4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
British actor Albert Finney plays the famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. He received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his performance, in which he dominates the final act.
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“MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS”
4k Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1974; PG with thematic element
Best extra: Interview with producer Richard Goodwin.
SOME OF the pleasure in watching “Murder on the Orient Express” comes from sensing how much fun each member of the stellar ensemble cast clearly had, as they hammed it up for Sidney Lumet’s (“12 Angry Men,” “Fail Safe,” “Network”) lavish, campy take on Agatha Christie’s classic novel.
The film was a big hit, earning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Ingrid Bergman), and nominations for Best Actor (Albert Finney); Best Original Score (Richard Rodney Bennett); and Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth). Kino Lorber celebrates the film’s 50th anniversary with gorgeous new 4K and Blu-ray editions.
In the film, the voyage on the fabled train starts right after a sepia-tinged newsreel-style flashback depicting the kidnapping and murder of a famous American’s baby daughter. Christie obviously modeled this after the notorious 1932 Lindbergh baby case, which occurred two years before her novel was published. Cut to glorious full color in Istanbul, Turkey, where we see the train being made ready in the station, and the impressive star-filled cast of characters are boarding: Albert Finney in the lead, as the famed Belgian detective Hercule Poirot; joined by Richard Widmark (Ratchett); Martin Balsam (Bianchi); Sean Connery (Colonel Arbuthnot); Vanessa Redgrave (Mary Debenham); Lauren Bacall (Mrs. Harriet Hubbard); Ingrid Bergman (Greta Ohlsson); Sir John Gielgud (Beddoes); Rachel Roberts (Hildegarde Schmidt); Jean-Pierre Cassell (Pierre Paul Michel); Dame Wendy Hiller (Princess Natalia Dragomiroff); Anthony Perkins (Hector McQueen); Michael York (Count Andrenyi); and Jacqueline Bisset (Countess Elena Andrenyi).
(1) “Murder on the Orient Express” premiered November 24, 1974. (2) The film opens with a flashback to the kidnapping of 3-year-old Daisy Armstrong, daughter of British World War I pilot Colonel Hamish Armstrong. (3&4) Inspector Poirot is requested to return to England and travel on the Bosphorus ferry across the Bosphorus Strait from the Asian side of Istanbul to the European side. (5) Passengers Count Rudolf Andrenyi (Michael York) and his wife Countess Helena Andrenyi arrive at the Sirkeci Railway Station to take the Orient Express to Paris. (6) The conductor Pierre Paul Michel (Jean-Pierre Cassel). (7) Signor Bianchi (Martin Balsam) is a friend of Poirot and the director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (coach cars) for the Orient Express.
Before too long, one of the passengers is murdered and, naturellement, Monsieur Poirot is on the case. The train gets stuck in a snowdrift, and that’s when all the detecting – and most of the fun – happens. It’s a romp, with plenty of laughs, and opportunities for each actor to wear wonderful costumes and speak in a variety of accents. The denouement is a bit unusual for a Christie story for a couple of reasons but, for the benefit of those who may not know the plot, it won't be revealed here. The best thing to do with a colorful, fluffy movie like this, is to just sit back, relax, and let it entertain you.
VIDEO
Paramount Studios with Kino Lorber have scanned the original 35mm camera negative (1.85:1 aspect ratio) in TRUE 4K and restored the imagery to the best it’s ever looked for home viewing. Some lens diffusion filters were applied to create a more romantic 1930s feel, while the color palette is on the cold side to mimic the December weather outside. There is some reduction of clarity during composite fades and dissolves, but overall, the sharpness is very good with a heavy wash of natural film grain for both formats, each sourced from the new 4K master.
HDR toning includes the standard HDR10 and Dolby Vision, with both providing a wider contrast balance from highlights to shadows, and a more natural color palette compared to the 1980p disc. HDR10 peak brightness hits 495 nits and averages 119 nits. It seems everything was encoded onto the smaller 66 GB disc with an average bitrate around the upper 40 Megabits per second range.
