© 2017Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
"Murder on the Orient Express" What are the difficulties of adapting the world's best-selling author's novel into a movie? ?
The hunt for the true culprit is even more fun with an all-star cast
The plot of the original novel, "Murder on the Orient Express," was so original that it shocked the mystery novel world. When adapting a mystery novel that seeks the true culprit of a murder case into a film, the most important factor is probably the casting. By having an unexpected culprit and having a big-name actor play that role, the drama of solving the mystery has more impact. If you follow this rule, for example, in film adaptations of Yokomizo Seishi's Kindaichi Kosuke series, such as " The Inugami Family " and " The Devil's Ball Song ," the true culprit is more or less obvious if you look at the cast.
How did Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express deal with this? By assembling an all-star cast. By casting the big names of the time as the 12 suspect passengers and the conductor of the Orient Express, Lumet made it impossible for the audience (who hadn't read the original novel) to guess who the real culprit was. Although some of the cast members were obviously not big stars, the film brought together a stellar cast that included Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman, and Jacqueline Bisset.
“Murder on the Orient Express” © 2017Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Lumet's version begins with a flashback to the kidnapping of a young girl from the Armstrong family. Although this opening is different from the novel, the rest of the story is basically faithful to the original. The Orient Express leaves Istanbul and heads to Calais, France, but gets stuck on the way due to heavy snow, where one of the passengers is murdered. Poirot solves the mystery of whether one of the passengers is the culprit. In the original, the connection to the Armstrong family's case is discovered midway through. Although there are some changes to the importance of the characters, no one would want to make major changes to a film adaptation of a novel that shines brightly in the history of mystery novels. As a result, Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express was highly praised by audiences and critics as a proper film adaptation, and was nominated in six categories for the Academy Awards (Ingrid Bergman won Best Supporting Actress).
The success of Murder on the Orient Express Express prompted a series of all-star film adaptations of Christie's works, including Death on the Nile (1978), Murder on the Crystal Line (1980), Murder on the Mediterranean (1982), Murder on the English Channel (1984), and Murder on the Dead Sea (1988).
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