A man by the name of Ratchet has been stabbed multiple times during one night on the Orient Express train. Detective Hercule Poirot investigates the murder by questioning every passenger.
Blaine: Producer Richard Goodwin’s daughter was reading the “Murder on the Orient Express” book and Richard thought it must be something, so Richard read the book and thought it should be made into a film. Sidney Lumet was bowled over by the cleverness of the plot after reading the script and really wanted to direct it because he felt it was perfect for him. Sidney thought there was many ways of doing a movie like this, but he didn’t want it to be like a small little, realistic British mystery movie. Sidney thought of it as glamorous and put an all star cast in it. They didn’t want Albert Finney to play Hercule Poirot because the character is in his 50s and Albert was in his early 30s. Sidney had other actors in mind like Alec Guinness and Paul Scofield, but they both were unavailable so they chose Albert even though he was too young, but still a great actor. They decided to put makeup on Albert to make him look older. All the other actors they spoke to really wanted to be apart of the project after informing them that Sidney was going to direct and they loved the script.
Sean Connery was the first actor Sidney went to ask if he wanted to be in the film and they worked with each other before. Sean said that Sidney is always stimulating and a good friend. Richard Widmark agreed to be in the movie just to meet the cast of people they chose. Jacqueline Bisset was very flattered to be asked if she would be in a movie with an ensemble like this, but she was curious of why they had been picked and what Sidney expected from them. Everyone was delighted with the parts that they were attached to. All except for one and that was Ingrid Bergman. Sidney originally wanted Ingrid to be Princess Dragomiroff, but she wanted to play Greta, the crazy nanny. There’s not a lot of scenes that focus on Greta, but Ingrid told Sidney to trust her because she knew that Greta was right for her. All that payed off because Ingrid's performance as Greta won her a best supporting actress oscar.
The only location they could get that was big enough for a train station was a railroad shed in Paris, where they repaired engines. A whole train could pull into there. The actual Orient Express train no longer existed so they reinvented it. The train was fake because none of the carriages existed in a finished and functional form. Portions of them existed in museums. They were able to borrow some portions that contained the Lalique paneling. They would use one piece and then duplicate it.
They shot it in Europe because the Orient Express is a European train. The gauge is different than England and the wheels of the English trains are set at a different width.
Sidney wanted the costumes to actually look like costumes and the actors would be happy with the costumes they were wearing. Albert Finney was so unrecognizable to the rest of the cast and he was always in character on the set with all that makeup on him.
The most difficult part was getting a shot of the train leaving the station. They did one take of that shot without rehearsal at 5 in the morning because they didn’t think they were going to get another chance to shoot it. They did it perfectly and clapped for doing a fantastic job.
The shots of the train running and the whole sequence of the train getting stuck were done in the French Alps in a little town called Pontarlier where there was always snow by late October and November. The day before there was no snow and Sidney knew they had to do something quick so they ordered ten large trucks of snow. But then out of no where it started to snow hard and there was tones of snow which was good news. The bad news was the trucks got blocked off by snow and it was expensive to get them out of that mess. The main part of the film was shot at Elstree Studios in the north of London, on a set designed to look like the inside of the train.
Some of the scenes in the dining car were done by rear-screen photography. They had gone out and shot the actual countryside that they needed and each window would have it’s own projector in the front and project the passing countryside.
Sidney knew he wanted a very lush and original music score. Steve Sondheim recommend composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. Richard went down to Elstree Studios where they were filming and saw pieces of the film to get ideas of how the music score should sound. Richard wanted to do a proper music score and Sidney trusted Richard to do what he believed was right. Richard thought of “Murder on the Orient Express” as something entertaining and wanted to give the audience that feeling of glamour of excitement. The first thing Sidney said to Richard was they were going to need a big piece of music for the train. Richard thought what he could do was make that train dance and make it so glamorous with a big waltz because he wanted to make it gorgeous.
Author Agatha Christie went to the premiere of “Murder on the Orient Express” to show her respect and she thought Sidney and everyone else did a terrific job of turning her novel into something artistic. My rating on “Murder on the Orient Express” is five out of five stars.
Music by Sir Richard Rodney Bennett
Blaine: I like this shot in the film where the doorway is framing the people in the next room.
