Death on the Nile (1978 film)

Death on the Nile is a 1978 British mystery film based on Agatha Christie's 1937 novel of the same name, directed by John Guillermin and adapted by Anthony Shaffer. The film features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov for the first time, plus an all-star supporting cast that includes Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, David Niven, George Kennedy, and Jack Warden. The film is a standalone sequel to the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express.
It takes place in Egypt in 1937, mostly on a period paddle steamer on the Nile. Various famous Ancient Egyptian sights are featured in the film, such as the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, and temples at Abu Simbel and Karnak.
Death on the Nile won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 51st Academy Awards.
Expat heiress Linnet Ridgeway hires her friend Jackie de Bellefort's fiancé, Simon Doyle, as her English estate manager. Linnet and Simon marry following a whirlwind courtship. Honeymooning in Egypt, they are surprised by the jilted Jackie. The Doyles pretend to take a train to Alexandria, then board the Nile paddle steamer, S.S. Karnak. Holidaying detective Hercule Poirot learns about the situation.
During an excursion to the Temple of Karnak, a large falling stone narrowly misses the Doyles. Jackie joins the cruise, ignoring Poirot's advice to stay away. She is a crack shot and carries a pistol. Drunk, she shoots Simon in the leg during dinner. The next morning Linnet is found dead, shot in the head with the letter "J" in blood on the wall. However, Jackie has a solid alibi, as fellow passenger Miss Bowers sedated her with morphia and watched her all night.
Poirot and lawyer Colonel Race investigate. Unknown to the Doyles, Race is there following Andrew Pennington, Linnet's trustee suspected of embezzlement. Almost every passenger had motives to kill Linnet: her maid Louise Bourget was bitter that her mistress refused her a dowry; Pennington, who was trying to hide his embezzlement; kleptomaniac American socialite Mrs. van Schuyler wanted Linnet's pearl necklace; van Schuyler's nurse, Miss Bowers, blamed Linnet's father for ruining her family; romance novelist Salome Otterbourne was being sued by Linnet for libel; Otterbourne's daughter, Rosalie, wanted to protect her mother; Communist writer Jim Ferguson hated Linnet for her wealth; and Swiss psychiatric doctor Ludwig Bessner faced Linnet exposing his unorthodox treatments.
A bundle is retrieved from the Nile, containing the missing pistol wrapped in van Schuyler's stole, which has a bullet hole; a red ink-stained handkerchief; and a marble ashtray. When Linnet's pearl necklace is found to be missing, van Schuyler denies taking it, when Poirot and Race discover the necklace back on Linnet's dead body, Poirot deduces van Schuyler returned it.
Bourget is found dead clutching a fragment of a banknote, her throat slit with Bessner's scalpel. Poirot deduces she saw the murderer exiting Linnet's cabin and extorted money for her silence. Salome is about to tell Poirot and Race she saw Louise's murderer when she is shot through the doorway with Pennington's revolver.
Poirot gathers everyone in the saloon and reveals that Simon killed Linnet, with Jackie as the mastermind; they had remained lovers all along. Jackie pretended to shoot Simon, drawing attention to herself and ensuring Simon would be left alone while she was taken to her cabin. After running to Linnet's cabin and shooting her, Simon returned to the saloon and shot himself in the leg, using van Schuyler's stole as a silencer. He threw the gun wrapped in the stole and the supposed blood-stained handkerchief with a marble ashtray into the Nile. He used another handkerchief on his leg. Jackie killed Louise, who was blackmailing Simon because she witnessed him enter Linnet's cabin, then killed Mrs. Otterbourne, who saw Jackie exiting Louise's cabin. The plan was for Simon to kill Linnet, inherit her money, and marry his old love later.
Realising they are caught, Jackie confesses and embraces Simon. Too late, Poirot realises she has reclaimed her pistol and she fatally shoots Simon then herself.
EMI Films had scored a huge success in 1974 with a film version of Murder on the Orient Express, and wanted a follow-up. The plan was to make Death on the Nile, but the rights could not be obtained, so in July 1975 EMI announced they would film Evil Under the Sun instead. However, these plans were postponed and the Nile rights secured.
The movie was made during a period of expansion for EMI Films under Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings, who were increasingly aiming at the international market with films like The Deer Hunter and Convoy. Death on the Nile was a more traditionally British film.
The director, John Guillermin, had just made two blockbusters, The Towering Inferno and King Kong.
