Sleeping Car to Trieste
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Sleeping Car to Trieste is a 1948 is a British film directed by John Paddy Carstairs. The film is a remake of the 1932 film Rome Express, with essentially the same characters and many of the same actors.
Plot
The film takes place almost entirely on a train travelling between Paris and Trieste in post-war Europe. Albert Lieven and Jean Kent play two somewhat mysterious people, at ease in sophisticated society. On Valya's behalf, Zurta steals a diary from an unnamed embassy in Paris, but in doing so, is forced to kill an embassy guard. Poole, an accomplice of theirs, is passed the diary, but he double-crosses the other two and attempts to escape with it on the Orient Express. Just in time, Valya and Zurta also board the train.
They are soon involved with not only tracking down Poole (who is hiding in a train compartment and desperately trying to avoid being moved by the train staff) but with several other travellers, including a U.S. Army sergeant with an eye for the ladies, an adulterous couple, an idiot stockbroker, a wealthy, autocratic writer and his brow-beaten secretary/valet, a bird watcher, a French police inspector, and the train's chef, who is forced to listen to a self-styled cooking 'expert' from England.
The diary is discovered by accident and passes through the hands of several people on the train, but when Zurta kills Poole, he is eventually confronted by the police inspector. In an attempt to escape, he leaps from the train, but is hit (and presumably killed) by a train travelling in the opposite direction. The diary is presumed to be lost with him.
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
- Grégoire 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 Andrée
- Zena Marshall as Suzanne
- Leslie Weston as Randall
- Michael Ward as Elvin
- Eugene Deckers as Jules
Production
Rona Anderson made her film debut.[1] "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."[2]
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?"[3]
Release
The film proved more popular in the US than most British films, enjoying a long run in New York.[4]
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />External links
- Lua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). Sleeping Car to Trieste at IMDb
- Sleeping Car to Trieste at AllMovie
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Brian McFarlane, An Autobiography of British Cinema by the Actors and Filmmakers Who Made It, Methuen 1997 p 17
- ↑ Brian McFarlane, An Autobiography of British Cinema by the Actors and Filmmakers Who Made It, Methuen 1997 p 340
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- Pages with reference errors
- Use dmy dates from September 2012
- Use British English from September 2012
- 1948 films
- Black-and-white films
- British crime films
- British films
- English-language films
- British film remakes
- Films directed by John Paddy Carstairs
- Rail transport films
- 1940s crime films
- Films set in Trieste
- Films set on the Orient Express
