Lush and Magnificent Christie Puzzle With an All-Star Cast

The great director Sidney Lumet was at the top of his game in 1974; with more than two decades in the business under his belt, he had already given us the classic gem 12 ANGRY MEN and the film version of Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, which many critics feel contains Katharine Hepburn's greatest performance, FAIL-SAFE, THE GROUP, and SERPICO, establishing himself in the process as one of the great cinematic voices of his generation. DOG DAY AFTERNOON was still in the future when Lumet decided to take on lighter fare: the film version of one of Agatha Christie's most popular novels, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS.

The material may have been lightweight compared to what he was used to (a friend of mine always refers to an Agatha Christie as a "jolly good murder"), but it was not without its challenges. Set on the world-famous Orient Express, a luxury train that used to run from Istanbul to Paris, Christie's dandyish Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) is shoe-horned into an unexpectedly full Wagon-Lit car (it is full in the off-season, the film's first red flag). With Poirot on board, we know what we're in for, and it isn't long before it starts.

Lumet had a formidable task on his hands; despite the light tone of the material, the stage set was even more claustrophobic than the jury room in 12 ANGRY MEN, and he had to cram roughly the same number of actors into it. There are actually two sets: the sleeping car where the compartments are, and the dining car, where most of the action takes place.

I'll keep it brief: first night out, the train runs into a snowdrift in the Balkans and cannot proceed until the next station realizes it has not arrived and sends help. With nothing better to do, the characters have breakfast and chatter about this and that. Christie tended to draw her characters with broad strokes, which is often an invitation to actors to overact, and yet when they do, somehow it works.

Breakfast is barely over when it is discovered that an American who had offered Poirot a lot of money to be his bodyguard the night before has been murdered in his bed in the night. With nothing better to do, Poirot gives in to the pleadings of his friend Bianchi (Martin Balsam), a director of the railway company who fears a police scandal, and takes the case.

What follows is possibly the most fascinating series of interviews ever put on film. Clues have been strewn all over the dead man's compartment, which alert's Poirot's sensitive nose that something is up (Finney is hilarious when he asks Balsam and George Coulouris, who plays a doctor, if they've noticed that "there are too many clooos in this room??"). Worse yet, the clues point all over the place but all lead to dead ends. Of course, by the end Poirot figures it all out (and if you watch this one carefully you will too) and a grand time is had by all.

Lumet is aided and abetted by a terrific screenplay by Paul Dehn and an incredible cast of international stars ranging from Finney to Lauren Bacall as a loud and irritating American woman to Sean Connery as a Colonel in the Indian Army to Wendy Hiller as a Russian Princess to Anthony Perkins playing yet another variation on Norman Bates (but no, he's not crazy here, just a bit neurotic) to Vanessa Redgrave as a private secretary/governess to Ingrid Bergman in a sensational performance as a Swedish missionary (Bergman would win her third Oscar for this, delivering a memorable acceptance speech in which she apologized to Italian actress Valentina Cortese, who had been the front runner for DAY FOR NIGHT).

Yet it is Finney who draws the viewer's attention. Already of less than average height at 5' 9", he makes himself smaller to play the man always referred to in the novels as "the little Belgian." I won't vouch for the authenticity of his accent; he does not exactly sound Belgian, but he does sound foreign, and the rest of his performance is good enough to be considered the definitive Poirot (my apologies to David Suchet, who is as British as Finney and whom I never believed as Poirot); he keeps the viewer entertained with the character's many eccentricities.

Christie wrote a lot of these "about-a-dozen-characters-assembled-for-a-murder" types of yarns: I highly recommend watching this one back to back with AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (dir Rene Clair, 1945).

Murder is never quite so much fun as when Christie does it.



Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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