All Aboard The Orient Express!
Le grand retour d’Hercule Poirot au cinéma.
Hercule Poirot est de retour ! Kenneth Branagh signe une nouvelle adaptation du Crime de l’Orient-Express, actuellement au cinéma. A bord du plus mythique des trains, l’acteur et réalisateur britannique donne un nouveau visage au célébrissime détective privé, entouré d’un casting de rêve… En voiture !
Agatha Christie ‘had always been allergic’ to cinema adaptations of her books, her husband Max Mallowan was quoted as saying. ‘She didn’t like her characters to be portrayed on book covers either,’ says James Prichard, her great-grandson. Christie, who wrote 66 detective novels between 1920 and 1976, translated into around 45 languages, is the most widely read novelist in history, with sales of more than two billion copies worldwide.
2.There have been 23 film adaptations of her books in the UK alone, not to mention the multiple TV series. And now we have Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also plays Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It features a parade of towering greats from stage and screen including Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer and Daisy Ridley. It’s possible that there haven’t been so many stars gathered together in one movie since the last big-screen adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974, directed by Sidney Lumet.
3.The 2017 version sets up the classic whodunnit with 14 strangers boarding the longdistance passenger train that connects Istanbul with Paris. These include Caroline Hubbard, an American widow, the Russian Princess Dragomiroff and her maid, Hildegarde Schmidt. A businessman named Ratchett (Johnny Depp) is murdered at night in the compartment next to Poirot. The train gets marooned in an avalanche (a snowdrift in the book) and the plot follows Poirot’s interrogation of each of the passengers in the hunt for the killer.
TRUE DETECTIVE
4. The appeal of the film is clear: stars are not being asked to play anything run-of-themill. They are showcased in sumptuous 1930s glamour, dressing for dinner, and the cooks produce delicious fancies such as walnut soufflés. ‘I liked the sense that I could let the audience escape into that world,’ says Branagh. We live in a world where everything is so transient and quick, it seemed to me a period in which, from a piece of linen to a glass of water to an arrangement of flowers, there could be a way of evoking a parenthesis of calm in an incredibly rushed life.’ 5. An ‘avid reader of crime fiction’, he last read the book years ago, but admits to being surprised when he reread it. ‘I’d forgotten how it worked out! ‘I liked the ensemble nature of it,’ he continues, ‘I like it being enclosed in snow, the claustrophobia. And it’s a tale that sums up the golden age of travel: a world in which you feel the miles under your feet.’
6.‘Agatha Christie described her work as entertainment and dismissed any other claims for her work. But she leaves holes,’ he says, ‘invitations to go a little deeper. I think she definitely asks whether revenge is worthwhile – Can you forgive? When do you stop hurting? – and says that loss has to be acknowledged because it can provide a poison that can create more crime.’
7.Branagh’s Poirot is slightly evolved from the original character. Everything there is to love about Poirot is here: his grooming routine, intellect, appetites – specifically, hot chocolate, macaroons, ice cream. But there is also something that doesn’t appear in the novel. ‘He carries some secrets that the books seem to hint at.’ And Branagh brings another strength, says James Prichard, Agatha Christie’s great-grandson: ‘He’s a good-looking Poirot and you don’t necessarily think of Poirot as being good-looking.’
HOP ON THE LEGENDARY TRAIN
8. Murder on the Orient Express was filmed at Longcross Studios, in Surrey. The ensemble of stars ‘were very playful, ebullient and like naughty schoolchildren at times,’ says Branagh. ‘Judi is a big part of that. She has a capacity to switch from daftness into a very concentrated performance and she encouraged the others to keep up.’
9.Istanbul station was built in the studio in Surrey as was the train itself: a majestic locomotive with four complete carriages designed to run along nearly one mile of track. Hydraulics and air bellows beneath each carriage helped to convince the cast they were riding on an actual train, as well as virtual moving scenery on LED screens.
10.‘If you suffer from motion sickness, as I do, it was a nightmare,’ says Tom Bateman, who plays Bouc, Poirot’s sidekick, who works at the train company that runs the Orient Express.‘I had to pop a bottle of champagne and walk through
the carriage and talk to all the passengers and pour them champagne. It wasn’t only motion sickness, it was a bit like trying to juggle on a unicycle.’
11.Branagh’s approach was to surprise his cast with an unscripted scene to make the action more convincing, such as getting them to watch a short film related to the plot and shooting their reactions. ‘I love stuff like that,’ says Olivia Colman, who plays the princess’s maid. ‘If you think too much or prepare too much, often that is the death of it.’
12.Branagh also embraced relentless precision as his guiding aesthetic. He never shot unless someone had been around with a ruler making sure each glass, plate, knife, fork was in exactly the right place. Dishes had to be historically accurate. All the train fittings were either Orient Express originals or copied from originals, from the seats that unfolded to become beds right down to the coat hooks, door latches and light switches. Authenticity also governed the costumes, which are mostly handmade and true to period.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE ’STACHE
13. The fabric for Poirot’s suits was specially woven in a mill in Scotland to ensure the drape and movement was ‘true’. ‘Cloth from the 1930s has a much denser weave, which we don’t use today for tailoring,’ says Alexandra Byrne, the costume designer. ‘If you are using a modern fabric, it’s a bit more bouncy.’
14.But perhaps the most startling prop is Hercule Poirot’s formidable moustache. In Christie’s stories, Poirot’s moustache is described as ‘gigantic’, ‘immense’ and ‘amazing’. In Murder on the Orient Express, he is ‘a little man with enormous moustaches’. Agatha Christie was said to be disappointed with Albert Finney’s more reserved whiskers in the 1974 film. ‘I wrote that my detective had the finest moustache in England,’ she allegedly said. ‘But he didn’t in the film. I thought that was a pity. Why shouldn’t he have the best moustache?’
15.Now Branagh has set a standard of facial shrubbery that few can hope to equal. He sees it as a ‘visor’ and a ‘mask’ that also hints at military service. ‘There is more substance and bulk, more growl in the moustache,’ he says. It is also a useful aid in detection. ‘People around him, I certainly felt, were focusing on the moustache, and not on him checking them out.’ Branagh tried growing his own – ‘it took a long time’ – but in the end went for a stick-on version.
16.‘Everytime you made Ken laugh it would peel off,’ says Bateman. ‘I do remember getting the first email jpeg of the moustache and seeing something that took magnificence to a magnificent degree,’ says Green. ‘I just giggled to myself and thought, “Can we create a movie where the moustache by the end doesn’t appear distracting because you are so involved in the story?”’