Sleeping Car to Trieste - 1948 film review

Sleeping Car to Trieste, first screened in the aftermath of the Second World War, when international tensions were still running high, is a remake of a film called Rome Express, written by Clifford Grey, which I haven't seen. But it has a real freshness even now, and I found it very entertaining indeed, even if it didn't give viewers much of a picture of Trieste itself, since all the action is done and dusted by the time the train gets there!

The story begins with a robbery and a shooting. A diary is stolen from an unidentified embassy in Paris; the thief is in cahoots with a woman (Jean Kent) who fears that the diary, if it falls into the wrong hands, will lead to revolution. Unfortunately, the pair have opted to conspire with a villain (played by Alan Wheatley, better known as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood) who proceeds to run off with it, and take the train to Trieste. They follow him, but find it difficult to figure out which compartment he's staying in.

The strength of the screenplay by Allan Mackinnon lies in the clever use of a range of characters on board the train who each play a part in an increasingly convoluted storyline. The diary is a Macguffin in the finest Hitchcockian tradition. The guy who has taken the diary hides it, only to be forced to move out of his compartment. A lawyer who is on the train with his girlfriend finds himself mixed up in it all, and the tension mounts before, eventually, murder is done.

There are plenty of nice comic touches, and John Paddy Carstairs' direction reminded me of Hitchcock's. He keeps the action going, and the use of comic minor chatacters, such as the lawyer's tedious and thick-skinned old friend (David Tomlinson) and the long-suffering secretary (Hugh Burden) of a vain and selfish author (Finlay Currie). So it's a good cast, and an even better story. Most enjoyable.

The Woman in Question

The Woman in Question is a relatively unsung film, made in 1950 by Anthony Asquith, the son of a former Prime Minister. I found a DVD version in my quest for whodunit movies – as I've mentioned before in this blog, they are much scarcer than thrillers. And I certainly wasn't disappointed with this one.

A woman (played by Jean Kent) who scrapes a living as a fortune teller in a small seaside town is found strangled in her home. A police team headed by Duncan MacRae investigates and interviews a series of witnesses and potential suspects. The unusual and clever feature of the film is that each witness portrays the victim in a different light, so that understanding her character from the contrasting accounts becomes key to solving the crime. What other books and films have done this so explicitly? A few, but not a large number, I think.

Among the witnesses is a young stage performer played by Dirk Bogarde, whose American accent is so ropey that it comes as a great relief when he admits to his girlfriend that he was actually born in Liverpool – not that there is any trace of a Scouse accent, either. But overall he and the rest of the cast do a good job.

When it emerged that the dead woman had a pet parrot, I anticipated that the bird would provide the detectives with a vital clue, and so it proved. I managed to figure out the identity of the murderer, but this did not in any way spoil my enjoyment of a short, snappy and entertaining mystery movie. It is almost a British film noir, and I can definitely recommend it.