Death on the Nile (1978)
Directed by John Guillermin
As Hercule Poirot enjoys a luxurious cruise down the Nile, a newlywed heiress is found murdered on board and every elegant passenger becomes a prime suspect.
9 connections found
View:
9 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Death on the Nile to
But the Christie adaptations that followed — “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), “Evil Under the Sun” (1982) — were half-baked suspense films that felt, collectively, like the fading embers of a genre.
Death on the Nile (previously adapted in 1978) is not quite as enjoyable as Orient Express , primarily because the first hour of the movie takes too long to get out of the harbor and spends too much time on various non-essential activities before finally diving into the sleuthing of whodunit.
"Death on the Nile" is in almost every conceivable way a step down from Branagh's last outing with the character, to say nothing of the Peter Ustinov-led version from 1978 or the David Suchet television adaptation of Christie's novel from 2004.
Sluggishly directed by Kenneth Branagh, the unnecessary remake of the 1978 film version of Dame Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile is a curiously boring misfire.
Even if one has seen the 1978 DEATH ON THE NILE, which starred Peter Ustinov as detective Hercule Poirot, and/or read the book, and/or just figured out what has to be happening from the set-up, there’s still fun to be had following the clues and figuring out who did what and why and how the central crime goes unsolved as long as it does.
Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out—primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them (Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap.
The best-known examples of the form – almost all of them Agatha Christie adaptations, such as And Then There Were None (1945), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and Death on the Nile (1978) – tend to be clever, star-studded little tchotchkes, eliciting a fleeting sensation of gratification but no lasting artistic impression.
On the surface, Knives Out is very much like one of the star-studded old movie adaptations of Christie novels like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express — the kind of films where the posters featured all the actors' faces in tiny boxes.
Beyond dependable Christie fare like Death on the Nile (1978) and Murder on the Orient Express (2017), there’s Clue (1985), Gosford Park (2001) and now, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out.
(Murder on the Orient Express was last year’s release and Death on the Nile won’t arrive until 2020.)
Before "Death on the Nile" is released late next year, I hope its makers take a lesson or two from Rian Johnson's fun, ingeniously witty "Knives Out," which not only puts a modern twist on the classic whodunit, but is also one of the most purely entertaining movies to come around all year.
In spite of the script’s heavy reliance on exposition, the ending cleverly nods to another Christie novel and film, “Death on the Nile.”
For more of Agatha Christie’s twists and turns, see “Death On The Nile” (1978) with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot and a cast including Bette Davis, David Niven, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith and Jack Warden.
Movies always get Poirot wrong by casting swaggering British actors in the role: Albert Finney in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, Peter Ustinov in 1978’s Death on the Nile and subsequent films.
If you like this try: the original version with Albert Finney and other movies based on Agatha Christie stories like “Death on the Nile”…
Casting another actor in the Poirot (this time Ustinov), Death on the Nile was a slightly lesser affair than Orient Express .
He's legitimately entertaining in this (the "French" accent occasionally slipping into "Inigo Montoya" notwithstanding, and with the ending of MotOE directly leading into Death on the Nile, Branagh could easily spend the latter years of his career playing Poirot in more movies — not much chance of that in the Jack Ryan universe, alas (RIP Viktor Cherevin) — and that’d be swell.
Before you know it remakes of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile are getting greenlit.
But, look at classic Christie versions like “Death on the Nile“, “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Evil Under The Sun”.
I think I liked See How They Run even more because I didn't like Kenneth Branagh's Death on the Nile earlier this year.
Kenneth Branagh adapted two of Christie’s most famous Hercule Poirot novels, Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and Death on the Nile (2022).
Advertisement
President Barbie (Issa Rae, The Lovebirds) makes sure the laws are in place with the all-female Supreme Court, while Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney, Dumbo ), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef, Bad Things ), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey, Death on the Nile ) and Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp, tick, tick…BOOM! ) spread their wealth of knowledge when they aren’t accepting awards or hanging at the beach with Robbie’s “Stereotypical” Barbie.
Recently, the likes of Death on the Nile and Hulu's No Exit have pleased amateur sleuths with tales of shady criminals making the lives of a small ensemble absolutely miserable.
Except that it wasn’t the kind of whodunit similar to say, Knives Out or this year’s Death on the Nile but more of a mystery drama that explored the grim nature of Chef Slowik’s multi-course agenda in a darkly comic manner.
One in particular, evoking a famous scene from one of my all time favourite films “Death on the Nile”, will go down as one of the great cinematic kills of recent years – seriously.
Advertisement
The formula might owe a considerable debt to the classic, convoluted mysteries of Agatha Christie – the set-up is reminiscent of Death On The Nile, the score is bustling with intrigue – but Johnson sprinkles the film with sly contemporary jokes.
While Kenneth Branagh successfully resurrected Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in his 2017 film “Murder on the Orient Express,” followed by “Death on the Nile” in 2022, “Knives Out” had the honor of introducing a new super sleuth, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a private detective and one considered to be the last of the gentlemen sleuths.
Last month, he programmed a few movies at the Paris Theater in New York City and I went to the 1978 version of Death on the Nile and a World War II-era film called Green For Danger – and you can see where a lot of his influences for these Knives Out movies comes from.
One of the best working directors today, Johnson proves his giddiness for the genre by mixing in elements of past heralded works like “The Last of Shelia,” “Death on the Nile” and “Clue,” though he merely uses them to inform his writing and never to crib from lazily.
Rather as Kenneth Branagh did with Poirot in the recent version of “Death on the Nile“, the script at least starts to peel away some of the mystique around Benois Blanc.