Death on the Nile (1978) - film review

Jacqueline de Bellefort persuades her friend, the wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway, to employ her fiancé Simon Doyle as her estate manager.  Within a year, Linnet and Simon are married and happily honeymooning in Egypt.  When the couple least expect it, Jacqueline appears and begins to taunt them.  She has yet to forgive Simon’s betrayal and is determined to ruin the honeymoon.  Simon thinks he has thwarted his former sweetheart when he books a paddle-steamer cruise on the River Nile, but Jacqueline is not so easily outmanoeuvred and soon boards the boat.  During a fierce argument one evening, a drunk Jacqueline shoots Simon in the leg with a pistol.  The overwrought Jacqueline is sedated, providing her with the perfect alibi for the night’s other big event.  The next morning, Linnet Doyle is found dead, shot in the head by a small handgun.  If Jacqueline did not murder the heiress who did?   As luck would have it, one of the passengers on board the boat is the famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot.  He soon discovers that there is no shortage of people who had the motive, the means and the opportunity to kill Mrs Doyle.  In fact, Poirot aside, there appears to be no one on board who does not benefit from her demise...

Murder on the Orient Express (1974) showed how an Agatha Christie murder mystery should be adapted for the big screen and, when this film proved to be a colossal box office hit it was inevitable that other Christie novels would be given the same big budget, star studded treatment.  Death on the Nile came next, with director John Guillermin having a good stab at matching the elegance, grandeur and sheer fun of Sidney Lumet’s inspired Christie adaptation.  Once again, a troupe of some of the biggest names in filmland are wheeled in to test the resources and little grey cells of one Hercule Poirot, this time played with whimsical charm by Peter Ustinov, his first outing in the role.

Death on the Nile is easily one of more enjoyable of the big screen Agatha Christies, benefiting from its exotic location (sumptuously photographed by Jack Cardiff) and a colourful cast, which includes Jane Birkin struggling hopelessly to deliver a convincing French accent, in spite of the fact that she was married to a Frenchman at the time (a certain Serge Gainsbourg).  The score is an evocative reworking of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet by the great Nino Rota, and Anthony Powell’s Art Deco-inspired costume design won the film its sole Oscar.  The humour is perhaps taken a little too far, with Angela Lansbury and Bette Davis going so far over the top that it is a miracle they don’t go shooting up into the stratosphere and end up orbiting the planet Jupiter.  Ustinov’s Poirot may bear little, if any, resemblance to Christie’s creation, but his solid presence provides a vestige of sanity to the proceedings that prevents the film from sinking to the level of a threepenny bit farce.

In true Agatha Christie vein, the plot is both ingenious and fantastic, ensuring that the spectator is kept guessing right to the end, thanks to the numerous digressions and sideshows.  That the film still manages to hold our attention on a second or even third viewing is testament to the quality of Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay, Guillermin’s confident direction and the delightfully hammy performances.   Death on the Nile may be a little too comical for its own good, but it is a slick production that offers superlative entertainment, just the thing to lighten up a dull bank holiday weekend.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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