MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1974) Paramount Home Video

Billed as the “who’s who in whodunits”, Sidney Lumet’s Murder on the Orient Express (1974) remains the uber-glamorous touchstone in Agatha Christie’s cinematic canon to have kickstarted an entire cottage industry in Dame Christie’s screen renaissance. Truth to tell, the mistress of murder was not at all pleased by Hollywood’s previous efforts to bring either her characters or her plots to the big screen. And thus, despite her own never waning popularity as an author, Christie on celluloid largely remained something of an enigma prior to this effort. To this day, the staying power of Agatha Christie shows little signs of abating, all the more curious still as Albert Finney’s magnificent reincarnation of Christie’s famed super-sleuth, remains the Billy Barty of all Hercule Poirots. There is something genuinely perverse about this Poirot. More in a moment. But Christie’s detective of international repute was never intended to be ‘loveable’. Indeed, Christie’s various descriptions of the man in print, focus on his fastidious nature, immaculate appearance, and, telescopically focused intelligence, a la Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’. Even so, Albert Finney, an actor much esteemed, herein offers us a somewhat more hideous Hercule, leering from under his bowler at the sultry, but troubled Contessa (Olivia Hussey), systematically snubbing the congenial A.D.C. (Jeremy Lloyd) offering his gratitude on behalf of the British government, and, exhibiting equal portions of frustration, bombast and general disdain for the service and food served inside the Turkish restaurant he patronizes just prior to his departure on the most-celebrated train in the world. Add to this, the hallmarks Christie otherwise afforded him, and Finney’s Poirot is a tad exasperating, at times. While fine literature could get away with such unlikeable manifestations, the concreteness of the moving image struggles to legitimize Poirot as a man of finely wrought intellect, worthy of our time and consideration. He doesn't much care for us, so why should be care about him and his little grey cells?

Murder on the Orient Express, nevertheless, remains a lush, often daring soufflé that, on the relatively miniscule budget of $1.3 million managed to become the highest-grossing film of the year. Lumet, who had previously tried his hand at making light confections, only to miserably fail, decided to go all out on this outing, heightening the visual flair of the costumes and sets so that little – if anything – remained accurate from the historical period. Instead, Lumet instructed Tony Walton, his costume and set designer to embellish wherever possible. Indeed, Lumet’s edict, the costumes should look like costumes rather than clothes, harked all the way back to Hollywood’s fashion gurus of the 1930s, who concocted absurdly lavish outfits for the stars to wear. The impracticality in Walton’s designs reaches its zenith with a feather topped hat worn by Lauren Bacall for her arrival at the Istanbul train depot. The hat dramatically sloped to the right made it virtually impossible to photograph the actress from any angle except one, if her face was to remain visible to the camera. Murder on the Orient Express is, of course, one of Agatha Christie’s most celebrated detective stories, starring her incomparably perceptive Belgium-born master sleuth, Hercule Poirot. Christie, an avid writer to satisfy her periodic attacks of boredom, created the portly and penguin-like detective with effete mannerisms, an egg-shaped head and immaculately curled moustache after a casual encounter with a real Belgian refugee who had relocated in England.  In his heyday, Hercule Poirot was a justly celebrated fish out of water. Viewed today, he is quite simply the strangest hero to ever grace a thriller, much too fastidious and oddly formed to be adored. But, Hercule Poirot is a man of principle, and this, perhaps, remains his greatest asset and appeal for Christie’s readership. Agatha Christie’s intent was never to write a ‘likable’ hero. In fact, despite the longevity of Poirot’s career and his popularity with audiences, very little is actually known about his background. Rather he emerges a mysterious, somewhat inhuman figure of immaculate deductive reasoning who, not unlike Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, is an egotistical loner, enjoying the camaraderie of a select group of male friends, whom he regards as his equals, though rarely appreciating people in general, except to poke fun at, and his nose into, their private lives.

