And Then There Were None (1945 film)

1945 film by René Clair

This article is missing information about the film's production, and theatrical/home media releases. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (April 2018)

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And Then There Were None

American film poster

Directed by| René Clair
Written by| Dudley Nichols
Based on| 1939 Novel:
Agatha Christie
Produced by| René Clair
Harry M. Popkin
Starring| Barry Fitzgerald
Walter Huston
Louis Hayward
Cinematography| Lucien N. Andriot
Edited by| Harvey Manger [d]
Music by| Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Distributed by| 20th Century Fox

Release date

* October 30, 1945 (1945-10-30)

Running time

| 97 minutes
Country| United States
Language| English
Budget| $1 million[1]
Box office| $1 million[2]
And Then There Were None (1945)

And Then There Were None is a 1945 film adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1939 mystery novel of the same name, directed by René Clair.[3] It was released in the United Kingdom as Ten Little Indians,[4] in keeping with the third United Kingdom title of Christie's novel.[5] The film was released by 20th Century Fox and due to the lapsed copyright, it is now in the public domain.[6] The film has been remastered multiple times and is freely available online.[7]

## Plot

[edit]

Eight people, all strangers to each other, are invited to a small isolated island off the coast of Devon, England, by a Mr. and Mrs. Owen. They settle in at a mansion tended by two newly hired servants, Thomas and Ethel Rogers - a married couple, but their hosts are absent. When the guests sit down to dinner, they notice the centerpiece, ten figurines of Indians. Thomas puts on a gramophone record, through which a man's voice accuses them all of murder:

* General Sir John Mandrake, of ordering his wife's lover, a lieutenant under his command, to his death
* Emily Brent, of the death of her young nephew
* Dr. Edward G. Armstrong, of drunkenness which resulted in a patient dying
* Prince Nikita Starloff, of killing a couple while speeding
* Vera Claythorne, of murdering her sister's fiancé
* Judge Francis J. Quinncannon, of being responsible for the hanging of an innocent man
* Philip Lombard, of causing the deaths of 21 South African tribesmen
* William H. Blore, of perjury, resulting in an innocent man's death
* Thomas and Ethel Rogers, of the demise of their previous employer, an invalid

It becomes apparent that none of the ten knows or has even seen "U. N. Owen"; they then realize the name stands for "unknown." They also cannot leave the island, as Rogers informs them that the boat will not return until Monday, and it is only Friday.

Starloff admits his guilt, then dies from his drink, which was poisoned. The next morning, it is discovered that Mrs. Rogers died in her sleep. The guests notice that one figurine is broken and another missing after the two deaths. With the two deaths matching the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme, they search the island for "Mr. Owen" without success. After General Mandrake is stabbed to death, the judge declares that Owen must be one of them.

They vote on who they suspect Owen is; as the only one to get more than one vote, Rogers is made to sleep in the woodshed. The next morning, they find him dead, his head split open with an axe. Miss Brent dies next, her body found with a hypodermic needle nearby. Armstrong discovers that his needle is missing and Lombard's revolver is lost as well.

At dinner, Quinncannon, Armstrong, Blore, and Lombard all confess to their crimes. When it is Miss Claythorne's turn, she excuses herself to get her coat and the others hear her shriek and rush to her. In the confusion, a single gunshot is heard. They find her shaken after being brushed by seaweed hanging from the ceiling. They also find Lombard's gun; Quinncannon is dead from a shot to the head.

Miss Claythorne insists she is innocent, but Armstrong suspects her and locks her in her room. That night, Claythorne admits to Lombard that her sister killed her own fiancé, and that Claythorne helped her cover up the crime and took the blame. The two later realize Armstrong is missing.

The next morning, Blore is struck by stonework toppled from the floor above. Lombard sees a corpse on the beach: Armstrong. Miss Claythorne holds Lombard's gun against him, certain that Lombard is the killer. He tells her that his real name is Charles Morley, and that the real Lombard was his friend who committed suicide. Morley has a flash of insight and urges her to shoot, but not actually at him.

