Sleeping Car to Trieste

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Sleeping Car to Trieste
Directed by John Paddy Carstairs
Written by William Douglas-Home
Clifford Grey
Starring Jean Kent
Albert Lieven
Release date(s) 1948
Running time 95 min.
Country U.K.
Language English
IMDb profile

Sleeping Car to Trieste is a film made in 1948. It was directed by John Paddy Carstairs and written by William Douglas-Home and Clifford Grey.

Contents

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot

Virtually a remake of the 1932 film Rome Express, with essentially the same characters and many of the same actors, the setting is post-war Europe. The film's action takes place almost entirely on a train travelling between Paris and Trieste.

Albert Lieven and Jean Kent play two somewhat mysterious people, at ease in sophisticated society. On Valya's behalf, Zurta steals a diary from an unnamed embassy in Paris, but in doing so, is forced to kill an embassy guard. Allan Wheatley, as Poole, an accomplice of theirs, is passed the diary, but he double-crosses the two and attempts to escape with it on the Orient Express. Just in time, Valya and Zurta also board the train; they must now track down Poole and recover the diary.

However, they are soon involved with not only tracking down Poole (who is hiding in a train compartment and desperately tryng to avoid being moved by the train staff) but with several other travellers, including a US Army sergeant with an eye for the ladies, an adulterous couple, an idiot stockbroker, a wealthy, autocratic writer and his brow-beaten secretary/valet, a bird watcher, a French police inspector, and the train's chef who is forced to listen to a self-styled cooking 'expert' from England.

The diary is discovered by accident and passes through the hands of several people on the train, but when Zurta kills Poole, he is eventually confronted by the police inspector. In an attempt to escape, he leaps from the train, but is hit (and presumably killed) by a train travelling in the opposite direction. The diary is presumed to be lost with him.

[edit] Back story

Details of the 'back story' of the film are few, including the contents of the diary, who wrote it and why it has such value. Valya and Zurta are assumed to be from an unspecified country - possibly Yugoslavia - and Zurta cannot get into the country as he is a wanted man there, probably on account of his wartime activities. The diary, if published, would probably hurt the current regime.

MacBain, supposedly a world peace advocate but actually a self-promoting blow-hard, has been insulted by being denied entrance to Yugoslavia.

[edit] External links

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