Agatha Christie, who lived to be one-hundred, and was very much alive at the time Sidney Lumet began planning his film, controlled the rights to virtually all of her stories. However, Lumet had a pair of aces in his pocket - the first: producer, Richard B. Goodwin who had previously made The Tales of Beatrix Potter – a faithful adaptation of another famed author’s celebrated children’s stories. It was Goodwin’s daughter’s affinity for Murder on the Orient Express that provided the catalyst to make the movie. So, Goodwin exploited his friendship with Lord John Brabourne – cousin to the Queen – who effectively persuaded Agatha Christie in the living room of her Wallingford home to grant him the film rights. Paramount and EMI partnered to provide the financing and Lumet went about casting his picture from a veritable gallery of popular stars from their day. Owing to a mutual friendship and previous working relationship, the first star to be cast in Murder on the Orient Express was Sean Connery. Lumet had no trouble filling out most of the rest of the cast with his first choices. Only Ingrid Bergman defied his offer to play the Princess Dragomiroff, a part eventually given to Wendy Hiller. Instead, Bergman encouraged Lumet to cast her as the dowdy Swedish missionary, Miss Greta Ohlsson – a fortuitous decision, as this cameo won Bergman the Best Actress Academy Award. Lumet had sought either Paul Scofield or Alec Guinness for the plum part of Hercule Poirot, perhaps after reading Paul Dehn’s masterful script containing eight pages of solid monologue delivered by Poirot. Only the most spellbinding actors could pull off such a feat. Regrettably, neither Guinness nor Scofield were available. So, Lumet fell to his third choice, Albert Finney.

At thirty-one, Finney was far too young and in too good a physical shape to play the bulbous middle-aged Poirot. Yet under Stuart Freeborn, Ramon Gow, John O’Gorman and Charles E. Parker’s brilliant makeup and hair appliances the transformation of Finney into the very embodiment Agatha Christie’s portly crime fighter was startling.  Finney, who was also starring in a west end play at the time filming began at Elstree Studios was literally whisked to the set in an ambulance, being made up in its cab during the 35 min. journey from his townhouse to the studio. The inspired camerawork of Geoffrey Unsworth was divided between real exterior footage photographed on location in the French Alps and an ingenious combination of studio sets and rear projection to simulate the backdrop of a moving train. Tony Walton’s production design made excellent use of partial train cars from the real Orient Express borrowed from various museums, as well as the construction of several train cars built according to scale back at Elstree. This made it exceedingly difficult to film in, but added to the claustrophobic closed quarter’s atmosphere of a real train.

Murder on the Orient Express begins with the abduction of a child, Daisy Armstrong from the upstairs bedroom of her wealthy parents’ Long Island estate. Agatha Christie’s prologue ominously parallels the real-life gruesome details surrounding the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby – often referred to as ‘the crime of the century’. For those unfamiliar, Charles Lindbergh had been the first man to cross the Atlantic in a plane, an aviator par excellence at a time when aviation was still just a dream reserved for a few elitists. Deemed a national hero, Lindbergh’s life seemed storybook complete. But on March 1, 1932 his twenty-month-old son was abducted from his crib. After 10 weeks of negotiation a $50,000 ransom was paid in exchange for the child’s safe return. But this never happened. Six weeks later, the boy’s decomposed remains were discovered by a truck driver in an abandoned field.

For the film, Lumet and Unsworth recreated these particulars for Daisy’s abduction with an ominous homage to the Lindbergh case, using a combination of live-action images dissolving into frozen stills presumably inserted into tabloid newspaper headlines of the day. Anne V. Coates’ unique editing style expedites this prologue considerably, allowing the story to advance by several years in the span of a few minutes. We are introduced to detective, Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) disembarking a schooner on the Bosphorus. While indulging in the delights of a Turkish café, Poirot is inadvertently reunited with his very old and dear friend, Senior Bianchi (Martin Balsam), the director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. As a director of the line, Bianchi insists the train’s conductor, Pierre Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel) find drawing room accommodations for Poirot on the trip back to England. After insisting that there are no available spaces, Bianchi orders Pierre to place Poirot in the lower birth of passenger, Hector McQueen’s (Anthony Perkins) compartment, a decision that unsettles the already quirky and very nervous Mr. McQueen.

McQueen’s employer, wealthy American businessman, Ratchett (Richard Widmark) is a cold-hearted blowhard who bosses McQueen and his valet, Beddoes (Sir John Gielgud) to exhaustion. Ratchett also attempts to whet Poirot’s appetite for crime-solving by offering him a hefty $15,000 retainer to get to the bottom of a series of death threats he has received. The offer is moot to Poirot, who openly tells Ratchett he only takes cases of interest to him “…and frankly my interest in yours is dwindling.”  Their conversation does, however, conclude on a note of foreboding. For upon being plunged into relative darkness while going through a tunnel, Poirot suddenly realizes Ratchett has seemingly vanished into thin air. The first length of the journey is uneventful. Poirot and Bianchi enjoy eavesdropping on the other passenger’s conversations while in the dining car, with Poirot blissfully declaring in jest, “Thank God we are no longer young,” after witnessing a tiff between a despondent Countess Andrenji (Jacqueline Bisset) and her hot-headed husband (Michael York). That evening the Orient Express is barred by an avalanche. Stalled on the tracks, the guests retire to their compartments to await the plow. But in the middle of the night Poirot is stirred by a minor disturbance in the next compartment which he deems a nuisance at best. Unfortunately, Beddoes discovers Ratchett’s body repeatedly stabbed the next morning. Determined to quell any undue notoriety for the line, Bianchi implores Poirot to solve the case.

