A RETRO REVIVAL OF THE ORIENT EXPRESS ON THE EVE OF YEAR 2000

 A RETRO REVIVAL OF THE ORIENT EXPRESS ON THE EVE OF YEAR 2000 

      

Dr. Xenia Kisselincheva

If you mention Agatha Christie’s 1974 crime thriller  “Murder on the Orient Express” at any point round the planet, almost one out of five people is bound to respond they have read the novel, seen the screening of it, or, at least have heard about it. It’s no wonder, since the authoress, honored as Dame Commander of the British Empire is matched in popularity only by the Bible and Shakespeare. How does the international film co-production “Death, Fraud and Love on the Orient Express” relate to the classical thriller?

Here is what Mark Ropper, its British director has to say: “This is a contemporary action thriller, taking place on board the Orient Express on the eve of the year 2000. But I have still kept the suspense and the sinister mystery of Christie’s novel. I made it that way between myself and the actors, since I want to be watched by people of all ages across the globe, mesmerized the unfading magic of the train. According to the screenplay, I don’t have a detective like Hercule Poirot, but there is a pervading feeling that there is more going on than actually meets the eye. Besides, I have managed to model one of the characters into something like an investigator who is trying to make out who is on the train and why...”

The film, recently shot and edited in Bulgaria, has gone to the Cannes film festival, awaiting a good response by the audience, the pundits and the film companies. What is it all about? The train, zooming across Europe through the auspicious night, on the brink of the new millennium has been hijacked. Guess who is on board the train in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere? The two richest and most powerful men in the world / their prototypes might be Rupert Murdock and Bill Gates / have chosen to meet the new rising millennium in the stylish retro atmosphere of the Orient Express. The two blase tycoons are completely unawares of the threat that is creeping on them. The scheme of the international gang of hijackers is simply to take possession of their wealth. As the actor Christoff Waltz, starring as the chief villain, explains the motivation of his character: “I am after their huge wealth and I am at an inch of gaining it”. The Bulgarian actor Christo Shopov who performs in the role of the train’s manager turns out to be in the center of the clash game between the mega-rich hostages and the relentless terrorists.

The greater part of the film has been shot at the Boyana film center in Sofia. A true-to-life copy of the train has been built there, recreating in the minutest details the authentic ambience of the fabulous vehicle. This has been achieved under the guidance of the Italian stage and film designer Giovanni Natalucci. Apart from this reconstruction, the team has been shooting on King Boris’s train in the vicinity of Sofia and Dragoman.  Finally, they were also given the opportunity to do some shooting at the museum of old vehicles at the Central Railway station.

The film co-production is one of the international projects of the British producer Harry Allan Towers and it draws on the resources of talented people from across the globe. Suffice it to mention one of them, the well-known American actor Richard Greco, who stars as a film star and stunts man. With his tongue in the cheek, he loves to comment about his hero in this vein “My mission is to save beautiful girls like Joanna/ i.e. the Bulgarian actress Joanna Bukovska / and kill the wicked ones.”

But Joanna Bukovska, who stars in the lead female part, has her own version of her relationship with R. Greko within the context of the film. “As a matter of fact, I save his life with the help of acrobatic abilities.” Joanna is a charismatic film star, who made a name for herself in the first post-Communist TV series “The Danube Bridge”. While doing her studies at the Theater Academy in Sofia, she has managed to perform lead parts in three co-productions under the guidance of eminent foreign directors.

 That’s what she had to say about her experience of interacting with the director of the Orient Express thriller, tall and blue-eyed Mark Ropper, who has the bearing of a proud Viking: “This is the first director in my working experience  who knows exactly what he wants to achieve and who knows how to go about it. ” She explains further in greater detail:

“He manages very well to bring out  the subdued tension between the characters, both in terms of physical action and  through the gleam in the eye of the characters, when looking at each other. He helped me bring out a touch of Slavic sensibility in my heroine, who is a Russian ballerina. At times, she is a fearless and virtuoso acrobat, while at other times, she can be really romantic and gentle.”

