Murder on the Orient Express (1974) - film review

1935.  After a stay in Istanbul, the renowned Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot makes his return to England on the Orient Express.  He is immediately approached by Ratchett, a wealthy American businessman, who is anxious to hire him as a bodyguard.  Poirot turns down the potentially lucrative job offer, not realising that Ratchett’s fears that someone is out to get him are well-founded. That night, the businessman is killed, stabbed twelve times by someone who clearly bears him a grudge.  At the request of his friend Bianchi, who happens to own the railway, Poirot begins his investigation to try to unravel the mystery and discover who killed Ratchett.  To his surprise, everyone in the victim’s compartment seems to have had the motive and opportunity for doing the deed...

Murder on the Orient Express was the first adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel of which the author approved and which does justice to the book on which it is based.  A number of Christie’s Miss Marple stories had been adapted in the 1960s (with Margaret Ruthford playing the amateur ’tec) but the author was unimpressed and withheld the rights for further adaptations.   With its Art Deco trappings and evocative 1930s feel, Murder on the Orient Express captures the essence of Christie’s novel and set a very high standard for all subsequent film and TV adaptations of her work.

Murder on the Orient Express is a cracking good detective story but for a film adaptation it poses one obvious difficulty: how to keep the audience interested when virtually the entire story takes place on a train.  The production team overcame this problem by shamelessly casting some of the biggest stars in the business, including Albert Finney (his one outing as Poirot), Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman (who inexplicably won an Oscar for this film) and, in a near-reprise of his role in Hitchcock’s Psycho, Anthony Perkins.  With such an abundance of talent and charisma, the opportunity for any spectator to get bored is minimal, particularly since each actor is perfectly matched to his or her role and puts in a very creditible performance.

The confined setting clearly worried director Sidney Lumet, who does everything he can to open the story up – by including a lengthy but stylish montage prologue and frequent exterior shots of the train making its way across some breathtaking scenery.  He needn’t have bothered, though.  It is the cramped wood-panelled setting which provides the tension and atmosphere which makes the film so compelling, that and the meticulously constructed plot.  Albert Finney’s Poirot is perhaps a little too comical to be taken seriously (and looks decidedly limp when compared with David Suchet’s marvellous portrayal of the character in the acclaimed ITV series) but this is the only weakness in an otherwise highly enjoyable Agatha Christie adaptation.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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