zodiac. Our hero climbs above the clock to view the city, giving us a chance to share one of the greatest vistas in the world.
A Haunting in Venice is in cinemas from 15 September 2023