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Istanbul-Calais, with a deluxe launch (diagonal reverse track at the platform, ascending crane to the locomotive's smoky nose, headlight theatrically coming to life). "All the world elects to travel tonight." Stranded in Balkan snow, the train sets the stage for the mysterium of the disagreeable Yank (Richard Widmark) slain in his sleeping car, a baby-food tycoon with connections to a kidnapping scandal. "Funny little man" M. Poirot (Albert Finney) is on the case, with hairnet and mustache guard he peers out of his compartment as the crime occurs in a lull, "c'est le silence de la mort." The dead man's secretary (Anthony Perkins) and butler (John Gielgud) are among the suspects, which include gabby socialite (Lauren Bacall), Swedish missionary (Ingrid Bergman), British colonel (Sean Connery) and governess (Vanessa Redgrave), Hungarian royalty (Michael York, Jacqueline Bisset), Russian princess (Wendy Hiller), Teutonic maid (Rachel Roberts) and melancholy conductor (Jean-Pierre Cassel). "Ah, for the pen of a Balzac." Consciously trading urban grit for escapist gloss, Sidney Lumet piles on the Art Deco artificiality in intriguing concurrence with the Resnais of Stavisky... Lindbergh avenged and Capone dispatched comprise Agatha Christie's formulation, telescoping montage at one end and blue-filter execution at the other. Poirot the dandified Serpico, a runty seeker with "an eye for the figure of a receding woman" and Macbeth's thickening light. "Is that a quotation or a question?" The camera at the dining car pans 180° for the unfurling of the brilliant mind, lies are recalled in flashing inserts that recapitulate star turns as gargoyle closeups. A stab at justice a dozen times over, cf. 12 Angry Men, a toast for the Night of the Red Herrings. "Now you have accidentally said something valuable." Guillermin polishes the style (Death on the Nile), Clark cracks it open (Murder by Decree). Cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth. With Martin Balsam, Colin Blakely, George Coulouris, and Denis Quilley.
--- Fernando F. Croce |