Enlisting the help of Dr. Constantine (George Coulouris), Poirot and Bianchi corral the suspects in the dining car for interrogation. There, Poirot soon learns Ratchett was not who he claimed to be but a gangster named Cassetti who masterminded the kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong because Colonel Armstrong had run away with his wife, Sonja Arden Armstrong – Daisy’s mother. Due to grief sustained at the loss of her daughter, a pregnant Sonja went into premature labor, giving birth to a stillborn child before she too died. Paulette, an upstairs maid, wrongfully accused of the kidnapping, committed suicide. Overwrought in his grief, the colonel also took his life. Cassetti's accomplice was arrested and executed. But Cassetti escaped with the ransom and was never heard from again.

Armed with this information Poirot attempts to piece together his case. But against who? The mystery is baffling until Poirot realizes he is not dealing with one murderer, but a conspiracy to commit murder in which virtually every passenger onboard partook. Harboring a deep affection for Sonja, Hector was also the son of the District Attorney who prosecuted the case. Beddoes had been Colonel Armstrong's army batman as well as the family’s ever-devoted butler while Colonel Arbuthnott (Sean Connery) was a close personal friend from the war years. Mary Debenham (Vanessa Redgrave) used to be Sonja Armstrong's social secretary while the Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Wendy Hiller) is godmother to the Armstrong children. Hildegarde Schmidt (Rachel Roberts), currently the princess’ lady in waiting, is actually the Armstrong’s ex-cook and the Countess Helena Andrenyi and her husband are Sonja Armstrong's sister and brother-in-law respectively. Greta Ohlsson had been Daisy’s nursemaid, while Antonio Foscarelli (Dennis Quilley), now a used car salesman, was once the Armstrong’s chauffeur. Michel was Paulette’s father.

But the real instigator of the crime, the one who amassed this motley crew of coconspirators and arranged for Beddoes to drug Cassetti with valerian so he would be unable to defend himself against their orchestrated assault is Mrs. Hubbard (Lauren Bacall), the sassy, gum-chewing sensualist whose greatest pleasure derived from being the first to plunge the dagger into Cassetti’s heart. You see, Hubbard was actual Arden, Sonja Armstrong’s mother. Poirot, whose forthright nature might otherwise prevent him from partaking in such a diabolical group assassination, is reluctantly forced to concede that under these perverse circumstances a horrible murderer has himself been horribly murdered, yielding to the most unspoiled form of justice. Retiring to his room to prepare a fictional statement for the authorities, that a Mafioso hit man has taken revenge on Cassetti for some undisclosed crime, Poirot quietly observes as the conspirators toast their good fortune and Mrs. Hubbard one by one for making their sweet revenge possible.

Murder on the Orient Express is perhaps Agatha Christie’s most adept murder mystery. Without question, it remains the one most readily revived at the movies and on television. It is also quite unique, and not just within Christie’s literary canon, as it offers none of the clichéd ‘crime must pay’ finales, endlessly overplayed since, but rather exonerates the criminals as justifiable avenging angels. Christie, who adored travelling, particularly by train, dedicated this book to her second husband with whom she spent many happy trips. Still regarded as one of the undisputed masters in the genre of mystery fiction, the most fascinating aspect of Agatha Christie’s prose remains her intuitive understanding of both the delicacies and intricacies of human relationships. Her legacy is ultimately one of expert craftsmanship in telling a very good story. This film - unlike many based on her literary genius - lives up to the weighty expectations of the novel. Screenwriter, Paul Dehn died shortly after the film’s triumphant premiere – a pity indeed, because Dehn’s craftsmanship on Murder on the Orient Express cannot be underestimated – particularly in light of some more recent attempts to retell this classic story that have miserably failed. No, Dehn’s economy and wit are unparalleled herein, his affinity for Christie irreverently preserved, if ever so slightly tweaked to accommodate the language of cinema itself. Albert Finney’s central performance as the fastidious and easily exacerbated Belgian crime solver is exactly as Christie herself has described – although at the time of the release, Christie thought Finney’s moustache not quite smart enough. Despite this minor quibbling, the author was pleased overall with the final result and why not?

