| Murder on the Orient Express | |
|---|---|
 Original British quad format film poster | |
| Directed by | Sidney Lumet |
| Screenplay by | Paul Dehn |
| Based on | Murder on the Orient Express 1934 novel byAgatha Christie |
| Produced by | John Brabourne Richard Goodwin |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Geoffrey Unsworth |
| Edited by | Anne V. Coates |
| Music by | Richard Rodney Bennett |
Production companies | G.W. Films Limited EMI Films |
| Distributed by | Anglo-EMI Film Distributors |
Release date |
|
Running time | 128 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom[2] |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $37.7 million[3] |
Murder on the Orient Express is a 1974 Britishmystery film directed bySidney Lumet, produced byJohn Brabourne andRichard Goodwin, and based on the 1934novel of the same name byAgatha Christie.
The film features the Belgian detectiveHercule Poirot (Albert Finney), who is asked to investigate the murder of an American business tycoon aboard theOrient Express train. The suspects are portrayed by anall-star cast, includingLauren Bacall,Martin Balsam,Ingrid Bergman,Sean Connery,John Gielgud,Jean-Pierre Cassel,Vanessa Redgrave,Michael York,Rachel Roberts,Jacqueline Bisset,Anthony Perkins,Richard Widmark andWendy Hiller. The screenplay is byPaul Dehn.
The film was a commercial and critical success. Bergman won theAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film received five other nominations at the47th Academy Awards:Best Actor (Finney),Best Adapted Screenplay,Best Original Score,Best Cinematography, andBest Costume Design.
In 1930, toddler Daisy Armstrong, daughter of British Army Colonel Hamish Armstrong and his American wife Sonia, is kidnapped and murdered.
In December 1935,Hercule Poirot travels from Istanbul to London on theOrient Express. His old friend, Signor Bianchi, a director of thecompany that owns the rail line, arranges Poirot's accommodation after all the first-class compartments are uncharacteristically sold out during the off-season. Other passengers include American socialite Harriet Belinda Hubbard; English governess Mary Debenham; Swedish missionary Greta Ohlsson; American businessman Samuel Ratchett, with his secretary/translator Hector McQueen and English valet Edward Beddoes; Italian-American car salesman Antonio Foscarelli; elderly Russian Princess Natalia Dragomiroff and her German maid Hildegarde Schmidt; Hungarian Count Rudolf Andrenyi and his wife Elena; British Army Colonel John Arbuthnott; and American theatrical agent Cyrus B. Hardman.
The day after the train's departure, Ratchett requests to hire Poirot as a bodyguard as he has received death threats, but Poirot declines. When the train stops inBelgrade, Bianchi gives Poirot his compartment and shares a coach with Greek physician Stavros Constantine. A snowdrift inYugoslavia strands the train. During the night, Poirot is awakened by a moan from Ratchett's compartment. Conductor Pierre Michel is told through the door that it was just a nightmare. Ratchett is dead the next morning; drugged and stabbed twelve times.
Poirot finds a charred letter fragment revealing Ratchett's true identity: American gangster Lanfranco Cassetti who, with an accomplice, had carried out Daisy's kidnapping and murder. Cassetti had betrayed his accomplice and fled the country with the ransom money. Mrs. Armstrong then died giving birth to a stillborn baby, and Colonel Armstrong committed suicide. The French maidservant Paulette, suspected of complicity in the kidnapping, also committed suicide before being found innocent. Bianchi feels that there is justice in Cassetti's death.
Poirot finds Cassetti's broken watch showing 01:15, and concludes that Cassetti was murdered at that time when the moaning was heard. Hubbard says that she found a Wagon-Lit conductor's button in her compartment and a bloodied knife in her makeup bag. Foscarelli says that he knew Cassetti was "Mafioso", and theorizes that he was killed in a Mafia feud.
Interviewing the passengers individually, Poirot learns McQueen is the son of theDistrict Attorney from the kidnapping case and knew Mrs. Armstrong; Beddoes was a British Armybatman; Greta Ohlsson has been to America; Countess Andrenyi's maiden name is Grünwald (German for "Greenwood", Mrs. Armstrong's maiden name); Conductor Pierre's daughter died five years earlier of scarlet fever; Colonel Arbuthnott and Miss Debenham will marry once he has divorced his philandering wife; and Princess Dragomiroff was Sonia's godmother. He also learns that the Armstrong household had a butler, a secretary, a cook, a chauffeur, and a nursemaid. Poirot tricks Schmidt into revealing she had been a cook. Foscarelli denies having been a chauffeur, while Hardman claims to actually be Cassetti's bodyguard.
Poirot assembles the suspects and describes two solutions to the murder: the first that Cassetti's murder was a Mafia revenge killing - someone disguised as a Wagon-Lit conductor entered the train at Belgrade and later stabbed Cassetti, discarded the dagger in Hubbard's makeup bag, then escaped when the train was stopped by the snowdrift. Bianchi and Dr. Constantine reject this scenario as absurd, but Poirot says they might reconsider that opinion.
