Thu 29 Jan 2015
A Movie Review by Mike Tooney: SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE (1948).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[6] Comments
by Mike Tooney
SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE. General Film Distributors, UK, 1948; Eagle-Lion Films, US, 1949. Jean Kent, Albert Lieven, Derrick De Marney, Paul Dupuis, Rona Anderson, David Tomlinson, Bonar Colleano, Finlay Currie, Grégoire Aslan, Alan Wheatley, Hugh Burden, David Hutcheson, Claude Larue, Zena Marshall, Leslie Weston, Eugene Deckers. Writers: Clifford Grey (story), William Douglas-Home (writer), Allan MacKinnon (writer). Director: John Paddy Carstairs.
We watch as an important diary is abducted from a wall safe in a Paris embassy and one of the staff has the misfortune to witness the theft, with fatal results. The thief passes the book to an accomplice and then suavely rejoins the party in progress. As the plot unfurls we learn that this diary contains enough explosive information to ignite another war in Central Europe.
What our murderous book taker doesn’t count on is being double-crossed by his accomplice, who intends to sell it to the highest bidder. What our double-crossing accomplice doesn’t count on is being closely pursued by the other guy aboard the Orient Express. He has already killed once for the diary, and as we’ll see he won’t hesitate to do it again.
For a story of murder and political intrigue, this movie has a remarkably light tone. Much of the film is taken up with amusing character interaction — even the villain seems to have a human side. That, as much as the rest of the plot, makes Sleeping Car to Trieste highly watchable.
Both IMDb and Wikipedia inform us that Sleeping Car is a remake of a 1932 British film called Rome Express (in which, incidentally, Finlay Currie appeared as another character), with a somewhat different plot line and writers.
Take note of the steward who can’t keep his tunic buttoned, Eugene Deckers, a Belgian actor who appeared many times in many disguises on the 1954 Ronald Howard Sherlock Holmes series, most memorably as Harry Crocker, the disappearance expert.
Viewers might remember David Tomlinson as the father in Disney’s Mary Poppins; in Sleeping Car he’s endowed with just one brain cell more than Bertie Wooster, his unwitting interference deflecting the story in unexpected directions.
January 29th, 2015 at 3:12 pm
I think this was remade again as ROME EXPRESS with Joseph Cotton. I don’t know if it is based on the book by Major Griffith that came out in the late Victorian era and was anthologized by Hugh Greene in that massive omnibus with THE TONTINE, and Richard Marsh’s THE BEETLE.
It’s been a while since I read the one and I have yet to watch this though I have it.
Allan MacKinnon who is credited on the screenplay was one of the best British thriller writers. His films THAT MAN IS NEWS and THAT MAN IN PARIS were big hits, a sort of British Nick and Nora with a spy plot, and he wrote some of the best thrillers in book form of the 50’s and early 60’s. Only a little of his work was reprinted here, but if you admired writers like Hammond Innes, Household, Lyall, Canning, or Bagley I recommend MacKinnon.
CORMORANT’S ISLE was published here in paperback and if you can find it is outstanding. Barzun and Taylor had high praise for it and MacKinnon’s work in general.
Among other things Derek de Marney played Peter Cheyney’s Slim Callaghan on the West End Stage and in film in MEET MR. CALLAGHAN. His brother Terence plays Uncle Silas in THE INHERITANCE, the version of LeFanu’s novel with Jean Simmons.
Among other things David Tomlinson is the helpless bachelor who ends up caring for mermaid Glynnis Johns in MIRANDA, Algy Longworth to Walter Pidgeon’s Capt. Hugh Drummond in CALLING BULLDOG DRUMMOND, the hapless English officer who romances Yvonne de Carlo in the comedy HOTEL SAHARA with Peter Ustinov, and the male lead in Disney’s BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS. He was a busy actor in the period from the end of the war into the mid sixties.
