Camping in Style

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

DEATH ON THE NILE Directed by John Guillermin Screenplay by Anthony Shaffer

Death on the Nile is really very pleasant entertainment--professionally crafted by writer and director, wittily acted, most handsome in its photography, its period sets and costumes. These are all qualities not to be sneezed at in a time when both entertainment and professionalism in aid of amusement, that not very grand but very basic commodity, are in short supply at the movies. Perhaps it is because the picture comes so close to being something more than entertainment, comes close not to art but to something almost as rare--the genuinely delightful --that one comes away from it uneasily, vaguely disappointed.

The story, of course, is Agatha Christie's: a closed-room, or rather a closed-ship murder mystery. The most significant victim is Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles), an heiress taking a Nile cruise for her honeymoon. As it develops, just about everyone in first class has both motive and opportunity to do her in. Naturally, one does not imagine that Dame Agatha's immortal detective, Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov), pulled any triggers, and one can only spare the odd suspicious thought for Colonel Rice (David Niven), who assists him in his investigation. But that leaves plenty of others: Bette Davis as a dowager with a taste for pearls of the sort the late-lamented sported; Maggie Smith as her nurse-companion;

Mia Farrow as the jilted lover of Linnet's new husband; George Kennedy as her American lawyer, trying to hide his raids on her assets; Jack Warden as a doctor who feels Linnet has been slandering him; and Angela Lansbury, who is about to lose a libel suit Linnet has brought against her. There are also a mistreated maid and a handsome young Communist who have their class differences to settle with her.

They are, manifestly, a diverse, and therefore amiable set of cruise companions, and unless one has read the book, it is impossible to break the case before Poirot does. The trouble with the thing is that though Shaffer (the author of Sleuth) can outline a highly stylized murder-mystery character, he seems to lack the energy to fill in the kind of details that can, in masterly hands, utterly charm and disarm. There are possibilities, for example, in the bickering of Davis and Smith, but they peter out. There are promising hints of giddiness in Farrow's lovelorn posturings, but they too get lost in the toils of the plotting, and nothing much comes of doctor, lawyer or Communist. Even Poirot's fastidiousness and egocentricity are not used to full comic effect, Shaffer electing to go for the easy, running gags that involve the traditional difficulties of the British with the French language and everyone's insistence on confusing Poirot's accent with his nationality--he's Belgian, as he has to keep reminding them all.

Indeed, only Lansbury, taking matters into her own hands, staggering, grimacing, screeching, gets her full share of laughs. But given the rather muted surroundings, perhaps Guillermin would have been wise to sit on her if he couldn't find a way to bring the rest of the cast up to her dotty level.

Still, the basic mystery is mysterious enough, the antique manners of this genre have an inherent campiness that's fun, and there is a briskness of pace and enough mild wit to hold one's attention. By the end one is rather surprised at how high the pile of corpses is, which means that sufficient style was present to serve its traditional function in the puzzle mystery -- distract us from the gore that of necessity lies at the center of this form. Which is a way of saying that they must have been doing something right here. Too bad they couldn't have gone just a little bit further -- from the entertaining to the entrancing.

-- Richard Schickel

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