Murder On The Orient Express

Though there is death in Murder On The Orient Express, based on the novel by Agatha Christie, it's not a typical Sidney Lumet picture. He usually handled things that were far more messy and socially trenchant. This film is a fizzy entertainment with lots of stars and costumes.

Set on the train of the title, an unpleasant businessman (Richard Widmark) is murdered. It just so happens that aboard the train is the famous detective, Hercule Poirot (only in mystery novels are detectives actually famous--can you think of a real detective that is world renowned?). As friend of the director of the line (Martin Balsam), Poirot agrees to investigate while the train is snowbound somewhere in Yugoslavia.

I first saw this when I was thirteen, and the ending surprised me. I don't know if it would today. Poirot quickly deduces that Widmark was the mastermind behind a kidnapping and murder that was clearly inspired by the Lindbergh baby case. As Poirot finds that almost everyone aboard had a direct connection to the case, and that there were twelve wounds on the body, well, I think you'll have it figured out.

Albert Finney plays Poirot, and I wonder who in the world suggested it, as no one would think of that actor and that character together. He hams it up deliciously, and was Oscar-nominated. There were many other names of note in the cast, each getting a few minutes: Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, Lauren Bacall, Rachel Roberts, Sir John Gielgud, and Anthony Perkins, who in an inside joke discusses his love for his mother. The cast member who got an Oscar was Ingrid Bergman, but she won because it was another apology for the way Hollywood made her an outcast about twenty-five years earlier. She does get a juicy scene, with mangled English and lots of emoting. My favorite performance was by Wendy Hiller as a Russian princess. Man can she enunciate a word.

The film was remade a few years ago and I have yet to see that version, although I see by the cast list that the characters are more ethnically diverse, as this 1974 group is entirely white and European. But I'm always skeptical about remaking films like this, and wonder whether it was necessary. Aside from Witness For The Prosecution, which is a great film, this film was the only one that Christie actually liked from adaptations of her work.