AND THEN THERE WERE NONE isn't one of my favourite Agatha Christie stories, but it is one of the most filmed with numerous screen adaptations seemingly made every ten years or so. This 1945 outing is the classy Hollywood black and white version, featuring an all-star cast of notables including Walter Huston and Louis Hayward. The depiction of the story isn't too bad at all, with crisp photography that plays up the isolated setting and experienced cast members who really enjoy the roles they're given. I still think the story is a bit slow, predictable, and drawn-out, and the shallowness of the characters present doesn't help much either, but nonetheless this is a perfectly adequate murder mystery and a classic of its kind.

I've read almost all of Agatha Christie's novels, and this one has to be her definitive work, the darkest, the most intelligent, the one that truly keeps you guessing right until the very end. I like both English language versions of the film for different reasons. There is a quality to this production that defies the year it was made, a nice mix of suspense, intrigue and humour. Lombard is a real smoothy, and June Duprez is excellent as the beautiful but sad Vera Claythorne. My only annoyance is the switch in the ending, I wish they'd had the bravery to stick to the original ending, and not use the kop out stage play ending. The house and setting look really effective, it works, so much more so then a desert or even some other awfully imagined setting like a safari!

Entertaining whodunit is perhaps the best of the mysteries which uses the Ten Little Indians formula of a group of characters killed one after the other by someone among them. The methods of execution and the visual ideas (the use of knitting string which leads to a dead victim laying on her bed after a hypodermic with poison sent her to the great beyond, a fallen pair of binoculars after a brick pillar is pushed on top of a victim, chopped wood laid out strewn in front of the servant quarters of an ax victim, the clever use of cherubic statuettes representing the victims (each of which is shattered or broken once someone among the group is murdered), etc.) are directed in spirited fashion by an inspired crew under René Clair's guidance. The setting is perfect (a manor on an isolated island where a series of murders could take place without the concern of interference of others beyond the group themselves) for the Agatha Christie mystery. The cast is full of colorful faces and characterizations with particular standouts, Walter Huston (celebrated director, John Huston's, father) as a doctor and the delightful Barry Fitzgerald as a judge, both of whom "were selected" by an unknown party named Mr. UN Owen (get it, unknown?) to end up on the island as guests to be selectively offed in a variety of ways. Here's the deal: ten "Indians" arrive on the island at the request of a man their friends supposedly know. There's a butler and his cook wife, already at the location, but they are unaware of who Mr. Owen is. They will soon be a part of the killer's masterplan. Each person selected is supposedly responsible for the death of someone. Whether it is their actions causing a suicide (Judith Anderson, completely calm and without distress, just knitting, not a care in the world, responsible for putting away a kid because "he was bad"; the kid would kill himself as a result), wrongly convicting someone or being a reason for someone being imprisoned (Fitzgerald and cop Roland Young), or a problem with booze (Huston, his doctoring resulted in a patient's death, "social drinker and entertainer" (and a "prince" no less) Mischa Auer, who had a DUI resulting in the vehicular homicide of a couple; Mischa's bouts with the drink are obvious, as his obnoxiousness wearies the group almost immediately); this group has a sketchy past that someone among them believes is enough to see them meet poetic justice. Louis Hayward arrives with a medicine case (one a traveling doc would carry) with a different name than what he calls himself which might be a clue as to his reasons for being on the island. The very pretty June Duprez is the innocuous and sweet secretary called to the island by Owen for a job position…or so she thought. June continues to deny she was involved in any murder while most of the others confess to contributing or directly causing a death. Some do so with little regard for what happened, devoid of guilt, more worried about their own skin that recognizing *why* they are going through this.What makes the film fun for me is seeing them eventually question each other on who among them is the killer, deducing and speculating, looking over each other's shoulder, and forming alliances. Louis and June are both about the same age and share a budding romance blooming, while Fitzgerald and Huston (it seems) are in cahoots together to achieve an unveiling of the identity of the killer. A wonderful C Aubrey Smith ("The Four Feathers" and Hitchcock's "Rebecca") is the elderly, near-deaf General Sir John Mandrake, often speaking aloud about his wife, befriends June; I think out of the cast, he's the least suspect (his bouts of senility, which often has him mentioning his wife, kind of indicate this whole ordeal is speeding up his eventual demise).Clair's À Nous la Liberté, a precursor to Chaplin's Modern Times, came a decade before this, and you can see all that returning visual mastery on display in how the mystery developed itself often by using the camera as a pair of eyes (very Hitchcockian), as it follows (with the remaining survivors) the ensuing plot's unraveling. The murders are sometimes discovered by characters off screen (maid servant Queenie Richards is so overwhelmed at a record played (the one produced by Owen that details each murder committed by those present on the island) by her butler husband (Richard Hayden) that she goes to bed and never awakens, found dead the next day), and through dialogue tell the viewer how they occurred.But I think the movie is at its best when Clair carefully shows crime scenes through stylistic ways that paint a picture of what happened, imaginatively setting out the bodies to be found by the characters with tricks on what his camera does and doesn't see. The really talented directors could often take the limits placed on them by censorship and adopt a different strategy, incorporating a less is more approach. There's no in-your-face in 1945. Still, the cast expertly play along. This is all sweet music, with everything falling into place beautifully.

the house. and the performance of Judith Anderson. the memories after first meeting with this film who remains interesting proof of Rene Clair genius.a classic Agatha Christie adaptation, it remains source of a lot of surprises because the atmosphere and its construction, the perfect angles and the nuances of performance, the tension and dialogs are pillars for a solid artistic work. sure, many crime movies are more fascinating but, in this case, the details are key for a special image and the science of director to use each by each the possibilities of novel/script are remarkable. a film for each season/age/artistic taste. short- a kind of gem. and not ordinary one.