Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Murder on the Orient Express
1974 · Sidney Lumet · Murder on the Orient Express on Sightlines
4 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch where each passenger sits, and who enters through which door. (staging)
Lumet stages the carriage like a play, using entrances, seating, and proximity to define relationships before anyone speaks.
Payoff: The blocking is itself information, telling you who watches whom before dialogue does.
Listen for the waltzing music that swells as the train departs. (sound)
Richard Rodney Bennett's theme turns a locomotive pulling out of a station into a swooning romantic flourish, then curdles into unease as the case darkens.
Payoff: The score tells you when to feel glamour and when to feel dread, guiding you without a word.
Watch how each actor gets one distinct scene to make an impression. (performance)
Bacall, Connery, Bergman, Gielgud and the rest each land a self-contained miniature, a vivid habit or tic that fixes them in memory quickly.
Payoff: The film hands each detail meaning through repetition, so a single gesture can stand in for a whole character. In the reading: mark. A pipe cleaner means a pipe smoker; a handkerchief means a name. Each miniature teaches you a chain to expect.
Notice the soft, glowing light on every face in close-up. (camera)
Geoffrey Unsworth diffuses and flatters each face with the same glamorizing light he used on 2001 and Cabaret, giving the period a dreamlike sheen.
Payoff: The lighting makes every face look equally trustworthy and equally beautiful.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the seating and doorways in the carriage; Lumet treats blocking as evidence.