DEATH ON THE NILE: Blu-ray (EMI/Paramount, 1978) Kino Lorber

The only thing that could follow ‘murder’ is ‘death’ – at least, so the clever marketing campaign behind John Guillermin’s Death on the Nile (1978) suggested. The success of Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974) had invigorated Agatha Christie’s popularity on film. Yet EMI and Paramount hesitated in immediately producing another all-star spectacle based on the author’s celebrated works. In fact, by the time Death on the Nile made it to the screen it was a considerably different movie than originally planned. Albert Finney, who had astounded audiences with his transformation into Belgian master sleuth, Hercule Poirot, politely declined the opportunity to reprise his performance, leaving Guillermin and producers, John Brabourne, Richard Goodwin and Norton Knatchbull in search of someone new to fill Poirot’s shoes.  In Peter Ustinov they made a daring departure, not only from Finney’s Poirot, but also from the iconic character as written by Agatha Christie. It is virtually impossible to forgo Ustinov’s adroit personality. Ustinov is not Poirot but a clever derivation of himself. This is not to suggest Ustinov is either wrong for the part or unconvincing in it. On the contrary, the actor’s erudite approach bodes well with Poirot’s powers of deductive reasoning. Ustinov, a man of culture, class and impeccable good taste, also represents the character as a superior raconteur (a quality Christie’s Poirot would have absolutely abhorred); Ustinov’s deft skill for mimicry and intellectual prowess as a man of the world, informing not only his acting style but serving as the basis for his Poirot’s core values. Even so, Hercule Poirot is not one of Ustinov’s finest performances. Rather, it remains his most deliciously heartfelt, particularly when Ustinov allows himself the luxury to relax in the role. Gone is Poirot’s fastidiousness, his quick-tempered exacerbation and curt impatience with those he regards as his inferiors (basically everybody). In its place, we have a more reserved, questioning and oddly compassionate figure, empathetic toward his fellow man.

Death on the Nile is, arguably, the best of the Brabourne/Goodwin Agatha Christie big screen adaptations. For it aspires, not only to a level of craftsmanship, imbued with all-star performances that are, if nothing else, quite memorable, but it also has a sort of cadence and class that Dame Christie would have undoubtedly found most becoming and truer still to her cleverly concocted ‘locked room’ artistry as one of the most prolific writers of her generation. Indeed, Christie – born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in 1890 (Christie, adopted for her own after her marriage to first husband, the dashing Colonel Archibald Christie in 1914), proved to be a voracious reader, picking up her first novel at the age of 4, and by age 8, exhibiting a level of reading comprehension well beyond her years. In hindsight, it is the scope of Christie’s own authorship that is so damn staggeringly impressive – even, at a glance. The well-born maven of mystery and murder, who suffered a series of rejections in her youth before her first Poirot novel, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Styles’ was published in 1920, acquired her copious knowledge of poisons while working in hospital dispensaries during both the first and second World Wars.  And Christie today endures, not only as the most translated author in literary history, but one of the highest grossing and most popular of all time. And Then There Were None is, in fact, among the top 5 money-makers of all time, with sales to date tipping the scales at well over 100 million, while her play, The Mousetrap, holds the world record for the longest running engagement – 28,000 performances over 68 years!

Death on the Nile is one of Dame Christie’s most endlessly revivable mysteries. Like Lumet’s foray into ‘Agatha Christiana’, Death on the Nile split its shooting schedule between actual locations in Egypt and lavish recreations of the central set – the steamer Karnack – built to exact specifications on a flooded sound stage at England’s Shepperton Studios. On location, the actors endured infernal heat, the daily temperature hovering around 130 degrees, leaving costar, Bette Davis to wryly assess, “In my day they’d have built the Nile for you. But today films have become travelogues and actors, stuntmen.” Conditions were also exacerbated by a delay in hotel accommodations that forced at least half the crew to rough it for the first few days. However, and on the whole, the production of Death on the Nile incurred no major setbacks. Like Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile is blessed with a stellar cast of luminaries spanning the spectrum of talent from past to – then – present. Our story begins with the return of haughty heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) to her family’s pastoral English country estate. A beautiful creature on the outside, Linnet is both calculating and cruel. Hence, when her best friend, Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ de Bellefort (Mia Farrow) introduces Linnet to her fiancé, Simon Doyle (Simon MacCorkindale), Linnet wastes no time in seducing the young man, eventually marrying him herself. However, once scorned, Jackie is not about to let the happily marrieds go on their merry way. Thus, when Linnet and Simon embark upon a romantic holiday in Egypt, Jackie pawns everything to doggedly trace their every step. She scales the pyramids and books her hotel and passage on the Karnack to remain nearby.

