AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (87)

Directed by: Rene Clair (1945)

Starring: Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, Louis Hayward, Roland Young

The Pitch: Ten people are summoned to a mysterious party on a remote island, and murdered one by one.

Theo Sez: Not much to do with the fizzy, irrepressibly innovative quasi-musicals Clair was making in the 30s, but still one of Old Hollywood's most durable and elegant (and relatively under-rated) entertainments. From the marvellous opening sequence, wordlessly establishing its "ten little Indians" as their boat nears the island - panning slowly from one to the other, indicating their various personalities and connecting them through props and comic bits of business (a woman's scarf is blown into her neighbour's face, that kind of thing) - the inventiveness and unhurried craftsmanship on view is a delight. The light-hearted tone - featuring a cast of mostly comic actors, plus a number of near-farcical sequences like the everybody-spying-on-each-other bit early on - seems at first like a misjudgment but is actually what makes the movie, turning the rather mechanical whodunnit plot into a wickedly funny jape, "a game of precision" as one of the characters puts it. More surprisingly, even with the audience half-knowing what's about to happen most of the time (and, of course, without a single drop of onscreen blood), the jocular tone doesn't prevent it from being satisfyingly tense and shivery. No masterpiece perhaps - it is, after all, only a game - but unreservedly recommended : deft, civilised and altogether perfect.