Murder on the Orient Express remains – as Sidney Lumet had hoped – a cleverly executed mystery, ably abetted by Richard Rodney Bennett’s ebullient underscore. Reportedly composer, Bernard Hermann was outraged by Bennett’s contribution when he first saw the film, believing he had betrayed the suspense elements by writing lush orchestrations including a waltz for the train itself. With all due respect to Hermann, he was missing the point. Murder on the Orient Express is not a ‘whodunit’ per say, but rather a ‘how and why did they do it?’ – a light-hearted deception on top of a deception amply endowed by Bennett's score. In the final analysis, capturing the essence of this ruse must have pleased Dame Christie. And yet, none of this would have been possible if not for  producer, John Brabourne, whose entrepreneurial skills, coupled with his air of exuding ‘good taste’ in all things, had won him a lot of fans by the time he approached Christie for the rights to her most celebrated novel. Brabourne had, in fact, produced two widely embraced Shakespearean movies by that time: Olivier’s adaptation of Othello (1965) and director, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet (1968). Educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Brabourne served his country in WWII before wedding Patricia Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1946. It was his alliance with Richard Goodwin on Sink the Bismarck! (1960) that eventually paved the way for Murder on the Orient Express and later, Death on the Nile (1978), The Mirror Crack'd (1980) and Evil Under the Sun (1982) – this latter spate of Christie classics replacing Finney with Peter Ustinov as a decidedly more accessible Hercule Poirot.

It’s taken some time for Paramount Home Video to get off its lump and release this version of Murder on the Orient Express to 1080p Blu-ray. Not exactly certain why. But the picture has been out in hi-def since 2014, thanks to an overseas partnership between Studio Canal and Universal Home Video (who own the foreign distribution rights). Canal/Uni’s first stab at the hi-def apple left much to be desired, but was nevertheless ‘region free’ – offering fans on both sides of the pond the opportunity to own the movie on a more progressive video format. The second Canal/Uni re-issue was, alas, ‘region B’ locked, but sported a much more advanced remastering effort with vastly improved color fidelity, saturation and contrast. Colors on the newly minted Paramount lean less to the warm ‘ruddy’ hues that were previously present on all hi-def incarnations released elsewhere thus far. Although the Canal logo appears nowhere on this latest Paramount ‘region A’ locked Blu-ray for North American audiences, the results here are very much on par with the aforementioned second reissue across the pond. Colors are nicely saturated but flesh tones are more natural. The source looks pretty spiffy this third-time around. Gone – the age-related dirt and scratches that were decidedly a problem on Paramount’s DVD of yore.

Geoffrey Unsworth’s soft-focus cinematography looks velvety smooth without having been homogenized with untoward DNR. Film grain appears to be accurately reproduced. Grain is thick, as it should be. Now, for the oddity. On the Paramount DVD, the tabloid journalism prologue, depicting the kidnapping of Daisy Armstrong, sported ‘yellow’ newspaper print and nondescript midnight blues for the bulk of the intermittent flashbacks. On the Studio Canal/Universal first Blu-ray effort, these ‘news’ pages looked more sepia than yellow and the flashbacks contrasted much too dark, with indistinguishable fine details. These were markedly improved on Canal/Uni’s second Blu-ray release, but the newsprint was now decidedly B&W. On Paramount’s version, the yellow tint is intermittently back, decidedly not leaning to sepia, and the live-action kidnapping sequences now adopt a sort of demure blue (almost B&W) contrast, to reveal more information within these darkened frames than ever before. Also, the main titles on the old Paramount DVD sported a rich pink chiffon-like background with sunshine yellow lettering. The StudioCanal editions turned this coloring to peach with brighter yellow font. The new Paramount Blu-ray has a Pepto-bismol pink background with lemon yellow lettering.   So, which version is correct? Not sure, although the Pepto-pink doesn't look vintage to me.  Finally, optical shots are slightly softer.  Nobody at Paramount seems to be offering up any explanation for these alterations. We get 2 audio tracks on the Paramount re-issue – a 2.0 original mono, and a repurposed 5.1 DTS. Dialogue on both is frontally presented, but SFX and Richard Rodney Bennet’s underscore highly benefit from the untick to 5.1 DTS. Paramount’s DVD included two documentaries (one on the making of the movie, the other on Agatha Christie, with a wealth of archival interviews for both). This Blu-ray carries over those extras, plus a trailer. Bottom line: feel free to snatch up this Blu-ray. It isn't perfect, but it's likely the best we'll ever see.

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

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

0