Want to snuggle down with a Stormtrooper-free film?
That's easy - stay out of the cinema and reach for the remote control as Total MKs film expert @reelreviewer presents the first of his festive picks on the small screen this Christmas...
Murder On the Orient Express (1974)
Showing on ITV3 Saturday 19 December 2:10pm and Tuesday 22 December, 3:30.
Director: Sidney Lumet.
Synopsis
Fresh from solving a mystery in Turkey, 'detective of international renown' Hercule Poirot returns to London, settling down to relax on the luxurious Orient Express. But the train is strangely packed to the rafters with an odd mix of people, including mouthy American Mrs Harriet Hubbard (Bacall), simple Swedish Missionary Greta Ohlsson (Bergman) and xenophobic Scottish soldier Colonel Arbuthnot (Connery).
All goes well until one of them, rich businessman Mr Ratchett (Widmark) winds up stabbed to death, possibly by more than one of the other passengers.
It's up to Poirot to apply his little grey cells to sort this out.
Review by Jason Day
This Agatha Christie adaptation, advertised with such memorable taglines like 'The greatest cast of suspicious characters ever involved in murder' and (even better) 'The Who's Who in the Whodunnit!' is almost certainly one of the greatest of her novel-film versions, though the producers had to beg her to sell the screen rights (and with the intercession of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Duke Of Edinburgh's Uncle, no less - one of the producer's father-in-law), so unhappy was she at previous attempts to translate her narrative to the big screen.
Thankfully, she relented and we are rewarded with a sublime and supremely classy train of entertainment.
Yes, the acting becomes increasingly theatrical as the cast attempt to out ham each other, but the production is immaculate, the ridiculously pretty music leaps about like an impish, gazelle and the ending is a corker.
For those who haven't seen this delicious cake of a movie, check it.
For full review: http://cinesocialuk.com/2013/12/11/murder-on-the-orient-express-1974
Cast & Crew
Producer: John Brabourne, Richard B. Goodwin. Writer: Paul Dehn. Camera: Geoffrey Unsworth. Music: Richard Rodney Bennett. Sets: Tony Walton.
Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bissett, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts, Richard Widmark, Michael York, Colin Blakely, George Coulouris, Denis Quilley.
