Murder on the Orient Express: Over-Baked Agatha Christie

I don't wish to pick a bone with Dame Agatha Christie, but Sidney Lumet's 1974 Murder on the Orient Express is not the best cinematic treatment of one of her novels.

According to rumor, legend or full-bore press agent hype, the all-star production (Sean Connery! Lauren Bacall! Michael York! Jacqueline Bisset! Ingrid Bergman! Anthony Perkins!...and where's George Kennedy when you need him?) was a personal favorite of Christie's.

Sure, it stays pretty faithful to her novel about a murder aboard a snowbound train in Yugoslavia; and true, director Lumet adheres pretty closely to the Christie Principle of slowly peeling away the layers of the crime like an orange. But there are far, far better Christie adaptations than this over-hyped and over-baked movie which, like many productions of this kind in the 1970s, takes itself too seriously.

In all fairness, Dame Agatha didn't live long enough to see the BBC versions of her Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple mysteries, starring David Suchet and Joan Hickson respectively. What those made-for-TV movies lack in production values, they more than make up for in faithfulness to the source material. Up to the point when Murder on the Orient Express was released in theaters, Christie had to sit through movies like Murder at the Gallop where the many-wattled Margaret Rutherford plays Jane Marple with boisterous gusto; or The Alphabet Murders starring Tony Randall as Poirot. By comparison, Murder on the Orient Express probably seemed like Gone With the Wind.

But looking back at Lumet's movie now, its glamorous sheen distracts from the business of storytelling. Murder on the Orient Express looks good, but don't scratch too hard below the surface.

The movie announces its self-importance from the first frame onward as Richard Rodney Bennett's Oscar-nominated score comes crashing over our ears. Like everything else in the movie, the music is lush and over-the-top as the string orchestra plays with everything it's got while, one by one, passengers board the ill-fated Orient Express. The soundtrack continues to assault our senses as we get long drawn-out shots of the steam locomotive pulling out of the station and chugging through the European countryside.

Inside the train's cramped passageways we watch the travelers settle into their compartments, eat in the luxurious dining car, then retire for the night for pleasant dreams. Well, nearly all of them have pleasant dreams. The ill-tempered Mr. Ratchett (Richard Widmark) ends up with a new set of 12 knife wounds before the sun comes up. With the bloody murder on board the Orient Express, it's up to Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) to question each of the over-paid actors and get to the bottom of the crime (not the "crime against cinema," but the crime of murder).

Much has been made of Finney's performance-some say he's the definitive Poirot; others claim that honor belongs to Peter Ustinov who came along with the follow-up Death on the Nile four years later (for my money, Suchet's Poirot comes closest to the one on Christie's pages). Finney certainly has the most difficult part to play in the film since he's in nearly every scene and must set the tone and rhythm of the movie for the other actors. He is the sun and all the others orbit around him-which is okay if your sun isn't a blazing-hot ham who likes to turn the volume all the way to 11 (to paraphrase This is Spinal Tap).

He's got the look of Poirot down pat, but has trouble finding the spiritual center of the Belgian detective. Finney's hair-slicked with boot polish and Vaseline-and mustache are spot-on perfect, but he seems to carry himself with an uncomfortable stiffness, standing with his head tucked down as if he's playing that old parlor game where you pass an apple to your partner while holding it under your chin. He keeps his voice tucked deep down his throat, too, making it hard at times to understand what he's saying. The laid-thick accent doesn't help, either. A cross between Inspector Clousseau and Maurice Chevalier, Finney makes Poirot sound like a pastiche of what an American thinks a French (or Belgian if you prefer) accent should sound like. The actor would have been better served by concentrating less on putting curlicues on his words and more on giving us a detective who took a few quiet moments to study his suspects.

Most of the all-star cast play their parts according the rules of the Cardboard Cutout School of Acting. Few bother to break the bonds of their stereotyped stock character roles, which only serves to bog down the pace of the already cumbersome film. Those who do manage to rise above mediocrity certainly stand out from the crowd: Ingrid Bergman as the Swedish missionary (who won an Oscar that year for Best Supporting Actress), Lauren Bacall as the verbose American Mrs. Hubbard, and Anthony Perkins as the murder victim's secretary (Perkins essentially reprises his Norman Bates performance here, but still it's fun to watch his nervous, stammering man with a mother complex).

Occasionally, there are moments which sparkle and pop with enjoyable dialogue and well-timed performances-see, for instance, the scenes where Poirot interrogates Bacall and Bergman. The two veteran actresses sure know how to work the camera and entertain the audience.

When it comes to Christie movies, I prefer Death on the Nile, which seems much lighter on its feet; or, better yet, the BBC adaptations which rarely trudge along to the big finish where the murderers are unmasked by Poirot or Marple. Murder on the Orient Express, despite its lavish production design and a few superstar performances, runs out of steam long before it pulls into the station at journey's end.