Agatha Christie’s classic concept—10 strangers are invited by a mystery host to stay at a mansion on an English island, only to be mysteriously murdered one by one—gets a mildly amusing adaptation from screenwriter Dudley Nichols and director Rene Clair. And Then There Were None displays a witty bit of visual invention and silly slapstick in a sequence in which a series of guests peep on each other through keyholes, while the windswept location provides a moody atmosphere. Among the cast, Walter Huston works his eyebrows to the bone as a doctor, though he gets competition from Mischa Auer as a Russian Prince and Richard Haydn as a supercilious butler forced to keep feeding the guests even after his wife has been knocked off. Judith Anderson, meanwhile, mostly sits coolly in the corner, no doubt lamenting the fact that she’s not working with the same sort of material she had as Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.
(1/13/2026)
