Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1948


Sleeping Car to Trieste

Buy Sleeping Car to Trieste now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'Sleeping Car to Trieste' is a 1948 British crime film directed by John Paddy Carstairs. It is a remake of the 1932 film 'Rome Express'.

Plot



The setting is almost entirely on a train travelling between Paris and Trieste after World War II. Two rather mysterious people, Zurta (Albert Lieven) and Valya (Jean Kent), are at ease in sophisticated society. Zurta steals a diary from the safe of an embassy in Paris while they are guests at a reception there, killing a servant who walks in on the robbery. Poole, an accomplice, is passed the diary, but he double-crosses them and attempts to escape with it on the Orient Express. Just in time, Valya and Zurta board the train.

They start looking for Poole, who seeks to conceal himself and the diary. Other travellers become involved, including a US Army sergeant with an eye for the ladies, an adulterous couple, an idiot stockbroker, a wealthy, autocratic writer and his brow-beaten secretary, an ornithologist, and a French police inspector. Staff and other passengers provide light-hearted scenes. The diary passes through the hands of several people while the police investigate a mysterious death.

Cast



*Jean Kent as Valya

*Albert Lieven as Zurta

*Derrick De Marney as George Grant

*Paul Dupuis as Inspector Jolif

*Rona Anderson as Joan Maxted

*David Tomlinson as Tom Bishop

*Bonar Colleano as Sergeant West

*Finlay Currie as Alastair MacBain

*Grgoire Aslan as Poirier, the chef (as Coco Aslan)

*Alan Wheatley as Karl/Charles Poole

*Hugh Burden as Mills

*David Hutcheson as Denning

*Claude Larue as Andre

*Zena Marshall as Suzanne

*Leslie Weston as Randall

*Michael Ward as Elvin

*Eugene Deckers as Jules

*Dino Galvani as Pierre

*George De Warfaz as Chef du Train

*Gerard Heinz as Ambassador

Production



The film was originally known as 'Sleeping Car to Vienna'.

Rona Anderson made her film debut. "I did enjoy doing it", said Anderson. "It was a film full of nice little cameo performances.... Paddy Carstairs had a good way of relaxing you and I think he had a very good way with actors generally."Brian McFarlane, 'An Autobiography of British Cinema by the Actors and Filmmakers Who Made It', Methuen 1997 p 17

It was the one movie Albert Lieven made while under contract to Rank for five years.

However, Jean Kent later stated she "didn't like" the film "and didn't get on very well" with Carstairs. "You never knew where you were with him... I don't remember enjoying it. I had silly clothes. I wanted to be very French in plain black and a little beret but I had to wear these silly New Look clothes. I was playing a superspy of some kind. But who was I spying for?"Brian McFarlane, 'An Autobiography of British Cinema by the Actors and Filmmakers Who Made It', Methuen 1997 p 340

Release



The film proved more popular in the US than most British films, enjoying a long run in New York.

'The New York Times' wrote, "not without its trying moments, but on the whole it is a mighty interesting ride...The director John Paddy Carstairs shrewdly maneuvers the pursuers and the hunted about the train in a natural and credible manner so that the possibility of an imminent meeting creates a good deal of tension...None of the principals is too familiar to audiences here, and at times dialogue is lost in some of the players' throats, but the performances are generally satisfying."

References




Buy Sleeping Car to Trieste now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1948



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1108307153.