Murder on the Orient Express (1974) on Netflix
In December 1935, detective Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express from Istanbul. Snow strands the train in Yugoslavia, and a passenger, Samuel Ratchett, is found stabbed to death.
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- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
All first-class compartments of the Orient Express are sold out for the December 1935 run from Istanbul to London, but Signor Bianchi, a director of the rail line, finds his old friend Hercule Poirot a place. Among the passengers are American businessman Samuel Ratchett, his secretary Hector McQueen and valet Edward Beddoes, governess Mary Debenham, missionary Greta Ohlsson, Princess Natalia Dragomiroff and her maid Hildegarde Schmidt, Count and Countess Andrenyi, Colonel John Arbuthnott, car salesman Antonio Foscarelli, theatrical agent Cyrus B. Hardman and socialite Harriet Belinda Hubbard. Ratchett asks Poirot to serve as his bodyguard because he has received death threats; Poirot refuses. When a snowdrift strands the train in Yugoslavia, Ratchett is found dead in his compartment. Bianchi asks Poirot to investigate before the Yugoslav police get involved.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Weeks before the snowbound train scenes were due to be shot, the production feared a lack of snow and planned to truck in large quantities at considerable expense; heavy snowfall the night before made that unnecessary, and the snow-laden backup trucks had themselves become stuck in the snow.
- Cast members eagerly accepted as soon as they were approached; Sidney Lumet went to Sean Connery first, and Ingrid Bergman, who was offered the part of Princess Dragomiroff, asked instead to play Greta Ohlsson.
- Agatha Christie, displeased with 1960s adaptations of her books, was unwilling to sell more film rights, so EMI Films chairman Nat Cohen and producer John Brabourne felt they needed Lord Mountbatten of Burma, Brabourne's father-in-law, to help get her approval.
- Nat Cohen claimed the film was the first completely financed by a British company to make the top of Variety's weekly US box office charts; its success, from an idea of his, prompted the Rank Organisation to re-enter filmmaking.
- Exteriors were mostly shot in France in 1973, with a railway workshop near Paris standing in for Istanbul station, while the train's journey through Central Europe was filmed in the Jura Mountains on the then-recently closed line from Pontarlier to Gilley.