(1) Inspector Poirot meets wealthy American businessman Edward Ratchett (Richard Widmark). (2) The Orient Express heads toward Paris. (3) Legendary actress Lauren Bacall plays Linda Arden aka Mrs. Harriet Hubbard.
AUDIO
The original Mono track wasn’t provided, but a 2.0 DTS-HD Stereo track is here along with the reprocessed 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack that highlights the varying and lush Oscar-nominated score from Richard Rodney Bennett (“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Far from the Madding Crowd”). The dialogue-driven story is front and center with a number of effects pushed to the surround speakers.
EXTRAS
The sole new bonus feature is the commentary by film critics Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson. Unfortunately, they spend way too much of it explaining the plot of the film, which is totally unnecessary for those who have already seen it.
Other (archival) extras include a 48-minute multi-part ‘Making-of’ documentary, and an interview with Agatha Christie’s grandson, Mathew Prichard, in which he relates what inspired his grandma to invent Hercule Poirot.
The interview with producer Richard Goodwin (“A Passage to India”) is quite enjoyable and interesting. He notes that he had not really been an Agatha Christie fan, but while traveling in the Soviet Union with his daughter, she was so engrossed in “Murder on the Orient Express,” he felt compelled to read it, afterwards deciding it would make a great movie.
Goodwin had previously produced “Tales of Beatrix Potter,” which Christie happened to have seen and liked. Thanks to that stroke of luck, the author uncharacteristically agreed to sell the screen rights. Goodwin got Paul Dehn (“Goldfinger,” “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”) to write the screenplay, and wanted Lumet to direct. At the time, Goodwin says, New York-based Lumet hated Hollywood, and his agent, Sue Mengers, was against his taking on the project. But Lumet was interested, especially as the film was to be shot on soundstages in England, and several locations in Europe.
The Murder
(1) The Orient Express is stopped by an avalanche in the Balkan mountain range of Yugoslavia. (2) A murder takes place overnight, the victim stabbed 12 times. (3) The passengers are rounded up in the dining car, where Inspector Poirot announces the killing and that everyone is a suspect.
Because there were so many big stars in the film, it was agreed that each would be paid $100,000 for his or her work – with the exceptions of Finney and Connery, who got a bit more. Goodwin marvels at the production’s good luck to be able to recreate the vintage train authentically since, by chance, the last existing Orient Express sleeping car was still intact.
Goodwin then relates the ironic story of the location shoot near the Swiss border, where the train is supposed to get stuck in the snow. Two days before they began there was, surprisingly, no snow on the ground. So, Goodwin sent 30 trucks out to bring snow back from the Alps. As it happened, however, that very night there was a massive snowstorm. So, not only did they not need the snow-filled trucks, but those trucks got stuck in snow on their way back! Lumet, Goodwin jokes, claimed to be responsible for the storm, because he’d “had a word with the Almighty.”
Another bit of trivia involved the scene in the Istanbul train station – which was actually shot in Paris – in which tons of food were to be loaded onto the Orient Express. Everything was purchased, and stored in the train overnight, for the next day’s shooting. But when they were ready to shoot late that night, they discovered that all the food had been stolen. So, Goodwin says, they had to go on a frantic shopping trip to Paris’ huge all-night fresh food market at Les Halles, and were able to replace everything.
When the film premiered in London, Agatha Christie attended the showing in her wheelchair. Says Goodwin, “I think she really liked the film. I’m sure,” he adds, “she liked the returns!”
SIDE NOTE: Kenneth Branagh’s lavish 2017 adaptation of “Murder on the Orient Express” is available on 4K Ultra HD, and the same is true of his twist on Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile.”
— Peggy Earle
Evidence & Suspects
(1-3) The passengers react to being questioned about the night of the murder. (4&5) Mrs. Hubbard (Bacall) holds the murder weapon. (6) Poirot presents his summation to the group of suspects.
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