Cuts and Shots: "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim"

Curious about how much could happen in fifteen minutes of film, I took notes while watching “Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot” on television. With this, I discovered I had made a rough record of the framing of scenes (shots) and the editing of the film (cuts). Here it is. Slash marks indicate cuts. The scenes occurred toward the end of “The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim.”

:01       Grainy black-and-white film with an announcer’s voice, indicating that this is newsreel footage of a car race. The year is about 1935.

:02       Return to color film. A crowd at the race track, including Captain Hastings and Inspector Japp. / Japp opens his wallet to make a wager. / A vagrant snatches the wallet and runs away. /

:03       Hastings and Japp chase the vagrant. / They capture him. / Poirot’s office. Hastings and Japp are there. /

:04       Japp in a phone booth telephoning Poirot; tells him about Mr. Davenheim’s signet ring, found in the vagrant’s possession. / The jail. /

:05       A jail cell. Japp and Hastings interview the vagrant. Japp remembers him from a recent incarceration. / Flashback to a scene in the woods: in a voiceover the vagrant is telling about sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, drinking. /

:06       The woods. An unseen person tosses the ring into the leaves next to the vagrant. / Poirot’s dining room. Poirot serves dinner to Hastings and Japp. /

:07       Japp says he plans to test the vagrant’s story. /

:08       Concerning the ring, Poirot asks two questions. / The exterior of the Davenheim house. /

:09       Poirot’s apartment. Poirot in an easy chair reading a book about magic. / Poirot’s office. Miss Lemon enters, says the fog outside is very thick. / Poirot picks up a newspaper clipping about the disappearance of Mr. Davenheim and tears it into strips.

:10       Continuing the newspaper trick, Poirot crumples the strips, stuffs them into his fist, and draws the clipping out whole. He talks about the science of deduction. / Hastings arrives. /

:11       Hastings reads from the list of Davenheim household effects that Poirot has asked him to make. After a few items, Poirot stops him. / Miss Lemon enters. Poirot tells and her and Hastings to expect the Davenheim Bank to crash soon. / Japp arrives. /

:12       Poirot explains three details to Hastings and Japp. /

:13       The jail. The vagrant is taken before a line-up of suspects in the disappearance of Mr. Davenheim. / He identifies Mr. Lowen, a business rival of Davenheim’s. /

:14       Lowen assaults the vagrant. The police take Lowen away. / Mrs. Davenheim arrives. / When the men step aside and she sees the vagrant, she gasps. /

:15       Everyone is standing except the vagrant, who is cowering on a bench before the gaze of Mrs. Davenheim. The vagrant is Davenheim in disguise.

            Davenheim has been planning his disappearance for months, meanwhile draining his bank dry. On his last day at home, he stages a break-in of his own safe and pockets its contents, including expensive jewelry he had bought for his wife. Part of his plan is to frame Lowen for his murder.