Movie Review: Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Strong adaptation of a classic mystery

Cons: A few nitpicks, but nothing major

The Bottom Line:

A deadly train trip

Poirot must find the killer

Great movie version

Classic Movie Adaptation of a Classic Story

I’ve long heard about the 1974 version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.  Talk picked up when Kenneth Branagh made his own adaptation, with many people feeling the older version is far superior.  So when I spotted it on TV, I decided to watch it and see for myself.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it features Christie’s detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney).  He’s been summoned to England and so takes a last-minute trip on the Orient Express to travel from Turkey as quickly as possible.  On board, he meets Ratchett (Richard Widmark), a business man who wants to hire Poirot to protect him.  Poirot isn’t interested, and that night, someone kills Ratchett.  Meanwhile, the train has gotten stuck in the snow, so Poirot is asked to find the killer.  Which of his fellow passengers did it?

I’ve read that this was the only movie version of her stories that Agatha Christie liked (it premiered not too long before her death), and I can certainly see why.  It does a good job of presenting the story in a condensed time.  At just over two hours, this movie has a lot of story to get in to fully understand the solution.  I feel like a few things are given too brief a mention, but maybe that’s because I know the story already.  I do feel like the solution works when Poirot arrives at it.

And look at the cast that was involved.  It’s a who’s who of actors from 50 years ago.  Among those I still recognize today are Anthony Perkins, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman (who won an Oscar for her role here), Sean Connery, and Vanessa Redgrave.  I suspect if I watched more classic movies, I’d recognize even more of the cast.  All this talent means that the suspects are all memorable.

If I had to nitpick, I’d argue we didn’t need the prologue.  Not only does it tease a revelation the film makes, but we could have used the time to better understand what happens when we are on the train.  Again, things make sense in the end, but a few more minutes would have been nice to allow a couple of plot points to breath.

I can’t help but make the comparison with Kenneth Branagh’s version as well.  While I still stand by my original review that his version was good, I can see why this one is better.  For one thing, Albert Finney’s mustache isn’t a distraction.  Apparently, this was Christie’s only critique of the film, and that’s only because she hadn’t seen Branagh’s over the top version.  Additionally, we don’t get the self-indulgent attempts to flesh out Poirot or the weird camera angles used in the more modern take on the story.

In fact, I was struck by some of the camera work in this movie, something I rarely pay attention to.  Here, it was used wonderfully, often spending an entire scene on one character as they were interrogated.  We didn’t need to see cut aways of Poirot, and the performances we watched as a result were masterful.

I will say there are a couple of times near the end of the movie that we get all the suspects paraded by us.  Both times felt slow and indulgent to me.  We could have done without those scenes or shortened them somehow.  Instead, they killed the pace when it should be been sped up.

Complaints aside, this is a wonderful adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express.  If you haven’t seen it yet, do so soon, whether you are already familiar with the story or not.