AND THEN THERE WERE NONE - DVD review

The Movie According to John:
With all due respect to Dame Agatha Christie's other fictional achievements, Hercule Poirot, for instance, or Miss Jane Marple or Christie's seventy-five other mystery novels and many long-running plays like "The Mousetrap" and "Witness for the Prosecution," I believe it's her story "And Then There Were None" that is the masterstroke. It is a classic of mystery and suspense, later turned into a play and remade cinimatically three more times, all under the title "Ten Little Indians." VCI Home Video bring director Rene Clair's 1945 film version, the first and the best, to DVD in about as good a shape as we could hope for, making it must-viewing for any whodunit fan.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, "And Then There Were None" has been flattered, indeed. The plot of the story when it first appeared was so good, so inventive, that it's been copied, borrowed from, and parodied countless times since. It involves ten people who are invited to an isolated island and then murdered one by one.

Their host, Mr. U.N. Owen, is only a mysterious voice on a phonograph recording that welcomes them and hints at what's to come by enumerating each of their crimes. It doesn't take long before the guests scour the mansion and its surroundings and determine that they are alone. Which means that one of them is the murderer! As they are killed off one at a time, the list of suspects diminishes until....

Yes, it's classic. Not to say it's perfect. Like most of Ms. Christie's works, this one, too, depends upon coincidence and a degree of sheer luck for all the pieces to fall conveniently into place. An incident near the ending diminishes some of the impact of the climactic scene. And the exaggerated character of the Russian prince is hard to believe.

Yet admirers will love the film all the more for its minor shortcomings, and surely everyone benefits from its tongue-in-cheek black humor. The all-star cast, under the light and witty guidance of French filmmaker Rene Clair, includes Walter Huston as the doctor; Barry Fitzgerald as the judge; and Louis Hayward as the explorer; with June Duprez, Roland Young, Judith Anderson, Sir C. Aubery Smith, Mischa Auer, Richard Haydn, Queenie Leonard, and Harry Thurston. For those of you observant enough to notice that that is eleven actors, not ten, we have to count the boatman who takes the group to the island.

VCI Home Video have a large catalogue of older films waiting for transfer to DVD. But it is the buying public who will determine how many of these films will make the transition. The people at VCI are in business to make money, not to offer a service for a few old-movie buffs. This is by way of suggesting that today's DVD buyers should consider the possibility that many good older films, in spite of limited audiovisual appeal, are worth more repeat viewings than many newer, fancier, but mindless creations. "And Then There Were None" is a timeless classic that deserves a place in any DVD library.

The Movie According to Eddie:
Continuing in its efforts to make obscure or nearly-forgotten fare available to the general public, VCI Home Video has released the 1945 film "And Then There Were None." Screenwriter Dudley Nichols adapted his script from Agatha Christie's whodunit novel "Ten Little Indians," and the project features notables such as Oscar-winners Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston.

"And Then There Were None" begins with eight strangers being ferried over to an island off the coast of England. This party includes a judge, a doctor, a general, a Russian prince, and a secretary. They are guests of Mr. and Mrs. Owen at their island mansion. On the island, the Owens' servants are there to welcome the guests. Oddly enough, the hosts themselves aren't on the island, and they don't show up for dinner, either.

At nine o'clock that night, the butler puts a record on the gramophone, as instructed by Mr. Owens in a written memo. Suddenly, a booming voice tells everyone to be quiet as it begins to accuse the people in the room (the eight guests, the butler, and his wife) of being guilty of murder. The voice promises that justice will be served before the end of the weekend.

One by one, the ten individuals on the island begin to die by some invisible hand. As each person is murdered, one of the plaster Indian statuettes is broken. Each person is murdered according a musical ditty about "ten little Indians." The guests get more and more desperate as they try to figure out which one of them is the killer.

"And Then There Were None" is an exciting and skillful thriller/murder mystery. Of course, the success of the film can be largely attributed to the wickedly ingenious novel by Agatha Christie. She was one of the most popular authors in the entire world for a good reason: she knew how to write mysteries as well as, dare I say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame). Dame Christie wrote numerous novels following the fictitious adventures of not one, but two intrepid detectives: Hercule Poirot and Miss Maples. In addition to her Poirot and Maples novels, she wrote many other works that frightened and entertained millions of readers. Alas, the world has largely forgotten Dame Christie, and ‘tis a crime that people read dreck from the likes of Stephen King and Danielle Steele rather than Agatha Christie.