Meanwhile, the day to day management of the Ridgeway family fortune is being overseen by Linnet’s uncle, Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy) who, through his own creative bookkeeping, has managed to embezzle a fair sum he now fears may be discovered by his ever-clever heiress/niece. While staying at the hotel in Egypt, Poirot eyes Linnet and Simon in a passionate pas deux. He also reunites with an old friend, Colonel Race (David Niven), and endures the nuisance of Mrs. Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) and her demure daughter, Rosalie (Olivia Hussey). It seems Salome, the authoress of lurid romance novels, has written a book that closely parallels various scandals in the Ridgeway family’s closet of secrets. Its publication has incurred Linnet’s displeasure and she has since begun proceedings to sue Salome for slander. Also planning a trip down the Nile are Mrs. Van Schuyler (Bette Davis), her pert social secretary, Bowers (Maggie Smith) and Doctor Bessner (Jack Warden), a physician whose fraudulent claims of healing have been brought into question by Linnet. Her inquiries could threaten the ruin of his thriving practice. After observing the venomous way Jackie is stalking Linnet and Simon, Poirot attempts to encourage more prudence and restraint, forewarning, “Do not allow evil into your heart, madam…it will make a home there.” Alas, his words fall on deaf ears. Like a disturbed wasp’s nest, Jackie will not rest until she has destroyed Linnet’s chances for happiness. A trip to some ancient ruins nearly turns deadly when a heavy slab of stone topples from one of the spires, almost crushing Linnet and Simon. After temporarily eluding Jackie, the lovers – along with the rest of the passengers – return to the Karnack where an even more gruesome fate awaits.

For on the third day of the cruise, the mood on board grows precariously dark. A drunken, embittered Jackie confronts and shoots Simon in the knee, then appears to suffer a complete nervous breakdown that requires being attended to by Dr. Bessner. The next morning, Linnet is discovered murdered – shot through the head – in her stateroom. With Race’s help, Poirot attempts to separate the suspects from the red herrings. It seems unlikely Linnet’s maid, Louise Bourget (Jane Birkin) would have committed the crime, even though Linnet denied her the promised dowry quite necessary for her to marry a slippery Egyptian. Meanwhile, communist sympathizer, Mr. Ferguson (Jon Finch), a handsome, though penniless explorer, aids Poirot in his investigation. Everyone, including Jackie, seems to have the perfect alibi, leaving Poirot and Race baffled.  Almost anyone could have committed the crime. Van Schuyler, as example, coveted Linnet’s pearls. Bowers, who was forced into service when Linnet’s father financially ruined her family, might have sought revenge. Salome could have done it to thwart the prospect of a lengthy liable suit, while Rosalie might have shot Linnet to spare her mother the grief of a very public trial.

Poirot is working from the understanding Linnet was always the intended victim of the crime. However, his theory begins to lose its form after Van Schuyler’s stole is fished from the Nile with the gun used to murder Linnet still wrapped in a handkerchief smeared with Linnet’s red nail varnish. The body count rises. Louise is found with her throat slashed by one of Dr. Bessner’s scalpels. She is still clutching a fragment of a bank note in her dead hand. Salome rushes to Poirot and Race, claiming to have firsthand knowledge of this crime, only to be shot in the head with Pennington’s revolver – though not by the man himself. Poirot amasses the remaining suspects in the Karnack’s dining lounge. He explains how Simon’s initial wound was faked with a blank. While Jackie was attended to by Dr. Bessner, Simon snuck off to Linnet’s stateroom to kill his wife, using Van Schyuler’s stole to muffle the gunshot, before returning to the dining room to shoot himself in the leg for real, thus concealing his crime. Yet, the preparation of this murder plot is hardly his alone to bear. In fact, Simon and Jackie never stopped loving each other, all the way back to the plotting of Linnet’s seduction and subsequent marriage to Simon as a way for him to inherit her family’s millions; thus, ensuring both he and Jackie could live happily ever after upon her death. Faced with this revelation, Jackie produces the gun that killed Salome. Keeping the passengers at bay, she bids her lover farewell, shoots Simon in the head, then takes her own life before a stunned room of onlookers. As the Karnack returns to port, the passengers disembark, with Rosalie announcing to all, she and Ferguson plan to marry.

