Teresa Reviews “And Then There Were None” (1945)

Fidelity to text: 5 murder weapons (compared to play); 3 (compared to novel).

And Then There Were None is the world’s highest-selling mystery novel, so you’ve probably read it and wondered where the movie’s ending came from. The film is based on Agatha’s play, not her novel, and that’s why it’s not what you remember.

Quality of movie on its own: 5 murder weapons.

It’s terrific; alternately scary, atmospheric, tense, and funny. Yes, this is a funny movie about people dying in gruesome ways. It’s also surprisingly tidy and bloodless, but movies made in 1945 didn’t revel in gore like they do today. You could watch it with your kids, except they’ll have nightmares despite not seeing so much as a knife sticking out of a body. It’s amazing what a skilled director can do with implication. What you imagine is always worse than what you see.

And Then There Were None is a very early “the murderer is in the house with you” film, a slasher flick with an A-list cast and none of the blood. Ten people are lured under false pretenses and trapped in an island mansion. Other than the Rogers — he the butler and she the cook — none of them know each other.

Right from the start, you’ll get a feel for the characters. The boatman delivers eight strangers to Indian Island and during the journey, you can see how awkward and uncomfortable they are. You can also guess who’ll be a cool customer later on. On their arrival, they are greeted by the butler, Rogers, and his wife the cook, Mrs. Rogers. The host is delayed, they’re told. There’s only a cat roaming the house and keeping an eye on things.

After a good dinner, everyone’s relaxed and amused. One guest, Prince Nikita Starloff, sits at the piano and plays and sings the already-arranged sheet music “Ten Little Indians.” It’s a macabre little ditty, but no one suspects sinister motive. They’re on Indian Island, after all. There’s even a circular arrangement of ten little Indian statues on the dining room table. By the way: Keep an ear out for the tune; you’ll hear it several more times in the background.

Then the butler, obeying written instructions, cues up a record labeled “Swan Song” and the tension ratchets up. Instead of music, they hear a voice accusing everyone of murder, crimes that they committed that couldn’t proved and prosecuted, and they all got away with it. Until now.

Does anyone feel guilty? Mrs. Rogers does. She screams and babbles, while her husband tries to shut her up until she faints. The exiled Russian Count cheerfully admits to running over two people while drunk; his complaint is that he lost his driver’s license. Everyone else makes excuses, but they heard the record promising they’ll be punished.

As the guests die off, one by one, bits of the truth emerges. They’re all guilty as charged. Or are they? Someone’s acting as the executioner, so where is he or she?

This is a surprisingly funny movie considering the body count. In one scene, four men spy on each other, some of them staring through keyholes. Rogers gets drunk and insubordinate. Seeing Rogers and his wife dead, Miss Brent’s main concern is that there’s no one who can find the breakfast marmalade. Miss Brent also speaks in quotes, possibly to prevent original thought from intruding. The private detective, Blore, always gets it wrong. The judge is sharp and witty. Dr. Armstrong is a secret lush. Lombard is a sardonic observer. The survivors argue over what they see, while completely missing the body lying at their feet.

Then there’s the unnamed cat, who regularly provides comic relief . Kitty pops out of the woodpile when the characters nervously seek the source of a noise. Kitty soothes the judge as he does his Ernst Blofeld imitation. Kitty humanizes Miss Brent and leads the guests to her body. Don’t miss the beautifully arranged yarn trail that almost — but not quite! — spells out who’s the evil mastermind. It’s a great touch when Kitty bats Miss Brent’s yarn ball over the landing, and the ball dangles like a head in a noose.

Kitty is a dumb witness, seeing all and never telling. You could almost make the case that Kitty made the arrangements for her own amusement. What’s more enjoyable for a cat than playing with mice until they die of fun?

If you’re a cinema buff, you’ll enjoy the mise en scène, the lighting, the carefully chosen camera angles. There’s even special effects that permit the camera to pull through a keyhole.

The director, René Clair, makes the most of his isolated location and even employs psychotropic weather to punctuate the action. He makes a visual joke about the hand of Mr. Owen and an aural joke with a well-timed sneeze. He breaks the cardinal rule forbidding characters to stare into the camera; they confess their sins to the audience, forcing us to see them as untrustworthy but scared people.

The vast majority of the novel moved directly to the screen, but not the ending. I understand why. Agatha rewrote the novel as a play in 1943, altering the ending to make it less grim and nihilistic. She didn’t think audiences would pay to watch everyone die, especially during wartime. There’s no redemption in the original novel but in the play, there is.

So that’s the ending you get. The two most arguably evil characters in the novel, the last to die so they suffer the most, get retconned. A careful observer will see that Philip Lombard never says “I did it.” He says “Lombard did it.”

Similarly, Lombard’s monogrammed luggage has the wrong letters, but he has a ready explanation.

Likewise, Vera Claythorne never admits her guilt, but she doesn’t deny it either. This time around, Vera didn’t cause the death of the child she was responsible for. Instead, she took the blame for her crazy sister’s murder of sister’s fiancé, knowing that there’s not enough evidence to convict her.

This retcon changes the ending where Vera and Lombard, as the two survivors, confront each other. In the novel, Vera shoots Lombard and, traumatized by terrible memories of her evil deed, hangs herself. She dies never knowing who masterminded her death. In the film, she and Lombard decide to trust each other and why not? He’s the handsome hero, and she’s the brave shield maiden so you know what’s going to happen. But she still shoots Lombard. Then she finds out whodunnit, faces death by hanging, and foils the villain.

And it works, particularly since the original ending can’t be filmed. In the novel, Scotland Yard detectives reconstruct the crime based on what they found on the island, but they can’t reach a conclusion. They mention that Indian Island’s owner, a man known to the police for many reasons, also died mysteriously. The final pages are devoted to printing a message found in a bottle, tossed into the sea by the mastermind, that explained what he did.

Even if they ended the movie implying that Vera hung herself after hearing the villain’s confession, it would be deeply unsatisfying and depressing, especially to an audience in the middle of wartime.

Thus, the play gets filmed and it’s one of the best Agatha adaptions I’ve seen to date. I’ll watch it again to see a genius like René Clair film one of Agatha’s finest novels.