Sleeping Car to Trieste

This a delightful detective thriller, made in the inimitable British post-war manner. The cast is comprised of more than a dozen unusual characters who have taken the Orient Express to Trieste. A few of them are innocent and charming, but most of them are law-breakers on one level or another, their crimes ranging from evading customs duties to adultery, theft, assault, and murder.

The plot concerns a stolen diary, but the real action is trying to figure out who is in whose compartment at any given time, because as the police move in on the murderer, the matter of timing and alibis becomes of paramount importance.

The documentary shots of the train itself are exemplary. If you are a train buff, you will greatly enjoy this crude, lumbering, noisy hunk of iron, a giant boiler on wheels, barreling down the tracks as the people inside change compartments, eat, drink, and plot their petty and grand crimes.

I believe this is a remake of the film Rome Express.

In the beginning of this film, we see Zerta (Albert Lieven), a foreign agent, steal something from the Paris Embassy. He then throws it out the window to the waiting Karl. Valya (Jean Kent) is also at the embassy and an accomplice. They are to meet Karl the next day, but he stands them up. Realizing he is going to sell whatever it is for more money, they take off attempting to find him.

They find out that he is on a train headed for Zagreb. That's when the fun begins. Karl is upset to find that he does not have his own berth, which he has to have in order to a) stay hidden; and b) hide what he stole.

There are a bunch of characters involved - a couple secretly committing adultery, a friend of the man part of the couple (David Tomlinson) who wants to play cards and drink; a wealthy snobbish man (Finlay Currie) and his harried assistant; a bird watcher who won't shut up; two French girls who take advantage of an American soldier to avoid customs; the chef, who has to listen to an amateur cook that won't shut up.

Eventually we learn that the object is a diary that, if published, could start another war. Karl finally manages to get a berth alone, only to be moved from it after he's hidden the diary. The adulterous man would like his girlfriend to come to his berth, but he's stuck with someone else unexpectedly in his berth.

Sooner or later, they all play their part in retrieval of the diary.

Entertaining post-war film, well-directed.

... on a train maneuvering to obtain a stolen diary with international implications. The main cast is Jean Kent, Albert Lieven, Derrick De Marney, and David Tomlinson, with many others in an ensemble cast that tries its best to weave together a half dozen stories, not all of which are interesting. De Marney I expected the most from, as I liked him in Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937), but he has matured here into blandness. Lieven I didn't know at all, and he is good and savage as the head spy. Tomlinson with the jug ears is always fun to watch, the pip-pip cheerio Brit.

However -- and it's a big however -- this is a remake of Rome Express from 1932, and it doesn't have near the excitement and suspense of the original. The original had Esther Ralston and a ton of Hitchcock actors: Gordon Harker, Donald Calthrop, Joan Barry, Cedric Hardwicke, and Frank Vosper. Most importantly, it had Conrad Veidt as the head spy. Good as Lieven is in the remake, he can't top Veidt, and really no one could. Veidt gives a strange shading to the most innocuous lines -- he's the kind of villain who would knife Granny if she got too nosy. (He also resembles Bruno Hauptmann somewhat -- I wonder if audiences in 1932 made that connection.)

The 1948 version is good, but the 1932 version is more fun to watch. Both have a killer climactic scene in the train's luggage car -- a chance for both Veidt and later, Lieven, to shine.

There is something about trains as a setting for crime, espionage, and mystery. Agatha Christie used it in several of her stories, the most notable being turned into the film "Murder On The Orient Express". Other choice examples include Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", Carol Reed's "Night Train To Munich", "The Great Train Robbery" (with Sean Connery), and "Break Heart Pass". The historical settings of some of these stories dim any possible contemporary relevance from when they were made, but some of them remind us of the latter. Hitchcock and Reed's films were definitely aimed at the threat of Nazi Germany. And this film, "Sleeping Car to Trieste" was definitely set in post - 1945 Europe, and hinted (somewhat broadly) at what was the country that the train's hidden cargo was aimed at.