Death on the Nile is a rather deliciously stylish, but nasty affair. Its murders are baffling and occasionally gruesome, the probability of committing so many in such a confined space both confounding and occasionally not altogether convincing. How no one – not even Poirot – sees Salome’s killer, for example, when the murder is committed right before his eyes is a curiosity; the killing of Louise even more brash and diversionary without really making too much sense. Still, the cleverness of this all-star cast keeps most – if not all – of these suspicious balloons up in the air for most of the movie’s 143-minute run time. Even so, Jackie is the obvious villain; clever though she may be, but too venomous and self-destructive not to have had her hand in this criminal enterprise – even when Poirot’s cursory findings seem to suggest otherwise. David Niven is an admirable fop for Ustinov’s French-accented austerity to bounce off. These two ‘ole boys’ have magnificent chemistry. The other standout is, of course, Bette Davis; an actress impossible to discount even in a supporting role, even when she is doing little more than smirking from her armchair. Ah yes, she did indeed have Bette Davis eyes! Alas, the casting of Lois Chiles and Mia Farrow seems strangely off timber. Why Simon should choose to murder his extremely handsome and very wealthy seductress of a wife – whose money he already shares – in order to take up with the rather dowdy girl of common stock doesn’t quite fit, though it might have if Chiles and Farrow had switched their roles.

Upon renewed viewing, it also is rather disappointing to see such stellar performers as Maggie Smith and Jack Warden relegated to little more than comedic or doleful sound bites, the anemic status of their cameos a wee too thin to warrant such exceptional talent in their parts. Anthony Powell’s costume design is rather subdued, although it did win him an Oscar. Still, that ultra-glamour of the gathering so over the top in Murder on the Orient Express is lacking in Death on the Nile and, at times, is sorely missed.  When the box office tallies finally came in, Death on the Nile paled by comparison, earning a paltry $14.5 million compared to Orient Express’ $25 million. Indeed, the biggest criticism heaped upon the picture was that Ustinov’s Poirot was not Christie’s Poirot. Oddly enough, this did not prevent Ustinov from appearing as Hercule Poirot again – in two subsequent big-screen Christie adaptations, and, 3 more made-for-TV outings. Viewed apart from its predecessor, Death on the Nile is the best of his appearances as Christie’s super sleuth. The ‘no expense spared’ approach to its picture-making results in a lavishly appointed, all-star escapist fantasy/thriller, rather than a high-stakes and intriguingly complex ‘whodunit?’ And, the exoticism of the piece helps push it over the edge as a delightfully diverting murder mystery too.

Partnering with StudioCanal, Kino Lorber has endeavored to give us Death on the Nile on Blu-ray state’s side. Please note: StudioCanal initially released Death on the Nile on Blu-ray in Europe in a disc incorrectly marked as ‘region B’ locked, when, in fact, it was ‘region free’. However, the results were far from stellar. There was considerable gate weave, and a boost in color saturation to render the verdant fields of the Ridgeway estate artificially emerald, with flesh tones appearing rather piggy pink besides. When StudioCanal elected to remaster all of their Euro-owned Agatha Christie movies to Blu-ray in 2K upgrades in 2015, they ‘region B’ locked these new remasters, making them unavailable to those living in North America. Now, Kino has licensed these remastered versions for ‘region A’ audiences. The results are virtually identical to the Euro disc. So, how does this Death on the Nile look on Blu-ray? In a word – fantastic! Jack Cardiff’s cinematography is represented virtually blemish-free. The image is extremely crisp without having been artificially sharpened. The boosted colors and contrast to have afflicted the previous release have been brought back into line here. Everything looks natural. Fine detail is superb.  The remastered 5.1 DTS sounds wonderful with Nino Rota’s score well represented, and crisp, clean dialogue throughout. We lose StudioCanal’s interviews with Anthony Powell, Angela Lansbury and Richard Goodwin, but gain a new audio commentary from historians, Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. Kino has also licensed the rights to a dated puff piece on the making of the movie, plus vintage interviews with Peter Ustinov and Jane Birkin. Aside: I do not know what rights issues prevented Kino from gaining access to the Euro-produced interview content that accompanied StudioCanal’s remastered edition, but I do wish such matters could be resolved to all both sides of the pond access to such content. Enough said: this reissue of Death on the Nile comes highly recommended for its improved picture quality and added content. A great Christie whodunit has finally arrived on our sunny shores. And yes, only ‘death’ could follow ‘murder’. So, here it is, looking years younger as a result of some due diligence applied.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

3