Albert Finney played Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, but did not wish to undergo the heavy make-up required for Poirot in the Egyptian sun. The producers felt if they could not get Finney they should go in a totally different direction and picked Peter Ustinov. "Poirot is a character part if ever there was one", said producer Goodwin, "and Peter is a top character actor."
An all-star cast was employed. This was Jane Birkin's first British movie in a decade.
The initial scenes set in England were filmed at the village of Hambleden, the main gates of Cliveden in Buckinghamshire and at the country house Compton Wynyates in Warwickshire.
The production spent seven weeks on location in Egypt in late 1977. Four weeks filming were on the steamer Karnak (the historic ship SS Memnon) and the rest at places such as Aswan, Abu Simbel, Luxor, and Cairo. Most of the time the ship was conveyed by smaller boats and the engines turned off, because they were so loud that they disrupted filming. Desert filming required makeup call at 4 a.m. and shooting at 6 a.m. to accommodate a two-hour delay around noon when temperatures hovered near 54 °C (130 °F). Bette Davis wryly commented "In the older days, they'd have built the Nile for you. Nowadays, films have become travelogues and actors stuntmen."
John Guillermin commented that the Egyptian government was supportive of the film because there were so many Agatha Christie fans in the country, and the story "was unpolitical".
During the shoot, troubles arose as no hotel reservations had been made for the crew. They were shifted from hotel to hotel, sometimes on a daily basis. Director Guillermin never was allowed to see the rushes. By order of the producers, footage was sent directly to them in London. A lighter moment occurred during a love scene between Chiles and MacCorkindale, when a hostile desert fly landed on Chiles's teeth. The actors carried on as best they could, but the crew burst out laughing when Guillermin thankfully called "cut" and ordered another take.
Guillermin found the shoot logistically tricky because of the heat and the boat, which sometimes ran aground. But he enjoyed the cast:
"Poirot can be a cold fish, but here we made him more humanistic and warm, interested in young people for instance", said the director. "Peter Ustinov was able to bring that out." Costume designer Anthony Powell won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, his second. Among his touches were shoes for Chiles that featured diamond studded heels that came from a millionaire's collection and shoes worn by Davis made from the scales of 26 pythons.
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff says he and Guillermin decided to give the film "an old fashioned 30s look".
The choreography for the tango scene was provided by British dancer Wayne Sleep.
In early 1978 David Niven's daughter was seriously injured in a car accident. Niven would fly from London to Switzerland on weekends during filming to sit by her bedside.
Although it was a British film, Death on the Nile premiered in New York on 29 September 1978 to coincide with the sale of tickets for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's opening on 15 December 1978 of the travelling exhibition The Treasures of Tutankhamun, which had piqued interest in Egyptian artefacts. For the U.S. market, artist Richard Amsel was commissioned to change the original British poster art by including the profile of King Tutankhamun with ceremonial knife (and modern revolver), surrounded by the cast.
In London, there was a Royal Charity Premiere at the ABC Shaftesbury Avenue on 23 October 1978, attended by The Queen, Prince Philip and Earl Mountbatten.
The film was expected to be popular with audiences following on the heels of Murder on the Orient Express, the most successful British film up to that point. However, the box-office return was $14.5 million in the United States, lower than the $27.6 million high for Orient Express. EMI claimed it was the most successful foreign film shown in mainland China with 5 million admissions in Shanghai alone.
Nat Cohen said the film "did not do quite as well in America, though the US TV networks paid three times as much for it as they had done for Orient Express. It did ‘‘satisfactory”’ business in America — and made four times as much as Orient Express in Japan — but overall it grossed less than the first time."
The Times' film critic David Robinson had mixed feelings about the film. Although it was entertaining, and followed the formula of the Murder on the Orient Express film four years earlier, he found it a bit too long and not quite as good. He concluded that screenwriter Anthony Shaffer and director John Guillermin were not quite as suitable to handle Agatha Christie's rich material as Paul Dehn and Sidney Lumet had been when they worked on Murder on the Orient Express.
Death on the Nile has received generally positive reviews by film critics more than 30 years later. The film holds an approval rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10.
A third Poirot film, Evil Under the Sun, was meant for release in 1979, but was released in 1982. It was followed by several TV movies starring Ustinov and another theatrical adaptation in 1988 titled Appointment with Death, which marked Ustinov's final portrayal of Hercule Poirot.