Sleeping Car

Ivor Novello is a conductor with a girl at every stop of the Orient Express. When he spots Madeleine Carroll in Vienna, he decides to add her to his collection. Being a good iceberg blonde, she resists. However, when she is given two weeks to get out of France for having too many speeding tickets, she decides to take advantage of a loophole by wedding a Frenchman. Novello gets the job, but insists there be no funny business.

Unfortunately, there isn't that much in the way of funny business in the movie once that takes place, about two-thirds of the way through the movie. Director Anatole Litvak was never noteworthy for his comedies, even if he was a key talent in drama. As his first full English production -- an earlier movie had been co-produced by Gaumont-British -- it seems more of a movie he was assigned to than he wanted to make.

The leads are good, but there isn't much to the matter. Novello seems to have been on the downslide as a movie star; he is billed after Miss Carroll in the credits. Novello would make one more movie the following year and then return to the stage, where he would prosper for many years.