I am a huge Agatha Christie fan and adore the majority of her film/TV adaptations. Even the least of them have something to offer the viewer. The 1974 adaptation of her most notable novel, Murder on the Orient Express, is no exception. Anyone unfamiliar with the novel or the conclusion will without a doubt fail to guess it, which makes it a nice watch with a group so one can gauge their reactions. To my surprise, almost no one in the current generation knows a thing about it.
It is December 1935 and Christie's master detective Hercule Poirot is stunned to find the title train booked in the off season, but is able to finagle a berth thanks to connections. The train is filled with an eclectic cast of characters, but the one to initially occupy Poirot's (and our) attention is enigmatic, rough-hewn Richard Widmark, who wants to enlist Poirot's assistance as he is certain someone on the train is trying to kill him. Predictably Widmark does meet his maker during a rather busy night prior to the train running into a snow block, and everyone on board is a suspect.
Christie's novel uses the backdrop of a child kidnapping as the motivation for the murder on the train. It is a thinly veiled reworking of the actual Lindbergh kidnapping. It is interesting that Christie suffered very little blow back for taking a real event that the participants were still reeling over and using it for her fiction, but I digress. Apparently readers of the 1930s were more liberal towards such things.
What works in the film is quite simple. The sets, costumes, etc., are lavish. And that cast is flawless. We would certainly have to work hard to conspire to unite so many Hollywood luminaries on screen at one time (although films like Knives Out and Kenneth Branagh's version of this film certainly try hard to come close). Around every corner there lurks a legendary actor or actress from the Hollywood sky to illuminate the proceedings. It is a sheer joy to watch these professionals share the screen.
Christie's story is a like a Swiss watch, so it is fascinating to see it putter along on screen as we follow Poirot's investigation.
That said, the film falls short in several areas. It was undoubtedly a landmark in 1974 when such star-studded mysteries and serious Christie adaptions were novelties. Previously Christie had been adapted into a wonderful series with Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, but the prior attempt to do something with Poirot was a disastrous misfire with a seriously miscast Tony Randall in The ABC Murders. However, since 1974 we have had several Poirot films (featuring the redoubtable Peter Ustinov), the popular TV series with David Suchet, and the recent remakes with Kenneth Branagh. All of them have elements to recommend them and give us a contrast to this film that did not exist at the time. As such, they allow us to now see what a slow-moving and humorless film this is in actuality. The next sequel, Death on the Nile, would find just the right balance of humor, thrills and seriousness that are woefully in short supply here.
Albert Finney hams it up as Poirot - nearly unrecognizable under prostheses and make-up, but he is surprisingly unpleasant and despite garnering an Oscar nomination for this part, I find him less successful then Ustinov in the later films or Suchet in the TV series. Even Branagh brings liveliness to his interpretation that is sorely missed here. Finney's Poirot comes across as a rather a self-impressed dullard.
The supporting cast is incredible, but predictably some have more to do than others. Ingrid Bergman snagged a third Oscar in the supporting category as a nervous missionary. She is fine, but it is pretty inconceivable how she got a nomination much less the award for this part. By no stretch is she even the strongest supporting performance on hand and given her prior Oscars there should have been no compulsion to award her an honorary one for this role. Lauren Bacall is aces (and my pick from the cast for the best supporting work) as a brash American widow, who always manages to be the loudest person in the room. Widmark makes the most of his limited screen time as the victim, who is shady enough never to enlist our sympathy. Jacqueline Bisset is luminous as a countess and Michael York is solid as her husband. Anthony Perkins is predictably nervy as the dead man's secretary. I quite like Vanessa Redgrave and Sean Connery, but they have less to do here than others. Wendy Hiller enjoyably chews scenery as a Russian princess, as does Rachel Roberts as her German maid.
The score for the film is a puzzle. There is literally little to no music to imply that we are watching a mystery or a thriller. In fact, when listening to it, I kept envisioning women from the 1920s strutting down the catwalk to model their fashions rather than a particularly dramatic film. So a complete miss there for me.
The pace to the film can best be described as stagnant. I can understand and appreciate a deliberate pace, but there is literally no urgency in this film at all. When one considers that a murder was planned and committed, and an investigation is under way to unmask the culprit before they ostensibly strike again, the ho-hum shuffling along that this film indulges in goes from a curiosity to maddening to just plain dull. As much as I loved this cast and seeing them assembled, there is something really odd with the way the film presents them and the story on screen. The motivating factor here is the kidnapping and murder of a defenseless child. Justice has been thwarted, vengeance is in the air, lives have been forever altered for the worse, and yet the emotional impact of this film is nil. No one seems especially impacted and they are all directed as though they gathered to play dress up for an evening out at the club. Even after Poirot has outlined what happened, who was involved, and why, the characters on screen all seem strangely unemotional and muted. This is something I think that the Branagh adaptation handled better - you got far more than impression of lives that were destroyed and the emotional toll and loss that murder had taken on those in its orbit. Here, not so much.
I also would say that the immediate sequel to this film, Death on the Nile, is actually a much better effort, yet mysteriously failed to garner much Oscar acclaim in a weaker year, despite having extraordinary supporting performances from Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Angela Lansbury, and Ustinov's much more accessible Poirot.