Miss Claythorne fires and Morley drops. She finds a noose hanging in the parlor and discovers who Owen is: Quinncannon, very much alive. The judge tells her that all his life he had searched for perfect justice. After learning that he was terminally ill, he concocted this plan. He persuaded Armstrong to help him fake his own (Quinncannon's) death, supposedly to help catch Owen, then murdered Armstrong. He tells her that she can either hang herself or be sent to the gallows (as the only possible perpetrator). He drinks poisoned whiskey, while Morley appears behind him, alive, as Vera had purposely missed shooting him. Quinncannon dies and the boat arrives, rescuing Morley and Miss Claythorne.

## Cast

[edit]

From left: Louis Hayward, C. Aubrey Smith, Barry Fitzgerald, Richard Haydn, Mischa Auer, and Walter Huston in And Then There Were None (1945)

The cast included:[8]

* Barry Fitzgerald as Judge Francis J. Quinncannon
* Walter Huston as Dr. Edward G. Armstrong
* Louis Hayward as Philip Lombard/Charles Morley
* Roland Young as Detective William Henry Blore
* June Duprez as Vera Claythorne
* Mischa Auer as Prince Nikita "Nikki" Starloff
* C. Aubrey Smith as General Sir John Mandrake
* Judith Anderson as Emily Brent
* Richard Haydn as Thomas Rogers
* Queenie Leonard as Ethel Rogers
* Harry Thurston as Fred Narracott

## Reception

[edit]

On first release in 1945, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: "René Clair has produced an exciting film and has directed a splendid cast in it with humor and a light macabre touch. The temptation to the horrifying is intelligently dismissed".[3] The film kept its audience involved "from fear and trembling, not from gore." Several performances were commended, especially Walter Huston and Barry Fitzgerald.[3] Variety magazine, however, described the film as a "dull whodunit" which "rarely rises to moments of suspense and despite the killings it gives the appearance of nothing ever happening". Most of the cast, Variety thought, seemed out of place.[9]

Film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film four out of four stars, calling it "Highly suspenseful" and praising the film's script, music score, and visuals.[10] On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 12 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8.1/10.[11]

## Awards

[edit]

The film won the Golden Leopard and the Best Direction Award at the 1946 Locarno International Film Festival.[12][13]

## Distribution and copyright

[edit]

Though it was distributed by a major studio, 20th Century Fox, the copyright was allowed to lapse and the film is now in the public domain.[14] Several different editions of varying quality have been released to home video formats.[15]

The name of the film sometimes varies with who listed it. In 1960, Radio Times altered the title to Ten Little Niggers for an airing of Clair's film on BBC television on 9 July,[16] the original title of the novel as published in the UK.[17]

Sensitivity to the original title of the novel was remarked by Sadie Stein in 2016, commenting on a BBC miniseries with the title And Then There Were None, which she said "has been an enormous hit in the UK."[18] In general, "Christie’s work is not known for its racial sensitivity, and by modern standards her oeuvre is rife with casual Orientalism." Stein quotes Alison Light as to the power of the original name of the island in the novel, Nigger Island, "to conjure up a thrilling ‘otherness’, a place where revelations about the ‘dark side’ of the English would be appropriate."[19] Speaking of the "widely known" 1945 movie, Stein added that "we’re merely faced with fantastic amounts of violence, and a rhyme so macabre and distressing one doesn’t hear it now outside of the Agatha Christie context."[18] She felt that the original title of the novel in the UK, seen now, "that original title, it jars, viscerally."[18]

## Later film versions

[edit]

Multiple versions of Christie's mystery have been filmed, including Ten Little Indians (1965), And Then There Were None (1974), Desyat Negrityat (1987), and Ten Little Indians (1989).

## See also

[edit]

