Death on the Nile 4K 1978 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Lynnette, the heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune, married her best friend Jacqueline's fiancé. The newlyweds went on a luxurious cruise on the steamship "Karnak" on the Nile. And Jacqueline decided to spoil the mood of the newlyweds with her presence. On board the ship was a lot of other detractors Lynnette. She managed to "recruit" in the bodyguard famous detective Hercule Poirot, who was cruising on the same boat. And Lynette was found dead. As a result of numerous lengthy interviews and searches Poirot began to assume that he was close to the solution. In addition, the murder weapon had been found. But more murders began...

Review 4K Movie

Strangely enough, the secret of turning Agatha Christie's prose into hard cash was revealed by filmmakers relatively late. In fact, the first truly blockbuster film based on her works was shot by Sidney Lumet only in 1974, a good thirty years after the book was published. The resounding success of Orient Express (which remained at the top of the British box office charts for a decade) refreshed the clouded vision of other directors, The younger generation happily took up the baton, and by the turn of the 1990s, almost all of Agatha Christie's masterpieces had their own luxurious, wide-screen Anglo-American film counterparts. Death on the Nile appeared at the very crest of this wave and therefore reaped the rewards: the film can safely be called the most successful in the series of works about Poirot (in an interesting, though not entirely canonical, performance by Peter Ustinov, with changing directors), only The Mirror Crack'd (the only film that surpassed Death on the Nile in terms of the star power involved) can compare with it in the overall standings.

Because, yes, the secret was simple: the key to the success of the film adaptations of these elegant detective stories was a deliberately serious approach to the process, in particular, a willingness to spend serious money on the project. The literary shortcomings of the novel were more than compensated for by rich location shooting, glossy interiors, and breathtaking costumes, while the clichéd and superficial characters were made up for by the creative biographies of the top-tier movie stars involved, even in minor roles (indeed, doesn't the frankly faded heroine played by Olivia Hussey have a hint of Zeffirelli's tremulous Juliet? And doesn't the wicked Anglo-French charm of Jane Birkin, queen of the ‘swinging sixties’, give her poor scripted character completely new dimensions?) In this context, the intrigue of the crime receded into the background: it was assumed that the viewer would find it much more interesting to observe the capricious idleness of the rich and famous than to follow the twists and turns of the plot, at the expense of which the author's intention was often sacrificed.

In this respect, Death on the Nile again had a clear advantage over other stories (in particular, Evil Under the Sun): it took relatively little effort on the part of the author to glamorize this novel on screen. The intricately constructed and perfectly balanced system of characters, no matter how you look at it, perfectly matched the audience's expectations: a caricatured communist, a German psychiatrist, and a sexually preoccupied writer in search of “local color” (a subtle self-irony from the creator, remarkable acting by Angela Lansbury) outlined the range of socio-political moods of the era in an extremely schematic but very accurate way; A wealthy widow, bound by complex ties of hateful attachment to her dependent companion (a memorable role by the wonderful actress Maggie Smith), provided the necessary reference to the British classical literary tradition, while the love triangle at the center provided the necessary romantic component. Postcard views of Egypt—temples, pyramids, sphinxes, and feluccas—reinforced the effect of a carefree, noncommittal, moderately tense, and decently entertaining spectacle, not particularly deviating in spirit from the text, which views all this native exoticism from a somewhat, let's say, colonial point of view... The film Death on the Nile managed to stand on a par with the book, which is an honor for any film adaptation, and for a film adaptation of a classic (albeit a light genre), it is the best compliment.