Orient Express
Spanish poster
Directed byPaul Martin
Written byWilliam M. Conselman
Carl Hovey
Based onStamboul Train
by Graham Greene
Produced bySol M. Wurtzel
Starring
CinematographyGeorge Schneiderman
Music byHugo Friedhofer
Samuel Kaylin
Arthur Lange
Production
company
Distributed byFox Film Corporation
Release date
  • February 28, 1934 (1934-02-28)
Running time
73 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Orient Express is a 1934 American pre-Code drama film directed by Paul Martin and starring Heather Angel, Norman Foster and Ralph Morgan. It is based on the 1932 novel Stamboul Train by Graham Greene, the first of his works to be adapted for the screen.[1] It was produced and distributed by Fox Film. Fox were persuaded to hire Martin as director by Lilian Harvey, the actress who was in a relationship with him, and had signed with the studio after starring in several films directed by Martin in Germany.[2] It was his only Hollywood film and he returned to Germany where he again directed Harvey in several more hits. The film is part of a group set almost entirely on trains or ocean liners during the decade.[3]

Plot

A group of passengers travel from Ostend to Istanbul on the Orient Express.

Cast

Critical reception

Reviews were generally negative with the New York Herald Tribune noting "the story is a tangle of loose ends and rough edges which grows increasingly obscure as the tale unwinds" while the New York Times critic felt "the earlier sequences are pieced together in a crude way, and the latter ones are unbelievable".[4] This was in line with a wider poor reception of releases by Fox before the merger with Darryl F. Zanuck's Twentieth Century Pictures revived the company's production quality.[5]

References

  1. ↑ Hand, Richard J. & Purssell, Andrew. Adapting Graham Greene. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. p. 18.
  2. ↑ Ascheid p.123
  3. ↑ Dooley p.94
  4. ↑ Solomon p.189
  5. ↑ Solomon p.188-89

Bibliography

  • Ascheid, Antje. Hitler's Heroines: Stardom & Womanhood In Nazi Cinema. Temple University Press, 2010.
  • Dooley, Roger B. From Scarface to Scarlett: American Films in the 1930s. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.
  • Solomon, Aubrey. The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935: A History and Filmography. McFarland, 2011.
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