What you remember 20 years later

When I was about 10, my mother and aunt introduced me to Agatha Christie, and the first book my mother told me to read was Murder on the Orient Express. I figured out "whodunit" about five chapters in. (Sadly, I've never been that good at mysteries since.) I watched the movie a year or so later, and I remember liking it. Therefore, when my film class decided to expand beyond current releases last month, I suggested Orient Express, which was showing at Film Forum as part of the Sidney Lumet film festival. Ironically, I was sick that night and had to wait until this past weekend to see it. (Darn Blockbuster!) Does the movie work years later?

Sidney Lumet’s 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express represents a throwback to the days of MGM spectaculars. Glamour is what Lumet said he aimed for, and with the lush score, opulent costumes, and brand-name cast - Sean Connery! Lauren Bacall! Ingrid Bergman! - glamour is what he gave. More than 30 years later, though, the production resembles an overstuffed floral-print couch, a rich relic that hasn’t aged well.

The problem isn’t the script. Paul Dehn stays pretty faithful to Christie’s text, and the author reportedly called this version of Orient Express her favorite adaptation of her work. The Academy Award-nominated screenplay contains pithy remarks aplenty. “Does he speak English?” the great detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney, unrecognizable under deliberately aging makeup) asks of a suspect. “I think he speaks a kind of English, sir,” Beddoes (John Gielgud) replies. “He learned it in a place called Chicago.”

Of course, the delivery of the lines is as crucial as the dialogue itself. “My doc-tor has advised against it,” Wendy Hiller’s Princess Dragomiroff snootily explains to Poirot when he notes she never smiles. Finney takes pleasure in dragging out “ooh” sounds in Poirot’s Belgian-accented English - although his Oscar-nominated performance can border on hammy. Even without words, the actors convey emotions from shiftiness (Anthony Perkins, playing to Psycho type) to disdain, particularly when the grand American actress Harriet Hubbard (Bacall) chews gum during her interrogation.

A nice casting touch: Martin Balsam, as one of the good guys. He starred in another train drama in 1974, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, but there he played a subway hijacker.

Lumet said he wanted Orient Express to end with a “curtain call,” as it would in a theater. That ultimately may be the issue with the film: It looks and feels like a big theatrical production. It doesn’t open up.

Some staginess is unavoidable. Poirot delivers his explanation behind the murder of Mr. Ratchett (Richard Widmark) in a cramped train car, precluding much directorial creativity. On the other hand, the railroad shed in Paris where the boarding scenes were shot comes across as a generic soundstage. The ladies’ wardrobes, one more stunning than the next (excluding Bergman’s missionary), should have a “can you top this attitude” - but the women act as if they’re walking onto a stage, not an elegant train. Richard Rodney Bennett’s jaunty, waltz-heavy score has that unfortunate 1970s stereophonic quality. It also plays as a transition between scenes rather than as a complement to the storyline.

Lumet’s pre-1974 work included the serious Serpico and Fail-Safe; Orient Express was a deliberate attempt to lighten up. In seeking to be sweepingly classy and glamorous, though, Lumet forgets the simple fizzy fun of a murder mystery. From the Art Deco opening credits - imposed on red velvet curtains, no less - to the panoply of accents, Orient Express tries to be Champagne when white wine would be just perfect.