Albert Lieven and Jean Kent are foreign agents who steal a valuable diary from an embassy in Paris. Allan Wheatley is an accomplice, to whom the diary is passed by Lieven. But two unexpected problems arise. First, Lieven had to kill a servant in the embassy to complete the theft of the diary and get away. Secondly Wheatley has doubled crossed his partners, and is fleeing (via the Orient Express) to sell the diary for a large sum of money. Lieven and Kent soon have found out where to find Wheatley, and pursue him. However, they are soon involved with not only tracking down Wheatley (who is hiding out in a train compartment) but with an adulterous couple, an idiot friend (David Tomlinson) of the man in the adulterous couple relationship, a wealthy, autocratic writer (Finley Currie) and his beaten down secretary, a bird watcher, a French police inspector, and the train's cook (Gregoire Aslan) who is going through a purgatory listening to a cooking "efficiency" expert from England who knows nothing about making edible food. The film follows the twists and turns until the showdown moment when Lieven and Kent may get the stolen diary back or not.

I'm not a spoiler so I won't ruin the conclusion for viewers (who won't be disappointed). My concern here is what is the historical edge to when the film was made (1948). Lieven and Kent are from an Eastern European country, and Lieven cannot get into the country for some political reason (which Wheatley is counting on). But the diary would (if published) hurt the current regime (although it might cause another European War). What is this country, and why does it seem in the interest of the west (represented by the French inspector) for them to retrieve the stolen diary? Obviously the answer is the setting in the title: "Sleeping Car to Trieste". "Trieste", the last "western" European city/stop on the Orient Express, is on the border of Italy and Yugoslavia. In 1948 Yugoslavia was one of the Communist states set up by Russia following the end of World War II. But that year, it was becoming apparent to England and France (and the U.S.) that Yugoslavia was not going to be a robot creation of the U.S.S.R. Under Tito that country was struggling to practice socialist doctrine but not to automatically jump to Russian demands. As Yugoslavia is mountainous, and far from Russia, it could get away with this. But Yugoslavia was made up of six or seven nations, and if they were set at each other's throats the system would collapse. It was to the interest of the west to help (quietly) prop up Tito.

It fits into the plot on several levels. Lieven held military rank in the country prior to 1945. He must have been an officer in the Chetnik forces that Tito and his partisans defeated and decimated. He has no love for that regime, and if the published diary destroys it all to the good (and who cares about the European consequences - Yugoslavia, the creation of the Serbs after World War I, was built from the ruins of 1914 Europe due to the Serbian assassination of Franz Ferdinand). The country that resulted, though, was really a difficult balancing act (note how quickly it has collapsed in the years since Tito died in the 1980s). As Finley Currie comments in the film it is a crack-pot country, as opposed to say France, Spain, England, or Holland. This is actually wrong. Conflicting nationalist movements bother France, Spain, and England to this day - it's just that the people seem more homogeneous on the surface. But Currie, supposedly a world peace advocate but actually a blow-hard, has been insulted by being denied entrance to Yugoslavia by the government. He is venting his frustration with his comment. The movie flows very quickly, and is a solid entertainment. As such I recommend seeing it to anyone who wants to see a good film of intrigue.

This is a remake of 1932's Rome Express, which is a far better film and stars the seedy and sinister Mr Dane Calthrop. This version is slow and plodding, and the humour is mainly heavy handed. There is an unnecessary subplot about an Englishman trying to explain English cookery to a French chef (I'm not going back to the Good Old Days - I remember that food).

Best things about this version are David Tomlinson as the old schoolfriend who turns up inappositely, and Hugh Burden as the put-upon secretary. The McGuffin is a diary containing secrets that might start a war with an unspecified country, rather than a stolen painting. The adulterous couple are sexless as only the English can be.

Jean Kent is always worth watching, but whoever designed her frumpy wardrobe should be condemned to selling long underwear in British Home Stores. That hat with the two horns - or are they ice cream cones? There is a subplot about two French girls who are smuggling model hats, and they are rather good, as is Bonar Colleano as a wisecracking American soldier. His wisecracks really are funny. His mate the birdwatcher is good, too.

But overall - it's as stodgy as an English suet pudding.