January 29th, 2015 at 4:06 pm
David,
The Cotten picture is called Peking Express, and while I prefer the duck, neither has anything to do with this film. In theory, Peking is a remake of Shanghai Express, with Dietrich and Clive Brook, although on IMDB they claim it to be a remake of Night Plane To Chun King. I know nothing about that film other than it was an extremely low budget second feature with Robert Preston in the male lead.
January 29th, 2015 at 4:08 pm
Rome Express on the other hand, with Conrad Veidt and Esther Ralston, was the original for Sleeping Car.
January 29th, 2015 at 6:14 pm
Barry,
NIGHT PLANE may well have been a remake of SHANGHAI EXPRESS. I just watched RUNAWAY BUS which is a remake of GHOST TRAIN. Changing from a train to a plane and back to a train could easily pass for originality in Hollywood.
NIGHT PLANE FROM CHUN KING did get a nice mention in Miller’s book or B Movies, but I don’t recall if he referred to it as a remake or being remade.
To further confuse things the Edmond Lowe BOMBAY EXPRESS was remade with Jon Hall as LAST TRAIN FROM BOMBAY.
I suspect this is based on the Griffith book (available as a free e-book)but how much of the original got to the screen is anyone’s guess.
At least we can eliminate Phillipots MY ADVENTURE ON THE FLYING SCOTSMAN and Wood’s THE PASSENGER FROM SCOTLAND YARD. There is no shortage of mystery and intrigue on a train in the genre or on screen.
January 29th, 2015 at 11:09 pm
David, Barry
Thanks for bringing up all those other crime and suspense movies taking place on trains, as well as a book or two, too.
One could easily write a book about crime films taking place on trains, and one (someone) really should. Or make that two books. One on mystery novels taking place on trains would be welcome in this house too.
What is it about trains, especially those in movies, that makes them so interesting and attractive?
January 30th, 2015 at 12:15 am
A train is the ideal environment for a mystery or thriller. There is a closed society that is relatively isolated for long periods (certainly in earlier times) and short of leaping to their possible death there is no where for the suspects to go between stations.
There are a variety of venues from private and semi private compartments, sleeping cars, baggage cars, dining area, public cars, lounge to stage action in, and enough places to hide to make it both a challenge to find someone and difficult not to be seen. There are borders to be crossed, exotic cities to reach, dangerous and elegant trestles to cross …
Then there is the romance of the machine. No other mode of transportation ever caught the publics imagination quite like a train. Add to that the original great train robbery by Charles Peace, Jesse and Frank James, the Orient Express, the Trans Siberian, the famous hijacked Confederate train in the Civil War, and other famous trains and it was a natural.
Doyle used them frequently, Canon Whitechurch did a whole series with Thorpe Hazel, and so on. Half of Frank Packard’s output seemed to be set on or about trains. Graham Greene used them for THE ORIENT EXPRESS, MINISTRY OF FEAR, and TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT and one figures in Ambler’s BACKGROUND TO DANGER. Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming both used them more than once. There was the Rome, Paris-Lyon, Shanghai, Irish, and other Express trains and bestsellers like Dekobra’s THE MADONNA OF THE SLEEPING CARS.
I’m not sure there was ever another form of transportation as well suited to suspense, drama, melodrama, romance, mystery, and adventure.
Ships are too big, planes too small, the train though is the ideal size with limitless possibilities for mischief. Some like the Orient Express even lived up to the hype. It still had that exotic feel when I rode what was left of it in the seventies (it has been restored and runs its classic route since), but the cigar smoking gilded cherubs were still on the ceiling of the dining car.
Then too, trains were an adventure you could actually experience. Few people could afford a passenger liner, few needed to fly, but anyone might make a journey on a train. We forget just how common train travel was, easily up into my early twenties even in this country.
Few things are familiar and exotic, common and romantic, or mythic and down to earth, but trains are.
If nothing else how many little boys, and some little girls, dreamed of adventure on those Lionel trains of our childhood?