There are many memorable lines and each character has at least one. In a conversation with the judge, on dressing for that first dinner, the doctor says, “Half of my patients are sick because they’re trying to escape reality.” After the death of the cook, the spinster remarks, “Very stupid to kill the only servant in the house. Now we don’t even know where to find the marmalade.” The detective is forever saying, “I’ve got it!,” but each time he’s proven wrong, he shrugs, “No I don’t.” The butler, after the first three deaths, asks sullenly, “How many will you be for dinner tonight?”
“In my experience of ill-doing,” the judge says at one point, “Providence leaves the work of punishment to us mortals.” After the death of the butler’s wife, the judge suggests that he has known, in his practice, cases where husbands have killed their wives. “Oh, no,” the general moans, “I don’t think any man would ever kill his wife, no matter how guilty she was.”
After locking the dining room so that no more little Indians can be broken off, the surviving men try to give the butler the key for safekeeping. Rogers has taken refuge in the woodshed when they knock on the door. “At a time like this,” he says, “I wouldn’t open the door even if it was Santa Claus,” then, about the key, adds, “Shove it . . . under the door, sir.”
In the epilogue of the book, not depicted in the movie, two Scotland Yard men come to investigate how come there are no living souls on the island, only ten bodies. The two men are stumped. To solve the mystery, and through the old ploy of a message in a bottle—somehow luckily picked up by the captain of a fishing trawler—the master murderer of nine people informs the world how he committed his deeds and shot himself in a way to disguise his suicide.
Please glance at the book, if only to read the next-to-last paragraph—for a good laugh. You suppose Agatha tested this theory—with an unloaded gun, of course? Jeeze!! And why, oh, why, would this mass murderer go to all the trouble of disguising his suicide and then describe how it wasn’t a suicide?! Got to admit, though, the scheme is ingenious, however impracticable.
In the film And Then There Were None, supposedly adapted from Christie’s version of the play, not the novel, there are two survivors—a happy ending, with a stretch: after all, there are those . . . er . . . eight bodies! The movie has a great last line—two, actually—not to be revealed here, a better ending than the book.
And, oh, yes, almost forgot: in the midst of the movie, the four men venture through a rainstorm to slip that key under the door for Rogers. When they return to the house, the judge sneezes.
Wonderful cast. Thoroughly enjoyable movie. Why did they ever think that remakes would be better than the original?
They did not think that, only to repeat, as much as possible, a former success. And probably for that reason alone the new version came up empty.
Grand movie but the picture quality on my dvd is so poor its almost unwatchable which is a huge drag. Would like to see a restored version please if anyone is listening. Walter Huston had real presence in all he did on film. For a Canuck he had a lot of character.