* List of films in the public domain in the United States

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Indies $70,000,000 Pix Output". Variety: 18. November 3, 1944. Retrieved July 26, 2016.
2. ^ Solomon, Aubrey (2002). Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 221\. ISBN 9780810842441.
3. ^ a b c Crowther, Bosley (November 1, 1945). "And Then There Were None, With Barry Fitzgerald, at Roxy, Appears Opportunely as Goblins Pay Annual Visit Universal Offers a Refashioned Drama of Pirandello in Film This Love of Ours, New Bill Showing at Loew's Criterion At Loew's Criterion". The New York Times. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
4. ^ "Ten Little Indians". British Board of Film Classification.
5. ^ Willison, I.R., ed. (1972). "Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie". The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Volume 4 1900–1950). Cambridge University Press. p. 553. ISBN 0-521-08535-7.
6. ^ "Rene Clair's - And Then There Were None | Public Domain Movies". publicdomainmovie.net. Retrieved 2023-09-13.
7. ^ And Then There Were None (1945) | Agatha Christie | 4K Remastered [FULL MOVIE], retrieved 2023-09-13
8. ^ Barry Fitzgerald, Louis Hayward, Walter Huston in "Ten little Indians". Publicity campaign book. 1945. OCLC 318813939.
9. ^ "And Then There Were None". Variety. 31 December 1944. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
10. ^ Maltin, Leonard; Green, Spencer; Edelman, Rob (January 2010). Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide. Plume. p. 19\. ISBN 978-0-452-29577-3.
11. ^ "And Then There Were None (1945) - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Flixer. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
12. ^ "1946–2017 Palmarès". Locarno Festival. Archived from the original on November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
13. ^ "And Then There Were None". MUBI.
14. ^ Hurst, Walter E.; Baer, D. Richard (2008). Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain (1940-1949). Hollywood, California: Hollywood Film Archives. ISBN 978-0913616277.
15. ^ Arnold, Jeremy. "And Then There Were None - Home Movie Reviews". TCM Movie Database. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
16. ^ "The Saturday Film: Ten Little Indians". Radio Times. No. 1912\. BBC Magazines. July 1, 1960. p. 23.
17. ^ Ten little niggers. 1939. OCLC 152375426.
18. ^ a b c Stein, Sadie (February 5, 2016). "Mystery". The Paris Review. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
19. ^ Light, Alison (2013) [1991]. Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars. Routledge. p. 99\. ISBN 978-1-135-62984-7.

## External links

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to And Then There Were None (1945 film).

* And Then There Were None at IMDb
* And Then There Were None at AllMovie
* And Then There Were None at the TCM Movie Database
* And Then There Were None at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
* And Then There Were None at Rotten Tomatoes

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by René Clair

Feature films|

* The Crazy Ray (1924)
* The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge  (1925)
* The Imaginary Voyage (1926)
* The Prey of the Wind (1927)
* The Italian Straw Hat (1928)
* Two Timid Souls (1928)
* Under the Roofs of Paris (1930)
* Le Million (1931)
* À Nous la Liberté (1931)
* Bastille Day (1933)
* The Last Billionaire (1934)
* The Ghost Goes West (1935)
* Break the News (1938)
* The Flame of New Orleans (1941)
* I Married a Witch (1942)
* It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
* And Then There Were None (1945)
* Man About Town (1947)
* Beauty and the Devil (1950)
* Beauties of the Night (1952)
* The Grand Maneuver (1955)
* Gates of Paris (1957)
* All the Gold in the World (1961)
* The Lace Wars (1965)

Short films &
Anthologies|

* Entr'acte (1924)
* Forever and a Day (1943, segment "1897")
* Three Fables of Love (1962, segment "Les Deux Pigeons")

* v
* t
* e

Films by Dudley Nichols

As director|

* Government Girl (1944)
* Sister Kenny (1946)
* Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)

As writer|

* Men Without Women (1930)
* Born Reckless (1930)
* A Devil with Women (1930)
* Seas Beneath (1931)
* The Black Camel (1931)
* Hush Money (1931)
* She Wanted a Millionaire (1932)
* Robbers' Roost (1932)
* Pilgrimage (1933)
* You Can't Buy Everything (1934)
* The Lost Patrol (1934)
* Judge Priest (1934)
* The Informer (1935)
* The Arizonian (1935)
* The Crusades (1935)
* Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)
* The Three Musketeers (1935)
* Mary of Scotland (1936)
* The Plough and the Stars (1937)
* The Toast of New York (1937)
* The Hurricane (1937)
* Bringing Up Baby (1938)
* Carefree (1938)
* Stagecoach (1939)
* The Long Voyage Home (1940)
* Man Hunt (1941)
* Swamp Water (1941)
* The Battle of Midway (1942)
* Air Force (1943)
* This Land Is Mine (1943)
* Bataan (1943)
* For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
* It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
* And Then There Were None (1945)
* The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
* Scarlet Street (1945)
* The Fugitive (1947)
* Pinky (1949)
* Return of the Texan (1952)
* The Big Sky (1952)
* Prince Valiant (1954)
* Run for the Sun (1956)
* The Tin Star (1957)
* The Hangman (1959)
* Heller in Pink Tights (1960)
* Escape from Zahrain (1962)