So while I enjoy watching Christie's plot unfold and this wonderful cast interact with each other, I think the impact that this film had in 1974 has worn off over the years and allowed us to appreciate more fully some of the adaptations that followed, so I don't place this as high on my Christie adaptation list as others.
It is December 1935 and Christie's master detective Hercule Poirot is stunned to find the title train booked in the off season, but is able to finagle a berth thanks to connections. The train is filled with an eclectic cast of characters, but the one to initially occupy Poirot's (and our) attention is enigmatic, rough-hewn Richard Widmark, who wants to enlist Poirot's assistance as he is certain someone on the train is trying to kill him. Predictably Widmark does meet his maker during a rather busy night prior to the train running into a snow block, and everyone on board is a suspect.
Christie's novel uses the backdrop of a child kidnapping as the motivation for the murder on the train. It is a thinly veiled reworking of the actual Lindbergh kidnapping. It is interesting that Christie suffered very little blow back for taking a real event that the participants were still reeling over and using it for her fiction, but I digress. Apparently readers of the 1930s were more liberal towards such things.
What works in the film is quite simple. The sets, costumes, etc., are lavish. And that cast is flawless. We would certainly have to work hard to conspire to unite so many Hollywood luminaries on screen at one time (although films like Knives Out and Kenneth Branagh's version of this film certainly try hard to come close). Around every corner there lurks a legendary actor or actress from the Hollywood sky to illuminate the proceedings. It is a sheer joy to watch these professionals share the screen.
Christie's story is a like a Swiss watch, so it is fascinating to see it putter along on screen as we follow Poirot's investigation.
That said, the film falls short in several areas. It was undoubtedly a landmark in 1974 when such star-studded mysteries and serious Christie adaptions were novelties. Previously Christie had been adapted into a wonderful series with Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, but the prior attempt to do something with Poirot was a disastrous misfire with a seriously miscast Tony Randall in The ABC Murders. However, since 1974 we have had several Poirot films (featuring the redoubtable Peter Ustinov), the popular TV series with David Suchet, and the recent remakes with Kenneth Branagh. All of them have elements to recommend them and give us a contrast to this film that did not exist at the time. As such, they allow us to now see what a slow-moving and humorless film this is in actuality. The next sequel, Death on the Nile, would find just the right balance of humor, thrills and seriousness that are woefully in short supply here.
Albert Finney hams it up as Poirot - nearly unrecognizable under prostheses and make-up, but he is surprisingly unpleasant and despite garnering an Oscar nomination for this part, I find him less successful then Ustinov in the later films or Suchet in the TV series. Even Branagh brings liveliness to his interpretation that is sorely missed here. Finney's Poirot comes across as a rather a self-impressed dullard.
The supporting cast is incredible, but predictably some have more to do than others. Ingrid Bergman snagged a third Oscar in the supporting category as a nervous missionary. She is fine, but it is pretty inconceivable how she got a nomination much less the award for this part. By no stretch is she even the strongest supporting performance on hand and given her prior Oscars there should have been no compulsion to award her an honorary one for this role. Lauren Bacall is aces (and my pick from the cast for the best supporting work) as a brash American widow, who always manages to be the loudest person in the room. Widmark makes the most of his limited screen time as the victim, who is shady enough never to enlist our sympathy. Jacqueline Bisset is luminous as a countess and Michael York is solid as her husband. Anthony Perkins is predictably nervy as the dead man's secretary. I quite like Vanessa Redgrave and Sean Connery, but they have less to do here than others. Wendy Hiller enjoyably chews scenery as a Russian princess, as does Rachel Roberts as her German maid.
The score for the film is a puzzle. There is literally little to no music to imply that we are watching a mystery or a thriller. In fact, when listening to it, I kept envisioning women from the 1920s strutting down the catwalk to model their fashions rather than a particularly dramatic film. So a complete miss there for me.
The pace to the film can best be described as stagnant. I can understand and appreciate a deliberate pace, but there is literally no urgency in this film at all. When one considers that a murder was planned and committed, and an investigation is under way to unmask the culprit before they ostensibly strike again, the ho-hum shuffling along that this film indulges in goes from a curiosity to maddening to just plain dull. As much as I loved this cast and seeing them assembled, there is something really odd with the way the film presents them and the story on screen. The motivating factor here is the kidnapping and murder of a defenseless child. Justice has been thwarted, vengeance is in the air, lives have been forever altered for the worse, and yet the emotional impact of this film is nil. No one seems especially impacted and they are all directed as though they gathered to play dress up for an evening out at the club. Even after Poirot has outlined what happened, who was involved, and why, the characters on screen all seem strangely unemotional and muted. This is something I think that the Branagh adaptation handled better - you got far more than impression of lives that were destroyed and the emotional toll and loss that murder had taken on those in its orbit. Here, not so much.
I also would say that the immediate sequel to this film, Death on the Nile, is actually a much better effort, yet mysteriously failed to garner much Oscar acclaim in a weaker year, despite having extraordinary supporting performances from Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Angela Lansbury, and Ustinov's much more accessible Poirot.
So while I enjoy watching Christie's plot unfold and this wonderful cast interact with each other, I think the impact that this film had in 1974 has worn off over the years and allowed us to appreciate more fully some of the adaptations that followed, so I don't place this as high on my Christie adaptation list as others.