I know I've seen this before, and I'm pretty sure it was at a Christmas visit to my Granny's in the late seventies or maybe even early eighties. This is a real "BBC Christmas schedule" film - star studded and designed to be watched with a belly full of turkey. I'm pretty sure I didn't realize just
how star-studded it was when I saw it before. It's got (deep breath), Lauren Bacall! Ingrid Bergman! John Gielgud! Sean Connery! Vanessa Redgrave! Albert Finney! Michael York! Anthony Perkins! Richard Widmark! Wendy Hiller! Jacqueline Bisset! and even the lesser stars are recognizable faces, both British (
Colin Blakely) and American (
Martin Balsam). Sadly, apart from Finney who is (I think) miscast as Poirot (there can only be David Suchet), none of the others really gets to strut their stuff, although Bergman got an Oscar for her performance as a super-religious Swedish missionary, but it was probably one of those Paul-Newman-in-
The-Color-of-Money deals where they were just so pleased to see her in an English language film again they had to do something. I must say, I must've been a more patient tot (I think we all had longer attention spans back them) because watching it now, it seemed to
drag. The pacing was slow and the film was over-long, even though, after a slowish prologue, something is pretty much guaranteed to be happening every minute to make use of that amazing cast. I remember enjoying it, and it must've been because I legitimately did not know the plot. But once you do know it, there isn't much to enjoy. Gielgud's great, but there's nothing for him to chew on. Connery's great but... you get the idea. Christie's characters aren't always cardboard cut-outs, but when there are 12 suspects, you never have enough time, even in an overlong movie, to get to care about them. Also, although there are some nice shots of scenery, the train always seems so claustrophobic a set, so I can't imagine wanting to see it on the big screen. Maybe if it was an HBO miniseries?
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