In 1993, audiences were flummoxed by the fact that the filmmakers of "The Firm" had changed the ending of John Grisham's novel. Of course, purists cried foul play, but most people seemed to accept the director's explanation that he wanted audiences to experience a new surprise when they saw the film. This sort of thing happened close to 50 years before "The Firm" with "And Then There Were None." The film not only departs from the source novel in the way that it concludes, but it also amps up the blooming relationship between the two most attractive characters in the novel. (Dame Christie was also heavily involved in theatrical productions, and her novels display a keen sense of "playing" to an audience, just like a movie would. Therefore, it's no surprise that "Ten Little Indians" was turned into such an enjoyable thriller.) I won't give away any plot details as I would prefer you, dear reader, to see the movie and to read the book on your own.

The performances are uniformly good, and I particularly liked the way June Duprez and Louis Hayward develop the uneasy chemistry between their characters. This film is a good lesson on how an ensemble cast is supposed to act: without vanity and with respect towards one another's contributions to a film's final impact.

"And Then There Were None" is a clever little film. Despite the changes that the filmmakers made to the plot, the film remains true to the tense atmosphere and spirit of Agatha Christie's novel. Alas, the low quality of the video makes the film rough on the eyes.

Video:
DVD reproduction is an extremely precise medium. The problem we are going to encounter with more and more older films on DVD is that unless a studio lavishes a good deal of time and money digitally restoring them to pristine condition, as MGM did with "Casablanca," the results are only going to be as good as the basic source material. A DVD will show up faults as well as virtues in exacting detail.

VCI (authoring and compression by Winner Communications, Tulsa, Oklahoma) provided us with what appears to be an exact copy of the original film stock. The source is flawed, as we might expect after more than half a century. The black-and-white picture is sometimes bright and well-contrasted with blacks, gray tones, and white and sometimes a little faded and dull. It is sometimes clean and clear and sometimes filled with scratches and dust.

The video quality, ultimately, is rather poor (1.33:1 full-frame on 4:3 TVs). Obviously, the DVD presentation of "And Then There Were None" will probably be far superior to previous videotape transfers, but that just comes with the DVD territory. It's expected that a DVD will look better than a tape or laserdisc copy. However, the film has deteriorated so badly that sometimes it's hard to tell when an object ends and another begins. Rather than affecting natural lighting, lighter objects seem to glow while darker objects fade into the shadows. Sometimes, I couldn't even make out the features on the actors faces. Scratches, grain, and dirt are readily apparent throughout the film. I don't think that an original negative or interpositive exists as reel change dots are apparent in the upper-right hand corner every so often.

I discussed the quality of the video image with a representative at VCI, and this is the official explanation concerning the DVD:

"In restoring titles, sometimes available elements are practically beyond repair, as was the case for this title. We took it from a 16mm element and DVNR. In this case, getting the scratches and dirt out contributed in dulling the sharpness of the film."

At the moment, this is the best possible presentation as the source elements have not been preserved well by the film's previous handlers. Still, VCI is on the active search for a better print of "And Then There Were None."

Audio:
Audio options are limited to a Dolby Digital 1.o English track. The audio often sounds brittle, the music screeching, and the dialogue hollow. This is due to the limitations of 1940s recording technology, of course, but I'm sure that the audio stems have deteriorated just as badly as the film's negative over the decades. No subtitles or captions of any sort are provided.

Extras:
Along with the feature film, VCI provide a short subject, a fifteen-minute farce called "Twin Husbands" with comic actor Leon Errol. Short subjects (think of the Three Stooges) were a staple of move houses in the thirties and forties, back when the film industry was still trying to deliver a full evening's entertainment. The main film, a short, a newsreel, an animated cartoon, maybe even a second feature were standard fare. Today, the industry forces audiences to mortgage their homes to buy tickets, extorts exorbitant prices for refreshments, and offers a single attraction. It's no wonder people buy and rent videos in ever greater numbers, and it certainly makes a good case for buying DVDs. I missed having a newsreel and a cartoon on this one, though. Anyway, there are some filmmakers' biographies, too.