Teresa Reviews “The Mystery of the Blue Train” (2006)

Teresa reviews “The Mystery of the Blue Train” (2006) and wants a buy a ticket for the next trip to Nice, in the non-murdering section.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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Fidelity to text: 3 coshes

Add attempted murder and jewel theft, along with mysterious nuns, creative backstories, and personality transplants.

Quality of movie on its own: 4 coshes

On its own terms, this film works. For a vicious murder, it’s bright, bubbly, effervescent, and at times, silly and funny.

Agatha disliked The Mystery of the Blue Train. She thought less of readers who gushed that it was their favorite Christie. Why did she disparage her eighth novel? Because she wrote it under extreme duress. She was still recovering from the death of her mother, the fallout from her eleven-day disappearance, and the collapse of her marriage. She didn’t want to write anything but she didn’t have a choice. She was divorced, had a child to support, contractual obligations, and she needed the money.

In her autobiography, Agatha wrote that Blue Train was the book that proved to her that she was a professional writer. She could produce a coherent novel despite being over-stressed, uninspired, and unwilling to write a word.

What made the difference? Having to earn her living. Previously, despite the other novels and innumerable short stories, she could tell herself she was a wife who wrote. Now, she supported her household by herself.

That’s not to say she didn’t take a shortcut. She reused the plot of “The Plymouth Express,” a short story she’d written several years before. She altered names, added international jewel dealers, plenty of extra characters, and a more complicated plot.

The core of the short story remains: A spoiled, self-centered, unhappily married heiress takes the train to meet her lover and during the journey, she’s murdered and her priceless jewels stolen. The changes are minor. Ruth’s caddish husband and louche lover are the main suspects in both short story and novel. In both versions, the murderer turns out to be someone unexpected. In Plymouth Express, a naval officer discovers Ruth’s body and disappears from the story. In Blue Train, Katherine Grey, former companion and poor relation who inherited money, is involved from beginning to end.

I believe the plot similarities between short story and novel are why so much of the novel was rewritten for the film. The producers, knowing that The Plymouth Express episode appeared during the shows third series in 1991, needed to clearly differentiate between the two Poirot episodes. They didn’t want viewers saying, “I already saw this.”

So this version of the novel received a convoluted plot. It opens, like the novel, with a shady Bolshevik and his henchwoman selling the Heart of Fire ruby to a mysterious buyer who turns out to be U.S. millionaire Rufus Van Aldin (played by Elliott Gould, who was a fan of the series).

The Bolshevik and the henchwoman never appear again. The Greek international gem buyer and his daughter show up periodically in the novel, mostly as padding so Agatha could make her wordcount. I never could figure out why he sold the ruby to Van Aldin and then tried to steal it back. The film omits this crowd, streamlining the narrative.

Derek Kettering, Ruth’s husband, became a drunk gambler, losing much of his snark and suaveness. He lost his love affair with Katherine as he’s still – for no good reason – in love with Ruth. He also lost his mistress, the dancer Mirelle. She’s now Van Aldin’s mistress. Mirelle (Josette Simon) should have had more scenes to explain how Poirot managed to deduce that relationship.

Everyone shows up on the Blue Train for the trip to Nice, including Lady Tamplin, Corky (hubby #4), and Lenox Tamplin. It does make for an Orient Express feel, with the characters racing about the train, engineering chance meetings in the dining car, switching compartments, drunken, high-stakes gambling, and arranging trysts (consummated and not). Either that or a bedroom farce.

Corky became far more fun in the film. He’s clearly a member in good standing with the Drones Club ala P. G. Wodehouse. He’s also delighted to be what Derek Kettering couldn’t stand: a kept man keeping his mistress/owner happy. It’s a good bet that Corky is Lady Tamplin’s favorite husband by miles.

Lady Tamplin became more important. She’s a force of nature, coaxing a reluctant Poirot into becoming her houseguest in Nice and getting Van Aldin and Knighton to show up for her lively house party a day after Van Aldin’s daughter was beaten to death. Her daughter Lenox isn’t as snarky as she is in the novel but she gets to rescue Katherine from a midnight murderer in a furious struggle in which she bites the intruder’s neck.

For a film that centers around a brutal death, it’s fun. It’s got a swinging, jazzy soundtrack. Throw in mysterious nuns, create a new and terrible connection between Katherine and the Van Aldins, and give Ruth a crazy mother who turns out to not be dead and viewers won’t confuse the two adaptations.

However, the film ignored a major clue in the novel. Poirot couldn’t understand why Ruth had her face bashed in. There was no need for the killer to do that. Everyone knew who Ruth was. It did allow him to speculate that – due to switching compartments – Katherine might have been the target. Poirot eventually worked out the reason for the disfigurement: It was to keep the conductor from realizing the woman he delivered dinner to at 10 p.m. was not Ruth Kettering.

The ending was also radically different from the novel’s static climax. There, Katherine’s nowhere to be seen as she’s back in St. Mary Mead, taking care of another cantankerous old lady. Accused of murdering his estranged wife, Derek’s cooling his heels in a French jail. The rest of the crowd are back at Lady Tamplin’s villa. Poirot provides the solution onboard the train back to Paris only to Van Aldin and Knighton. The Sûreté are waiting in the next compartment to arrest Knighton and he goes quietly. His accomplice Ada Mason is arrested somewhere else.

The film’s climax should remind you of the Orient Express. Everyone’s onboard, waiting in the club car, including Derek and La Roche sprung from jail for the occasion. Poirot accuses various people in turn, at last revealing Mason as Katherine’s midnight attacker (Lenox’s bite mark on her neck proves it) and Major Knighton as Mason’s lover, international jewel thief, and murderer.

Knighton isn’t a mild-mannered secretary by day and criminal mastermind by night for nothing. He reacts instantly; leaping to his feet, dragging Katherine with him, and holding a razor blade to her throat. He drags her down the train’s corridor, followed by Poirot and French policemen but they don’t dare attack lest he slash Katherine’s jugular vein. As Poirot had told everyone, Knighton enjoys killing people. He won’t hesitate to kill Katherine, just as he instantly abandoned Mason to save his own skin.

Knighton and Katherine hover in the train door. The platform on the station side of the tracks is aswarm with Sûreté, waiting to arrest him. If he cuts Katherine’s throat, he’ll definitely be arrested and hung. There’s an oncoming train in the next track. He makes his choice, frees Katherine, and leaves her with the razor blade in her hand.

It is, of course, the Heart of Fire ruby.

When you sit down to watch the movie (and you should!), let yourself go and enjoy the ride. It is its own thing. It’s not the novel, not the short story, and not the Orient Express. It’s the Calais-Mediterranée Express or Le Train Bleu and that’s a different rail line altogether.