The second solution links together all the suspects. In addition to the incriminating revelations Poirot extracted from Hardman, McQueen, Schmidt, and the Princess, Poirot deduces that:
McQueen drugged Cassetti, allowing the conspirators to execute him jointly, each with a stab to the chest totalling 12, the Andrenyis stabbing Cassetti together. They killed Cassetti at 02:00 hours while Poirot was asleep. The moan and broken watch were to convince Poirot that the murder occurred at a time when the suspects had alibis.
Poirot asks Bianchi to choose one solution before the train is freed from the snowdrift, saying the Yugoslav police would probably prefer the simpler first solution of the Mafia feud. Bianchi chooses the first scenario. Dr. Constantine and Poirot concur, although Poirot struggles with his conscience. The train resumes its journey.
DameAgatha Christie had been quite displeased with some film adaptations of her works made in the 1960s, and accordingly was unwilling to sell any more film rights. WhenNat Cohen, chairman ofEMI Films, and producerJohn Brabourne attempted to get her approval for this film, they felt it necessary to haveLord Mountbatten of Burma (of theBritish royal family and also Brabourne's father-in-law) help them broach the subject. In the end, according to Christie's husband, SirMax Mallowan, "Agatha herself has always been allergic to the adaptation of her books by the cinema, but was persuaded to give a rather grudging appreciation to this one." According to one report, Christie gave approval because she liked the previous films of the producers,Romeo and Juliet andTales of Beatrix Potter.[4]
Christie's biographer Gwen Robyns quoted her as saying, "It was well made except for one mistake. It wasAlbert Finney, as my detectiveHercule Poirot. I wrote that he had the finest mustache in England — but he didn't in the film. I thought that a pity—why shouldn't he?"[5]
Cast members eagerly accepted upon first being approached. Lumet went toSean Connery first, who admitted that he had been "stupidly flattered" by Lumet saying that if you get the biggest star, the rest will come along. Bergman was initially offered the role of Princess Dragomiroff, but instead requested to play Greta Ohlsson. Lumet said:
She had chosen a small part, and I couldn't persuade her to change her mind. She was sweetly stubborn. But stubborn she was ... Since her part was so small, I decided to film her one big scene, where she talks for almost five minutes, straight, all in one long take. A lot of actresses would have hesitated over that. She loved the idea and made the most of it. She ran the gamut of emotions. I've never seen anything like it.[6]: 246–247
Bergman won anAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the portrayal.
The entire budget was provided by EMI. The cost of the cast came to £554,100.[7][better source needed]
Unsworth shot the film withPanavision cameras. Interiors were filmed atElstree Studios. Exterior shooting was mostly done in France in 1973, with a railway workshop nearParis standing in forIstanbul station. The scenes of the train proceeding throughCentral Europe were filmed in theJura Mountains on the then-recently-closed railway line fromPontarlier toGilley, with the scenes of the train stuck in snow being filmed in a cutting nearMontbenoît.[8] There were concerns about a lack of snow in the weeks preceding the scheduled shooting of the snowbound train, and plans were made to truck in large quantities of snow at considerable expense. However, heavy snowfall the night before the shooting made the extra snow unnecessary—just as well, as the snow-laden backup trucks had themselves become stuck in the snow.[9]
Richard Rodney Bennett'sOrient Express theme has been reworked into an orchestral suite and performed and recorded several times. It was performed on the original soundtrack album by theOrchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden underMarcus Dods. The piano soloist was the composer himself.
Murder on the Orient Express was released theatrically in the UK on 24 November 1974. The film was a success at the box office, given its tight budget of $1.4 million,[10][need quotation to verify] earning $36 million in North America,[10][11] making it the11th highest-grossing film of 1974.Nat Cohen claimed it was the first film completely financed by a British company to make the top of the weekly US box office charts inVariety.[12] The movie - which was Cohen's idea - is considered one of the great triumphs of his career.[13]
OnRotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 89% based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Murder, intrigue, and a star-studded cast make this stylish production ofMurder on the Orient Express one of the best Agatha Christie adaptations to see the silver screen."[14] OnMetacritic it has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[15]
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, writing that it "provides a good time, high style, a loving salute to an earlier period of filmmaking".[16]The New York Times's chief critic of the era,Vincent Canby, wrote
[...] had Dame Agatha Christie'sMurder on the Orient Express been made into a movie 40 years ago (when it was published here asMurder on the Calais Coach), it would have been photographed in black-and-white on a back lot inBurbank orCulver City, with one or two stars and a dozen character actors and studio contract players. Its running time would have been around 67 minutes and it could have been a very respectableB-picture.Murder on the Orient Express wasn't made into a movie 40 years ago, and after you see the Sidney Lumet production that opened yesterday at the Coronet, you may be both surprised and glad it wasn't. An earlier adaptation could have interfered with plans to produce this terrifically entertaining super-valentine to a kind of whodunit that may well be one of the last fixed points in our inflationary universe.[17]
Christie, who died fourteen months after the release of the film, stated thatMurder on the Orient Express andWitness for the Prosecution were the onlymovie adaptations of her books that she liked although she expressed disappointment with Poirot (Finney)'s moustache, which was far from the fabuloushirsute creation she had detailed in her mysteries.[4]
