Murder on the Orient Express

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Timing: 2:8 (128 min)

7.141/10
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7.732/10
32284

7.2/10
74000

All about film

Video 1

Photo 78

Actors and characters

Release date

1974-11-22

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Production

Paramount, EMI Films, G.W. Films, Agatha Christie Limited

Genre

Drama, Thriller, Mystery

Budget

$1 400 000

Revenue

$27 634 716

Website

Director

Sidney Lumet

Actors

Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Martin Balsam, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Jacqueline Bisset
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Agatha Christie

Producer

John Brabourne, Richard Goodwin

Operator

Geoffrey Unsworth

Composer

Richard Rodney Bennett

Artist

Audition

Editing

Anne V. Coates
All team (29)

• Agatha Christie, who was 84 years old at the time, attended the film's premiere in November 1974. The writer was very pleased. She particularly liked the image of Hercule Poirot, embodied on screen by actor Albert Finney, although his mustache did not impress her much. The appearance at the premiere turned out to be the writer's last public outing. Christie died on January 12, 1976.
• Applying makeup to Albert Finney took a long time, and the actor was also performing on stage. Such a demanding work schedule didn't leave him enough time to sleep, so the following procedure soon developed. An ambulance would drive up to the actor's house. The sleeping Finney would be carefully transferred into the ambulance, still in his pajamas, so as not to wake him, and taken to the set. Makeup artists would begin working on his face while en route from home to the studio. There, the actor would again be carefully carried out of the car, placed on a couch in the makeup room, and his makeup would be finalized. Finney slept through all of this.
• The final scene of the film, in which Poirot explains what happened, required shooting with more cameras simultaneously than the set could accommodate. Many takes were necessary, which was especially difficult for Albert Finney, who had to repeat his eight-page monologue again and again.
• The princess Dragomirova's maid reads a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) containing the line: "What has been done to you? And with what are you offended, unhappy child?", which is a reference to the murder of the Armstrongs' child.
• In 1929, the Orient Express was indeed stuck in the snow for five days approximately 130 kilometers from Istanbul. This incident served as the basis for Agatha Christie's novel and its film adaptation.
• The Orient Express was the first feature film to use radio microphones during filming. The idea to use them belongs to sound engineer Peter Handford (1919-2007).
• By the time she worked on the film "Murder on the Orient Express", Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) had already been filming in Hollywood for almost 40 years, and her Swedish accent was almost imperceptible. The filmmakers had to hire a linguist to teach the actress to speak with an accent again.
• Upon receiving the Academy Award for her role in "Murder on the Orient Express", Ingrid Bergman apologized to actress Valentina Cortese, who had been nominated for an Oscar for her role in François Truffaut's "Day for Night" (1973). Bergman stated that Cortese deserved the award more.
• The food served on the train at the beginning of the film was stolen from the set just before filming began. Everything had to be urgently found and procured in Paris in the middle of the night to avoid disrupting the shooting day.
• Initially, the filmmakers planned to cast Alec Guinness (1914-2000) as the famous detective, but the actor was unavailable. Paul Scofield (1922-2008) was then offered the role of Poirot – with the same result. Eventually, they had to turn to 37-year-old Albert Finney, who played Poirot, whose age was approaching 60.
• An error was made in the opening credits of the original copy – Colin Blakely's surname was written as "Blanckley".
• The princess Dragomirova’s maid is reading a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) which contains the line: “What have they done to you? And how has the unhappy child been wronged?”, which is a reference to the murder of the Armstrong child.
• In 1929, the Orient Express was indeed stuck in the snow for 5 days approximately 130 kilometers from Istanbul. This incident formed the basis for Agatha Christie’s novel and its film adaptation.
• The Orient Express was the first feature film to use radio microphones during its production. The idea to apply them belonged to sound engineer Peter Handford (1919-2007).
• There was a mistake in the opening credits of the original copy – Colin Blakely’s surname was written as “Blanckley”.