Word: ustinov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Moscow, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov assailed China's "dangerous provocation" and accused Peking of trying to "plunge the world into a war." The U.N.'s Security Council prepared to meet in urgent session, at Washington's request, to deal with the Chinese invasion as well as the earlier Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia...
...show. The East Germans are sprucing up Einstein's old summer cottage at Caputh, near Berlin. Japanese Einstein buffs are planning a pilgrimage to some of his European haunts. Television too is paying homage with several Einstein specials, including the BBC-WGBH two-hour Einstein's Universe, starring Peter Ustinov as a wide-eyed student of relativity, and PBS's 60-minute Nova documentary Einstein. Above it all is the "Einstein Observatory," an astronomical satellite launched in November to investigate stars and other celestial objects that radiate high-energy X rays...
...made--is killed in her stateroom while everyone else's attention is on the groom, who has been shot in the leg by the drunk, half-crazed woman he jilted to marry the heiress. Also on board this floating Orient Express is the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), who hears all, sees all, and eats all, at least to judge by his bulk. Add one American lawyer trying to cover up the fact that he has been embezzling the heiress's money, and balance with one English lawyer keeping his eye on the American lawyer. Throw...
...actors play their parts well, some more than others. Ustinov is fine as the supersleuth, but you wish he'd stop taking offense so often for being called French, not Belgian. Still, that's the screenwriter's fault more than Ustinov's. Niven is the quintessential unflappable Englishman, Bette Davis is right at home as a rich old bitch, and Chiles is a fine wealthy corpse. Mia Farrow is convincingly half-crazy, as usual. Some of the characters are drawn a little woodenly, and the script is nothing much to speak of. But then, neither is the Christie original...
...significant victim is Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles), an heiress taking a Nile cruise for her honeymoon. As it develops, just about everyone in first class has both motive and opportunity to do her in. Naturally, one does not imagine that Dame Agatha's immortal detective, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), pulled any triggers, and one can only spare the odd suspicious thought for Colonel Rice (David Niven), who assists him in his investigation. But that leaves plenty of others: Bette Davis as a dowager with a taste for pearls of the sort the late-lamented sported; Maggie Smith...