Mon 16 May 2016
A Book! Movie! Review by Dan Stumpf: SEBASTIEN JAPRISOT – The 10:30 from Marseilles / THE SLEEPING CAR MURDERS (1965).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[3] Comments
SEBASTIEN JAPRISOT – The 10:30 from Marseilles. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1963. Pocket, paperback, 1964. Souvenir Press, UK, hardcover, 1964. Originally published as Compartiment Tueurs, Paris, 1962; translated into English by Francis Price.
THE SLEEPING CAR MURDERS. Fox, 1966. First released in France, 1965, as Compartiment tueurs. Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Jean-Louiis Trintingnant, Michel Piccoli, Catherine Allegret and Jacques Perrin. Written and directed by Costa-Gravas.
Two approaches to the same story, with striking differences.
In the book, the 10:30 a.m. train from Marseilles pulls into Paris and the guy who cleans out the cars finds a dead woman, strangled in her berth (one of six) in a sleeping car. The Police begin their investigation at the logical place: find out who else was in that compartment and see what they know.
Inspector Graziani and his assistant Jean-Lou get the unenviable assignment of tracking them down, with the dubious help of their superior, a sub-chief who likes to talk in pithy but useless aphorisms (“Cover everything. It’s always where you don’t look….â€) whereupon….
We cut to Berth 226 and the man who used it last night: What he was doing there, how he interacted with the other passengers, and his reaction on finding out the Police want to talk to him. Then, as he rehearses his story, someone comes up from behind and shoots him.
Graziani and Jean-Lou, meanwhile, are still running down leads and find themselves with a problem: One passenger tells them there was a berth unoccupied; another passenger insists there was a man in it; and the woman who bought the ticket maintains she was there all night.
Then we cut to another Berth and the woman who used it; what she was doing on the train, what she saw there, and a long bit about her background. She tells the Police everything she knows, and after they leave, someone comes up from behind and shoots her.
And so it goes as we follow the investigating officers, then switch to another passenger… who also ends up dead. And then another. And then… well, you get the idea; someone is killing everyone who was on the train that night. But why? And how is the killer finding them?
Then, as we’re running out of berths, the pattern breaks and we get the answer to the riddle of the not-empty bed. We also get a charming tale of young love and youthful idiocy, mixed with a tense cat-and-mouse between the police, the killer, and his last victim.
Japrisot’s puzzle is a tricky one, and I applaud his craftsmanship, but I have to say things tend to drag a bit when he details the lives of his passenger/victims. It’s as if he’s more interested in the puzzle than the characters — and it shows.
Costa-Gravas’s film suffers from something similar; things drag seriously when he gets into the minutia of the characters involved, but he manages to save the effort with some sly visual tricks and camerawork that manages to be stylish without showing off.
Interestingly, he also chooses to reconstruct the story in linear fashion. We start with everyone getting on board before the murder, see them interact, understand the problem of the empty berth right from the start, and get involved with the young klutzes who end up being pursued by the killers.
Yves Montand has the dog-weary look appropriate for a police detective, and Simone Signoret radiates her usual overstuffed star power, but the most interesting performances come from Catherine Allegret and Daniel Perrin as a pair of youngsters caught up in the machinations of Japrisot’s tricky plot. Together they convey the kind of emotional reality one finds in the best films of Francois Truffaut, and I found myself wanting to see more of their affairs and less of the murders, well-done though they are.
And one other nod to cinematic convention: Where the book wraps up with off-page arrests, interviews and confessions, the movie ends with a car chase and shoot-out; well done, but I still wanted to see more of those crazy kids.
May 17th, 2016 at 7:01 am
I very much enjoyed the movie, when seen decades ago.
Costa-Gavras is a lively story teller (Z, The Confession, Missing).
Have never read the book – but should.
Thanks for a good review.
May 17th, 2016 at 2:31 pm
Sebastian Japrisot is an interesting writer who fared quite well on screen even writing many of the screenplays for his work. He outsold Simenon here at the time and was probably the most widely read French writer of that era in English translation after Pierre Boulle and Simone de Beauvior, one of the few to make the American bestseller list with LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN.
A TRAP FOR CINDERELLA, THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN (twice), GOODBYE FRIEND (a caper novelized by him from his screenplay for the film with Charles Bronson and Alain Delon), and A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT are all excellent adaptations of his work, and of course RIDER IN THE RAIN, his original screenplay, is something of a cult classic.
This one is almost a tribute to Simenon and Agatha Christie (and in structure somewhat to Ed McBain and the 87th Precinct books which were quite popular in France), more involved with plot than character, though twisty plots are one of Japrisot’s more notable characteristics in all his work.
THE SLEEPING CAR MURDERS, the first version of LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN, and GOODBYE FRIEND are all available on YouTube in varying quality (the first and last not bad prints).
A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT about a woman’s epic search for her husband lost in the confusion in the aftermath of WWI became an Oscar nominated film and is more a mainstream novel than genre though it does feature a private detective at one point.
I was a great fan of Costa-Gravas work until he finally let his politics get in the way of the storytelling in some of his later work. Up to then he made lively thoughtful films though, and despite its flaws I would add STATE OF SIEGE, like Z and SLEEPING CARS also with Yves Montand — ironically since Montand was extremely conservative to Costa Gravas left leaning sensibilities — to those Mike listed.
May 18th, 2016 at 5:01 pm
(Trying hard to avoid spoilers here.)
What I remember most about the book ( I don’t recall seeing the movie) was being so let- down by the ending. A tightly-plotted thriller with a number of plausible suspects, then suddenly…the mystery novel equivalent of “and then I woke up.” I was disappointed.
I had better luck with Japrisot’s THE WOMEN IN EVIDENCE which tells the story of a ne’er do well through the voices of the women he’s been involved with. Includes some tricky cross-cutting of time and narratives that completely change what has come before them.