After seeing the film, I made a better sense of what J. Bukovska was driving at. Nadia, her heroine is much more than the action thriller stereotype of  “an iron maiden” , flaunting about her stunningly good looks. “The calculating bitch” who is the lover of one of the moguls unexpectedly falls in love with R. Greco’s hero and displays surprising nuances of her personality.

As director Mark Ropper remarked “The performance of the Bulgarian actors hasn’t been touched by Hollywood, they still have a lot of theatre in them. There is some kind of depth to their interpretation, they seem to bring it up from their stomach. That’s why they have worked so well with the British actors.”

 Then Mark went on to greater lengths about the advantages of an international production, where each national talent invests his own unique shade of color. For instance, the director and some of the actors are British, the script writer is Canadian, the cameraman and the composer  are Italian etc.

 As Peter Jobin, the Canadian-born screenplay writer put it: “It’s a fantastic mixture of people who know what movies are all about. They kind of speak the same language, they immediately grasp what the other person is aiming at. Movie talk is like music, it transcends borders, it is team work and each person is just as important as the next.” Peter also makes it clear that he tries to tell interesting stories and to entertain people.

 He is full of amusing anecdotes about how words get redefined and rearticulated in the process of shooting a film. For example, the director might sometimes get excited or angry, waving his arms around like a conductor, caught up in a frenzy: “Why will this character do that?” The screenplay writer tries to explain, putting the logic of his creation to the test. On some occasions, he prevails over the director, on others, he backs down. Or, suddenly, another person on the team intervenes, and everybody accepts his point of view. Mr. Jobin takes another story out of the bag. “Once, I was woken up by a phone call and I was urgently summoned to the shooting site. When I arrived there, I realized the team people had got into a problem. They were sitting in the retro dining car and they were having a very hot argument. “This scene has to go there! No, it doesn’t have to. It belongs here!” and so on. The actors were sharing their thoughts and I was the guy who listened to them and said: “Well, that’s a great idea. Go on and develop it further. Or, I would say: “It doesn’t sound like that character, he won’t do this. Finally, Mark takes charge of the situation, he has the final say.”

Shooting a movie is a very complex thing, all sorts of difficulties creep up like cockroaches, out of all corners. These difficulties have to be resolved immediately, because of budget considerations. Or, because of the tight  schedule, very often you do the shooting for long hours and you have to finish in four or five weeks. Some people cannot take all the pressure, their nerves crack up. For instance, while shooting the Orient Express, an actress went into a nervous fit and had to go. They were all upset for a while, but they tried to drown their frustration into endless hours of shooting.

Mark Ropper is a straightforward and dynamic person, they all love to work with him. Nobody complained they were suppressed or snubbed by him. At the farewell cocktail at the NDK, he was all over the place. Sipping Heineken, he tried to weigh up his two year experience in Bulgaria:

 “To be honest, when we first came, the Bulgarian side wasn’t prepared for our style of working, like fast multiple camera shooting and others techniques. Since then, they have managed to catch up. Now problems are immediately dealt with, by executives like Evgeni Mihailov.”   

Suddenly, the lights went out. The film started unrolling, accompanied by whistling, booing and clapping of hands. The response was unrestrained and charmingly spontaneous like the one at a pop concert where fans and performers merge into a whole, each making part of the same ritual. The lights went on again and the ritual was over.

Before leaving, I had a last pint of beer with Peter Jobin. He tried to point out the reasons why international film teams felt happy about shooting in Bulgaria:

“Apart from the fine beer and beautiful women, we find here three important things. First, a fine studio that can accommodate building complicated sets, secondly, a countryside which gives us a great variety of choice. And, last but not least, a professional film industry that can back us up quite adequately, like producers, technicians etc., including the good choice of actors, some of them starring in leading parts. So, you can make a movie in the best professional circumstances. This is why we hang around here - we have finished one project and we are about to start working on another in a couple of weeks’ time... ”

Getting away from the razzle-dazzle of the cocktail party, I felt reassured that things were going the right way in filmmaking and international artistic cooperation. In a world, fragmented and divided along ethnic, social and religious lines, this is a bright light in the tunnel. Boyana film center was bought by an American company and now it is a most desirable venue for a cross-cultural creative activity.