The Sleeping Car Murder

Six people on a Marseilles-Paris sleeper carriage. One murder on arrival. Then a killing spree by an unknown assassin bent on wiping out all remaining passengers.

The Sleeping Car Murders is a French Hitchcockian thriller. It presents a pretty interesting puzzle to be solved, a mystery with a quite satisfying, clever resolution. In some other ways, aside from the Anglo-American Hitchcock influence it's a movie that also contains elements of the Italian giallo, what with its black gloved killer who prowls around bumping off each subsequent victim. It isn't as violent or salacious as the gialli though but it does have the sense of style associated with them. Although this one has a definite Gallic flavour with its Paris setting. It also has a very cool swinging 60's theme tune which adds to the overall chic value. Its plot is admittedly a little muddled at times and it's not always obvious who is who and what they are up to. But things do become clearer as the flick proceeds. It's certainly an interesting obscurity and should be of value for fans of post-noir. Look out too for an appearance by a young Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Directorial debut of Costas Gavras. A good crime/thriller/noir, better than i expected. This is very well directed, Gavras showed his talent and brilliance from the beginning of his career. Occasionally, it's not that easy to follow but in the end, it makes sense, something not very common for old movies of this genre (Older thriller movies are great and right now i prefer tham than 20's Cinema, but many of them were too unrealistic and unconvincing).

This could have been even better but it lost its steam during the final 20-25 minutes. Still, everything is at least interesting here, from the soundtrack to the acting. Nice cinematography, great music, stylish but substantial too, this is a success.

A very enjoyable and entertaining movie.

I saw Compartiment tueurs many years ago in a movie house in New York City. I walked outside feeling still overwhelmed by how great a movie it is. It is an excellent mystery with outstanding performances by Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, but it is much more. Most mysteries do not work the second time around. What matters too much is discovering who the murderer is, but not here. What counts is not just the suspense and action but something else, a profound moral statement. The film reminds me a lot of Hitchcock's Vertigo, in which the audience knows two-thirds of the way through the film what has been happening. Well, in this film the audience begin to catch on to something else, something more significant than the identity of the killer. We discover something more disturbing, the pettiness of crime, particularly of murder. It is what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil."

I like movies that have depth to them. I should, having degrees in several areas. As a philosopher and ethicist I relate strongly to what this film says. There is no greatness in criminality; by the end of the film we feel only a gnawing sense of all that has been lost.

There have been a handful of directors, notably Clouzot, Delannoy, Kurosawa and Claude Miller who have taken the 'police procedural' to new heights and transcended the genre. To this select group can be added Costa-Gavras for his astonishingly assured directorial debut 'Compartiment Tuers'.

This technically virtuosic and gloriously inventive piece is impressive enough by any standards but Costa-Gavras has here taken the giant leap from assistant to fully-fledged director with consummate ease.

He has the good fortune of course to have the services of simply superlative talent both in front of and behind the camera and great material with which to work, based as it is on the novel by Sébastian Japrisot who is renowned for 'subverting the rules of the crime genre'.

This film is a heady mix of policier, film noir and mystery thriller with a sprinkling of black humour and succeeds as both homage to and spoof of those genres.

The cast comprises some of France's finest and one has to mention Yves Montand who shows a new maturity here with his greatest roles still to come, not only for this director but also for Claude Sautet.

A first film can be make-or-break and here Costa-Gavras is setting out his stall and declaring "Here I am!" Luckily for us, here he stayed.

I saw this movie only once or twice -- on cable in the early 1980s, I think -- and it has remained one of my all-time favorites. It is filmed in black and white, and is a French police thriller seemingly populated with good-looking and sexy men, which is always an asset for me. I also love Simone Signoret and she is marvelous in this, as always. I think her daughter is in it, too, but I could be wrong. I cannot really review it because it is more or less a dim memory, but I remember being totally captivated by it. I have always looked out for it, but have not been able to either rent or buy it. I only remember excellent films, and I guarantee that any film buff would find this highly watchable and enjoyable.