MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Murder on the Orient Express, Sidney Lumet, 1974

 

HOOK:  A year after Serpico the director takes a paid vacation with this one?

 

STORY: Classic English parlor mystery, but this time on the exotic Orient Express.

 

GOSSIP: Agatha Christie said she wrote most of her novels while washing the dishes. This is one of her most famous.

 

JOHN: This movie is like a pair of old brown and white saddle shoes at the back of your closet. Out of style but how can you ever feel anything but affection for them. If nothing else, the presence of Albert Finney, Richard Widmark, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery, John Gielgold, Lauren Bacall and Ingrid Bergman (who received an Oscar for this, one of the worst performances of her career) makes this a movie “event.” Sure, about half way through you remember what is going to happen—but this was before the days of Mystery from BBC. And Finney wakes in the last half enough to give the drama some necessary life. (Note the symbolism of the train being snowed to a stop when the plot is the most befuddliong.)

 

GO (2 GO’s out of four)

 

SPANKY: Hey, I like to chew on old shoes as much as the next dog, but movie smells distinctly of mold. Agatha Christie decides, what the hell, why not make everyone the murder just as Lumet pretty much lets the actors direct themselves (not a good idea). Albert Finney decides Poirot is a tall man pretending to be short who has no chin. Sean Connery is double oh, oh,  zero. Ingrid Bergman missed make up call. Only Richard Widmark has any sense of his character—and he’s murdered toward the beginning of the film. This is like looking at a high school yearbook 35 years later and realizing all those classmates we thought so cool were really dweebs. The scary thing is we were even worse.

 

“TWO PAWS DOWN” (ONE BARK out of four)

 

KEEPER: “In my opinion the murder is among us.”