Michael Phillips: The greatest Hercule Poirot of all? Mystery solved: The clues are with these 10 actors

First, last and forever, there is the mustache. It’s spelled “mustache” according to the Associated Press and therefore also to the Chicago Tribune. But in Agatha Christie’s stories featuring her most famous and fastidious creation, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, now 103 years old, the spelling favors “moustache” and very often “moustaches,” plural.

This is not a story about facial hair, at least not entirely. (For that, you can go to agathachristie.com for a delightfully obsessive account titled “Great Moments of Poirot’s Moustache.”) The landmark a few inches south of the detective’s cherished “little gray cells” was introduced in Christie’s 1920 debut novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” not as a flamboyant grabber of a mustache, but as a “stiff and military” thing.

Then, like the Poirot mystique, it bloomed. By 1934 and the publication of “Murder on the Orient Express” (originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1933 as “Murder in the Calais Coach”) the Belgian was rich, famous and a real peacock. “A little man with enormous mustaches” is how he’s described in that novel, among his most popular. Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in the latest film version. His third Poirot adaptation, “A Haunting in Venice,” opened this week, with a considerably more subdued mustache, brown now instead of the silver fox — it looked like a literal silver fox stole attached to his upper lip — of Branagh’s 2017 Poirot debut.

If dimensions were all, Branagh would win “Fairest Poirot of Them All.” But this is a highly competitive situation. In movies, on television, on stage and on the radio, we’ve had a century of the Belgian paragon of deduction in many portrayals. My favorite, based on irrefutable subjective reasoning — a paradox! — is … well, you’ll have to read on to the denouement.

Before that, though, for the record: There are many worthwhile Christie adaptations that have nothing to do with Poirot. If you haven’t seen “And Then There Were None” (1945), you should; it has all the coldblooded attractions of prime Christie along with all the bloodless mechanics her detractors don’t like. If you haven’t seen “Witness for the Prosecution” (1957), that’s even better, and thanks to Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power, the human beings caught in the narrative trap emerge as, well, if not human beings, then wonderful actors playing human beings. And if you haven’t seen “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” (2022), Hugh Laurie’s beguiling three-part adaptation of the Christie whodunit, well, it’s dee-lightful, even when things get mean toward the end. It’s on BritBox and is, in fact, reason enough to get BritBox.

Back to the Belgian. In order of adaptation appearance, and realizing we’re leaving many Poirots undiscussed:

1. Charles Laughton, “Alibi” (London stage version, 1928): There is no filmed record of Laughton’s Poirot; “Alibi,” an adaptation of Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” was a success in London but flopped in a 1932 Broadway restaging. Mustache review: faint, relatively tame — presumably unlike Laughton’s performance, described by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times as “an immensely entertaining exercise in poster portraiture,” which is a nice way of saying his hamming very likely went to 11.

2. Austin Trevor, “Alibi” (1931): The first Poirot on screen, “Alibi” — now lost — was one of three Christie adaptations starring the Irish actor as the Belgian detective. Only the third, “Lord Edgeware Dies” (1934), appears to have survived; there’s a timecode-stamped copy of it floating around on YouTube. Based on that copy, mustache review: None. None!? None.

3. Orson Welles, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” Campbell Playhouse (Mercury Theatre, 1939): A year before he decamped to Hollywood to make “Citizen Kane,” Welles dined out on the role of Poirot in this 50-minute radio version of Christie’s story. Mustache review: Well, it was radio, but Welles as Poirot does refer to his mustache as “the largest in Europe.”

4. Tony Randall, “The Alphabet Murders” (1965): A zesty curio, shot in London in black-and-white and directed by the outlandish social satirist Frank Tashlin (“Artists and Models,” “The Girl Can’t Help It”). This Poirot lark has the fussy mastermind doing all sorts of uncharacteristic things: bowling, fending off Anita Ekberg, you name it. Christie hated what they did to her book “The ABC Murders”; audiences were indifferent. Mustache review: Not special but not bad. We’re getting there.

5. Albert Finney, “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974): I adore this performance, and love director Sidney Lumet’s film nearly as much as I did when it came out. Swank, full of knowing turns by a fabulous cast braking right at the edge of caricature. Finney is a lot, but in the best way: unlikely casting, lots of costume and facial and vocal deception, and somehow we believe it all. Plus, that train! Mustache review: The first great Poirot mustache on film — not a monster, but in perfect harmony with Finney’s jet-black, excessively slicked-down hair.

6. Peter Ustinov, “Death on the Nile” (1978): Finney was busy, so Ustinov took over as Poirot in a subtler vein. He went on to play the detective on film and television five more times. Mustache review: Finney-scaled, but slightly more restrained, like Ustinov’s performance. Then again, against the hamming of some of the other players in “Nile” and “Evil Under the Sun,” I’d back off, too.

7. David Suchet, “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” (1989-2013): Suchet’s career was happily consumed by the enormously popular ITV television adaptations of Christie’s Poirot mysteries, and for a great many aficionados this was it, the ideal Poirot, externally and internally, with Suchet delineating every little detail of the character’s habits and cunning with sublime ease. Mustache review: Delightful variations over the years. Sometimes the points point straight toward noon; in other iterations, the mustache favors the more traditional 10:45 a.m. angle.

8. Alfred Molina, “Murder on the Orient Express” (2001): This modern-day relocation of Christie’s warhorse, premiering on CBS, stranded an excellent actor in a wholly misjudged update. Mustache review: Eh.

9. Kenneth Branagh, “Murder on the Orient Express” (2017): In his first of three Poirot adaptations to date, director and star Branagh co-stars with more digital effects than “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Still, audiences liked it well enough, and here we are this week, with “A Haunting in Venice” in theaters. Mustache review: Where to begin? At which end of this insane mustache? By the time it got to Branagh’s “Death on the Nile” (2022) it was a mite less florid, but still a scene-stealer, for better or worse.

10. John Malkovich, “The ABC Murders” (2018): Filmed for BBC One, this adaptation gave Malkovich his Poirot shot. An intriguing take, with a … fluid dialect, let’s say. Mustache review: A full natural goatee, in keeping with Malkovich’s minimalist characterization.

My favorite of these 10? Painfully close call. Seriously, I’m in pain. If I could give half-a-stache to David Suchet and the other half to Albert Finney, that’s what I’d do, and I adore much of what Ustinov accomplished as Poirot, especially in his later TV portrayals. But for me it’s Finney.

And now, as he says at the end of the best-yet screen version of “Orient Express,” I must go and wrestle with my report to the police and with my conscience.

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