The Sleeping Car Murder

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.

"The Sleeping Car Murders" is a quintessential and bona fide and prototypic Giallo, and yet at the same time … NOT a Giallo at all. Gialli are – generally speaking – Italian productions from the early 70's with a script written directly for the screen. "The Sleeping Car Murders" is French, released during the mid 60's (when Mario Bava only just kick-started the Giallo concept in Italy) and the script was adapted from a novel by Sébastien Japristot. Surely both Japristot and director Costa-Gavras didn't had a clue what a Giallo in fact was and simply aimed to deliver a good old-fashioned whodunit that would keep the reader/viewer guessing until the very end. Well, the least you could say is … they succeeded! "The Sleeping Car Murders" is an engaging, intelligent and convoluted murder-mystery with a tremendous amount of effective red herrings, detailed character drawings and one perplexedly flawless conclusion. I honestly can't fathom why this movie is so little known, especially since it concerns the writer of "A Very Long Engagement" and the director of the political top thriller "Z". If this exact same story were filmed by, say, Alfred Hitchcock, I bet the film would have ranked high in this website's top 250.

Speaking of Hitchcock; several of his film revolved on the potentially perfect murder plot (like "Strangers on a Train", "Dial M for Murder"…) but – in my humble opinion – this is the film which comes up with the most ideal and waterproof scheme to get away with murder. I've rarely been overwhelmed and impressed as much as when upon witnessing the denouement of "The Sleeping Car Murders". Obviously I can't reveal too much about the climax, but it's so damn great that I really was almost tempted to select some random people and try out the formula myself! Six strangers share a compartment on the night train to Paris, one of them being a fare dodger who met up with a cute young girl in the compartment itself. The next morning one of travelers, a woman, lies murdered in her bed and a hugely complicated police investigation led by the cynical Inspector Graziani ensues. The next following days, however, the other residents of the compartment are murdered – Agatha Christie style - in cold blood as well, as if the killer wants to eliminate all potential witnesses before they have a chance to talk to the police. With the number of compartment survivors rapidly decreasing, the fare dodger and his girlfriend will have to seek protection before the killer finds them.

The set-up of "The Sleeping Car Murders" is brilliant, without any form of exaggeration, and the tight screenplay fills in every tiny detail and remains always several steps ahead of even the cleverest viewers. The plot patiently takes its time to draw a detailed portrait of every witness and, since they each have their own dark secrets and suspicious characteristics, they could all be the culprits. The structure and unfolding of the plot is truly genius here. Whenever you're sure you figured out the killer's identity, he/she gets killed or some other type of twist points out he/she couldn't have done it. The film also gives some marvelous and realistic insight into the progress of a police murder investigation, like stressed Inspectors, false attention-seeking witnesses, dead-end leads, media circuses and a lot of hatred from wrongfully accused suspects. The entire cast and crew also contributes a great deal to the high level of brilliance of the film as well. This may perhaps have been Costa-Gavras' long-feature debut as a director, but his obvious talents and straightforward vision place his right away up there with the greatest film-makers ever. The performances, particularly from Simone Signoret and Yves Montand, are just as top-notch as every other tiniest detail in the rest of this ingenious but shamefully overlooked production.

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.

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.

Six people are in a train sleeping car. One of them is murdered. Thus begins a fine thriller with some really good suspense. The story's underlying premise is clever and quite unusual for its time.

The main problem here is the dialogue, which makes character identification unnecessarily hard. In the first 13 minutes, nine major characters are introduced, but no names. People refer to each other as "you" and "miss" and "she". Fully 18 minutes elapse before we know the names of all six sleeping car occupants. Even then we have only names, but no way to connect the names with the faces. As the plot moves along, additional characters are introduced, which further muddles a suspect pool that is already unclear. Because of the sloppy script writing, this is one of the most frustrating murder mysteries I have ever watched. Some simple changes in the script's dialogue could have made the characters so much easier to identify.

The film's chilling suspense is reminiscent of Hitchcock. The solution to the whodunit puzzle is quite interesting, and foreshadowed by clues that are effectively subtle. Another plus is the presence of the lovely, and talented, Simone Signoret.

"Compartiment tueurs" is a good thriller. If the characters had been better defined the film could also have been a great whodunit.