It's a full feature and skips the usual broop-de-broop saxophone theme. It begins with a crisply performed trumpet lead on "I'll Never Be The Same," a pretty torch song with an arrangement more out of the forties than the thirties. Extremely euphonious. Later on there are bits of George Gershwin and a nice Strauss waltz. Hints of Django Reinhardt. What happened to contemporary music anyway? Why is it necessary for the world to listen to lyrics about some Gangsta who wants to rip our heads off and dump terrible things into our neck cavities? I have a closet full of wide neckties. Oh, where did it all go? (Sob.)
Elliot Gould is an American millionaire (now, he would be a billionaire) whose impressionable daughter has married into the British aristocracy. But it was a mistake. The young man is a drunken, manipulative, ne'er do well. He embarrasses his wife on the dance floor, spurns a major offer from Gould to get a divorce, and gambles like a fiend.
Some clever dialog: when Gould corners the husband and accuses him of infidelity, the handsome young man replies, "Sorry, but the old chap has been hors de combat ever since I started drinking scotch with breakfast." But Gould's daughter is unfaithful too, having played doctor with another man. When her lover hits on her and she demurs, he tries subtle persuasion. "I know you retain some withered stump of affection for your husband." Someone spends his time "marinating" in another's company. "Life -- grossly overrated, I find." Nothing of this amounts to a flight of poetry, but together that's pretty good writing.
Another character is Katherine Grey, an attractive young woman who has just come into a great deal of money and is introducing herself to the posh life, alone, at the fancy party with which the episode opens. She has glistening brown calf-like eyes. She's touchingly unsophisticated. Alone, self conscious, at her table, she watches the wine steward pour a bit of the bottle into a glass, waiting for her to taste it. She isn't at all familiar with the ritual and simply sits there, politely smiling up at the steward, until Poirot intervenes and saves her. She has the kind of wide and inviting smile that melts doubt. It reminded me of my single visit to Birdland in New York when I visited the men's room. It was like an alien planet. Some smiling black dude -- much older and better dressed than I -- brushed my shoulders with a tiny broom. I had no idea what was up. When he saw how befuddled I was he did what Poirot did. "Thirty-five cents," he said in a reassuring low voice.
A slew of the usual suspects take the Blue Train to Nice. There is a murder on the train, and the unraveling of the mystery take place in the vacation spot, which is not a bad place to unravel a mystery. When I was in Nice, I stayed in the Ritz-Carlton -- for about thirty seconds in the lobby.
There is no Hastngs, no Miss Lemon, and no Inspector Japp. Poirot explains all the details of the crime to the assembled suspects. The ending is out of Anna Karenina.
Elliot Gould is an American millionaire (now, he would be a billionaire) whose impressionable daughter has married into the British aristocracy. But it was a mistake. The young man is a drunken, manipulative, ne'er do well. He embarrasses his wife on the dance floor, spurns a major offer from Gould to get a divorce, and gambles like a fiend.
Some clever dialog: when Gould corners the husband and accuses him of infidelity, the handsome young man replies, "Sorry, but the old chap has been hors de combat ever since I started drinking scotch with breakfast." But Gould's daughter is unfaithful too, having played doctor with another man. When her lover hits on her and she demurs, he tries subtle persuasion. "I know you retain some withered stump of affection for your husband." Someone spends his time "marinating" in another's company. "Life -- grossly overrated, I find." Nothing of this amounts to a flight of poetry, but together that's pretty good writing.
Another character is Katherine Grey, an attractive young woman who has just come into a great deal of money and is introducing herself to the posh life, alone, at the fancy party with which the episode opens. She has glistening brown calf-like eyes. She's touchingly unsophisticated. Alone, self conscious, at her table, she watches the wine steward pour a bit of the bottle into a glass, waiting for her to taste it. She isn't at all familiar with the ritual and simply sits there, politely smiling up at the steward, until Poirot intervenes and saves her. She has the kind of wide and inviting smile that melts doubt. It reminded me of my single visit to Birdland in New York when I visited the men's room. It was like an alien planet. Some smiling black dude -- much older and better dressed than I -- brushed my shoulders with a tiny broom. I had no idea what was up. When he saw how befuddled I was he did what Poirot did. "Thirty-five cents," he said in a reassuring low voice.
A slew of the usual suspects take the Blue Train to Nice. There is a murder on the train, and the unraveling of the mystery take place in the vacation spot, which is not a bad place to unravel a mystery. When I was in Nice, I stayed in the Ritz-Carlton -- for about thirty seconds in the lobby.
There is no Hastngs, no Miss Lemon, and no Inspector Japp. Poirot explains all the details of the crime to the assembled suspects. The ending is out of Anna Karenina.