Watch Death on the Nile For Free

Wonderful Movie

Memorable, crazy movie

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

A later super-popular Agatha Christie adaptation, Death on the Nile (1978), hails from that wonderful period when multi-star movies were all the rage, both with producers and movie-goers. This one assembles a really outstanding cast, including Peter Ustinov and David Niven as the detectives, and the richly rewarding Mia Farrow, plus Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, George Kennedy, Maggie Smith, Jack Warden, Lois Chiles, etc, as the potential victims. No-one seems to have noticed that Miss Christie uses exactly the same plot device (admittedly with a cleverly convincing variation) that she employed in "And Then There Were None". Not that these quibbles matter very much when we moviegoers are treated to this opulently-filmed-on-location exercise in high-budget entertainment. The Anchor Bay DVD rates 10/10 with me. And it also carries some admirable extras.

When done right, mystery movies can be very fun and engaging movies. One of the best mystery authors of the twentieth century was Agatha Christie, and many of her works were adapted to the big screen to varying levels of success. The biggest hit movie was 1974's Murder on the Orient Express. Following in that film's footsteps, Death on the Nile was released four years later with the same formula. The story is essentially the same, but with a different location and brand new set of characters. While the movie is fine, it is also somewhat forgettable. It has not been awhile since I seen this film and I usually remember my films, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly happened. That being said, it is a decent watch. The scenery is fun to see and the costumes are cool to look at. The cast is filled to the brim with veteran British actors and they all deliver fine performances.We are aboard the S.S Karnak as it travels down the great Nile River in Egypt. However, there are many people who want the rich heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles) dead. Her riches are sought after by the elderly Mrs. Van Schulyer (Bette Davis), Salome Otterbourne (Angela Lansbury) is an author who has a libel lawsuit brought upon her, Salome's daughter, Rosalie (Olivia Hussey) wants to keep her mother happy, Andrew Pennington (George Kennedy) has been stealing from her family, and an old friend Jacqueline De Bellefort (Mia Farrow) is upset that her fiancé was stolen away from her. After Ridgeway is murdered, it's up to the famed detective Hercules Poirot (Peter Ustinov) to figured out the culprit behind the murder.As you can obviously tell, the film has a large cast full of brand names. So it's no surprise that they all deliver good performances. No one delivers career-best performances, but this is not the kind of film that requires such performances. However, my standout performance goes to Peter Ustinov as the detective. If you read any of Christie's stories, you will be able to tell that he captures the essence of what the character is supposed to be. It's also cool to see an actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood in the movie. I'm talking about the legendary Bette Davis. She delivers another great performance, and it's cool to note how she addressed the change of filmmaking since her heyday in the 30's and 40's. She called films travelogues in the 70's and essentially they are. I would have love to work along the Nile River traveling through ancient history. All of the names mentioned above did great, but there are even more names in the movie with the likes of Jane Birkin, Maggie Smith, and Jack Warden in the movie.So John Guillermin's Death on the Nile is a fun mystery movie even if its a little forgettable. It is formulaic, but the performances are well worth the watch. Seeing Ustinov in action trying to crack the case is what makes this movie a fun watch. It's hard to remember specific plot details, but that is what happens in a movie based on formula. But the film is successful in being mysterious, and that is really all that matters. I liked how the film was shot on location because we got to see exquisite scenery. Also, I really liked the costumes. Overall, this is a little fun mystery.My Grade: B

After watching every Poirot episode played by David Suchet I knew the bar was set very high. However Peter Ustinov gives a marvellous portrayal of the famous Belgian detective. His acting is effortless as he easily slips into Hercule Poirot's shoes in this mystery. He is very believable as a the great sleuth and you feel he has been doing this all his life. This also happened to be one of the best Agatha Christie Poirot novels that was dramatized. A mystery so well planned and executed it would fool the best of us. The supporting cast was superb as well and gave great performances. We have a rich list of acclaimed stars giving life to Agatha Christie's characters.

It is understandable that so many reviewers want to compare this film to its predecessor, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, and they are right to do so. But for all intents and purposes, these are the only two films that most of them bother with, almost as if no other ones bear comparison. In this assumption (either from not having seen these other Christie adaptations, or possibly even forgetting that they were adaptations from Christie), they do unintended damage to at least two other great Christie-based films. First, though, a short and personal comparison of NILE and ORIENT. They are both great films of their type, to many arguably the greatest, but I have always found NILE to be the better film as well as the better Christie mystery. Once a possible solution presents itself in ORIENT, it rather sneaks up on you before it does on Poirot. Whereas there are myriad story lines in NILE that would explain all of these characters' presence on a Nile cruise, it slowly dawns on the reader or viewer of ORIENT that no such variation of story lines exist to warrant all of the characters on the train being there at the same time - except one. Both are stupendously well-rendered adaptations, sumptuous in design, costuming, cinematography, musical background, etc., and brilliantly, incredibly cast down to the smallest role. Finney is the true physical embodiment of Christie's sleuth through some inspired (if occasionally hard-to-ignore) make-up, whereas it's hard to imagine any major actor looking less like Christie's creation than does Peter Ustinov. Since that fact is impossible to camouflage, that he succeeds so brilliantly in embodying Poirot is a veritable triumph of pure acting talent, versatility and charm over nature. I'd be happy with either actor in this role, but in the end it is Ustinov who "wears" better over time (as long as we can disregard the most perfect Poirot possible, David Suchet, from the long-running TV Poirot series). But what about those two other film triumphs? The first, made on a comparatively low budget but with some major acting talents (Louis Hayward, Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, Judith Anderson, Roland Young, C. Aubrey Smith, etc.), was 1945's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, which I always thought was the greatest of all Christie film adaptations until Messrs. Lumet and Guillerman arrived in the 1970s. Directed by the great Rene Clair, it may still hold that distinction, but would probably not appeal to a mass audience today due to its lack of Technicolor grandeur and, yes, budgetary excess. And that fourth great Christie film adaptation was, of course, Billy Wilder's WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), starring Charles Laughton (in a truly brilliant performance), Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power. (The sole problem with WITNESS is an added flashback - not in the original story or its theatrical adaptation - to the meeting and subsequent marriage of the Dietrich and Power characters, done not so much for exposition, I think, as to enlarge their roles to warrant their star billing in a film that is otherwise very much dominated by Charles Laughton's character from beginning to end.) What's interesting about these two older films is that both of them had to have their endings rewritten in order for them to conform with The Hollywood Production Code of the day, and in both instances, the endings (probably with input from Ms. Christie) were even better than in the original stories. And I can guarantee that nobody watching those older films for the first time had any real idea of what the denouement would be, this pretty much like NILE (which has the best denouement of them all), but somewhat unlike ORIENT (although in the latter, the ride the director takes us on is so enjoyable that we hardly care if we guess the ending before Poirot does!). One more thing, the musical score for AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is minuscule in comparison to the two films from the 1970s, but just as effective, as it was written by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a leading classical composer of that period, and its repetitive-but-understated nature seems to almost crawl into you as the film progresses. All in all, then, four wonderful Christie adaptations instead of two, all of them well worth watching every year or two (as I have been doing with AND THEN THERE WERE NONE for about 65 years now).