In there really a film whose cast includes Walter Huston, Roland Young, Judith Anderson, Barry Fitzgerald, C. Aubrey Smith and Mischa Auer? Yes there is, and this is the delightful baby which contains them. An unexpectedly entertaining version of Christie's story, through the filter of writer Dudley Nichols and director Clair, who provides wonderful little touches (the broken candle, the ball of wool, the cat). Loved the scene involving people spying through two keyholes and how they all start following each other - like Indians. And the realisation that there's no dinner causing more consternation than murder. Really good fun.
Rest of good cast: Louis Hayward, June Duprez, Richard Haydn, Queenie Leonard and Harry Thurston. Music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, photographed by Lucien Andriot. 20th Century Fox.
Clair's career began with a trio of remarkably interesting-sounding experimental films, Entr'acte, Paris Qui Dort and The Phantom of the Moulin-Rouge, the acclaimed comedy-musical A Nous La Liberté, then moved to Hollywood where he was responsible for the comedy-supernatural duo of The Ghost Goes West and I Married a Witch, worked back in France after the war.
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