* v
* t
* e

Golden Leopard winning films

1946–1975|

* And Then There Were None (1946)
* Man About Town (1947)
* Germany, Year Zero (1948)
* The Farm of Seven Sins (1949)
* When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950)
* Hunted (1952)
* Julius Caesar (1953)
* The Composer Glinka (1953)
* The Glass Wall (1953)
* Prince Bayaya (1954)
* Gate of Hell (1954)
* Wild Fruit (1954)
* Rotation (1954)
* The Sheep Has Five Legs (1954)
* Carmen Jones (1955)
* The Emperor's Nightingale (1955)
* Il Grido (1957)
* Ten North Frederick (1958)
* Killer's Kiss (1959)
* Il bell'Antonio (1960)
* Fires on the Plain (1961)
* The Winner (1962)
* Transport from Paradise (1963)
* Black Peter (1964)
* Four in the Morning (1965)
* Courage for Every Day (1966)
* Entranced Earth (1967)
* The Visionaries (1968)
* Charles, Dead or Alive (1969)
* Those Who Wear Glasses (1969)
* Three Sad Tigers (1969)
* No Path Through Fire (1969)
* Lilika (1970)
* Mujo (1970)
* Soleil O (1970)
* End of the Road (1970)
* On the Point of Death (1971)
* They Have Changed Their Face (1971)
* The Friends (1971)
* Private Road (1971)
* Znaki na drodze (1971)
* Bleak Moments (1972)
* The Illumination (1973)
* Tűzoltó utca 25. (1974)
* The Son of Amir Is Dead (1975)

1976–2000|

* The Big Night (1976)
* Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison (1977)
* The Idlers of the Fertile Valley (1978)
* The Herd (1979)
* To Love the Damned (1980)
* Chakra (1981)
* The Princess (1983)
* Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
* Alpine Fire (1985)
* Jezioro Bodeńskie (1986)
* O Bobo (1987)
* Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
* Schmetterlinge (1988)
* Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (1989)
* Accidental Waltz (1990)
* Johnny Suede (1991)
* Autumn Moon (1992)
* The Place on a Grey Tricorne (1993)
* Khomreh (1994)
* Raï (1995)
* Nénette et Boni (1996)
* The Mirror (1997)
* Mr. Zhao (1998)
* Skin of Man, Heart of Beast (1999)
* Father (2000)

2001–present|

* Off to the Revolution by a 2CV (2001)
* The Longing (2002)
* Khamosh Pani (2003)
* Private (2004)
* Nine Lives (2005)
* Das Fräulein (2006)
* The Rebirth (2007)
* Parque via (2008)
* She, a Chinese (2009)
* Winter Vacation (2010)
* Back to Stay (2011)
* The Girl from Nowhere (2012)
* Story of My Death (2013)
* From What Is Before (2014)
* Right Now, Wrong Then (2015)
* Godless (2016)
* Mrs. Fang (2017)
* A Land Imagined (2018)
* Vitalina Varela (2019)
* Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (2021)
* Regra 34 (2022)
* Critical Zone (2023)
* Toxic (2024)

* v
* t
* e

Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None

Films|

* And Then There Were None (1945)
* Ten Little Indians (1965)
* Gumnaam (1965)
* Nadu Iravil (1970)
* And Then There Were None (1974)
* Desyat Negrityat (1987)
* Ten Little Indians (1989)
* Aduthathu (2011)
* Aatagara (2015)

Miniseries|

* And Then There Were None (2015)

Other|

* And Then There Were None (play)
* Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None (game)

Related|

* "And Then There Were Fewer"
* "Private View"
* Ten Little Indians
* Something's Afoot
* I Know What You Did Last Wednesday
* A Stab in the Dark
* Bodies Bodies Bodies

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