What: This 1945 film is based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name (sometimes titled Ten Little Indians).
My points:
First, I should make it clear that I am in no way suggesting that you should not watch this movie. I am just suggesting that you shouldn't expect it to be good, especially if you've read the book.
In my opinion, Agatha Christie is not the best Golden Age mystery author, although currently she is the most famous. (Oh, we will get to this discussion in due time, believe me.) Her novel And Then There Were None, however, is a genuinely chilling and unsettling story. It does not have a happy ending.
Unsurprisingly, this film version of the novel struggles with tone. At times, it strikes the right note of foreboding, but the movie keeps drifting into farce as it hiccups its way to a cheerful resolution. Most of the time, I support having a bit of fun with an uneven tone (I'm a fan of Charade, after all), but here the shifts don't come across as deliberate. They just seem like placeholders.
It's as if the filmmakers wanted to make a very specific, very different type of movie, but Christie's plot kept getting in the way.
Representative quote: "Very stupid to kill the only servant in the house. Now we don't even know where to find the marmalade."
One of my favorite Huston movies, this and Dodsworth! Barry when he is not a priest. Judith still creepy but not as sick as Mrs. Danvers. Fun!
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