Last week I wrote about the Maigret story at reference 2, attempting an analysis of same. The sort of thing that one used to do at school. Then, more or less by chance, yesterday evening we watched the Rupert Davies adaptation of same, briefly described at reference 3 and part of what has proved to be far and away our most successful purchase from Amazon Prime.
On the whole, I thought this a successful adaptation, involving as it did a reduction of around 150 pages to just under an hour. But it did leave a lot out and it did make some big changes.
Some of the changes
The gang had been reduced from five to four, with two of the five originals having been compressed into one.
The back story of the bookbinder - Steuvals - has been left out. We are, for example, told nothing of his passion for reading - this including, for example, the likes of Proust - or of the street-walking background of his now very wifely wife. We are left with a much more ordinary villain. More believable if less interesting.
The body in the furnace is discovered by the dustmen, rather than as a result of an anonymous tip-off. Again, more believable if less interesting. And all the local colour, the neighbours, the local shops and the local cafés are left out.
In the book, we are left thinking that the chief villain, Levine, kills the rich old countess mainly because he is a psychopathic killer by nature. Here, because when held up, she pulls a small gun out of her bag, which is rather simpler. The chief villain looks pretty vicious and villainous though: well cast in that regard.
Much less is made on the screen of the extensive coverage of the affair in the press and the role of the lawyer, Maître Liotard, in puffing it and himself up. His unpleasant associate, the ex-policeman Alfonsi, is omitted altogether. However, Liotard ends up getting himself killed in more or less heroic circumstances, thus blotting out his crime - part of his cutting corners, trying too hard to get ahead in his profession - in the process. While the written word leaves all that rather hanging in the air. The BBC version works better as far as that goes.
The meeting of Mme Maigret and Gloria in the park seemed rather clumsy, and the all-important white hat rather ridiculous. Mme Maigret's successful search for the hat is much thinned down.
The fact that the hotel where some of the gang are staying, central to both written and screened versions, is more or less a brothel is omitted in the screened version. The sort of seedy hotel that one supposes was common in pre-war Paris. From where I associate to all the small hotels in the vicinity of Victoria Station in the mid 1960s, now vanished.
On the other hand, the Countess's ex son-in-law (Krynker) of the story becomes her toy-boy on the screen.
A foodie matter
Mr Steuvals makes a lot of money out of his art bookbinding, but he and his wife live very modestly, at the back of his workshop, an establishment which had been carved out of what was a Parisian town house. They do, however, like food, and Mrs Steuvals takes food in for him while he is remanded in custody. In the story, we have her taking in a little stack of pots on the tube (or Metro), with the pots being knocked over in suspicious circumstances - although no trace of poison was subsequently found in the by then empty pots. Simenon leaves us wondering whether there was evil intent here or whether Mrs Steuvals, at that time fully believing in her husband's innocence, was getting a bit paranoid. Which was fair enough.
But on the screen, the conflating of two of the villains makes it possible for the chief villain to creep into the workshop one night and put arsenic into the flour jar. Resulting in Steuvals being rather ill for a few hours after eating the cake that his wife had brought in. Not one of the complicated stews of the story at all. No ambiguity at all.
Which all worked perfectly well on the screen, despite being quite different from the story. And we do lose another chunk of background colour, the sort of thing that Simenon is very good at.
Conclusions
Lots of changes have been made and lots of stuff has been left out - but a successful adaptation for all that, one which stands the test of time very well. Even when, as in the present case, that I know the original story pretty well. I can't imagine that there are many serial adaptations which have worn so well.
I only wonder how much the viewer who does not know the story misses. The adaptation includes lots of hints and gestures towards the original which I would have thought would pass over most of said viewers.
PS 1: it occurs to me now that putting arsenic in one of the ingredients of a stew would be rather difficult. Cake works much better from that point of view - unless, of course, the intended victim was a coeliac who did not eat flour.
PS 2: Amazon Prime is one of the very few websites which blocks the use of the Microsoft Snipping Tool, so no snap of the strange white hat turned up by the BBC props department. Neither Bing nor Google could manage one either.
PS 3: more input for the business of names, mentioned yesterday. Maigret always calls his colleagues by their surnames. We don't get told about their given names. They always call him 'patron', which glosses over a minor story line in the written version. Lawyers are named by title or title plus surname. Ladies are named by 'Mme' plus surname. Not a given name in sight!
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2026/01/lamie-de-madame-maigret.html.
Reference 2: L'Amie de Madame Maigret - Georges Simenon - 1949. To be found in Volume XV of the Rencontre collection.
Reference 3: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0818179/.
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