The Sleeping Car Murders (Compartiment Tueurs, 1965)
When: Friday, July 6th | 21:30
Where: Cine Riviera (46 Valtetsiou Str., Athens) | Free Entrance
Directed by: Costas Gavras
Starring: Yves Montand, Catherine Allégret, Simone Signoret
Duration: 95’
On a night train from Marseilles to Paris, six passengers share the same cabin, but at the end of the journey one of them will be found dead in her bunk. The case is assigned to the Parisian police to solve, but the mystery grows bigger as the fellow passengers of the victim wind up, the one after the other, also dead.
Influenced by the devout noir cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville, Costas Gavras’ directorial debut enlivens in the big screen Sébastien Japrisot’s first mystery novel, a writer who would soon become renowned in the French crime fiction. Still far from the political film-making that would distinguish him, Gavras delivers - in between the French Nouvelle Vague explosion – a vigorous crime film which constantly keeps raising the tone, maintaining behind its classical noir form a modern cut of directorial wittiness.
As for that, the experience of the suspense generated in the striking chase scene in the end is enough to place the «Sleeping Car Murders» in the category with the most indulging and ageless mystery films ever made. Nektarios Sakkas
In collaboration with the Lost Highway of Greek Cinema