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Sleeping Car to Trieste
Directed by	John Paddy Carstairs
Written by	William Douglas-Home Clifford Grey
Starring	Jean Kent Albert Lieven
Release date(s)	1948
Running time	95 min.
Country	U.K.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Sleeping Car to Trieste is a film made in 1948. It was directed by John Paddy Carstairs and written by William Douglas-Home and Clifford Grey.

Contents 1 Cast 2 Plot 3 Back story 4 External link

• Jean Kent - Valya
• Albert Lieven - Zurta
• Derrick De Marney - George Grant
• Paul Dupuis - Inspector Jolif
• Rona Anderson - Joan Maxted
• David Tomlinson - Tom Bishop
• Bonar Colleano - Sergeant West
• Finlay Currie - Alastair MacBain
• Grégoire Aslan - Poirier, the chef (as Coco Aslan)
• Alan Wheatley - Karl/Charles Poole
• Hugh Burden - Mills
• David Hutcheson - Denning
• Claude Larue - Andrée
• Zena Marshall - Suzanne
• Leslie Weston - Randall

Set in post-war Europe, the film's action takes place almost entirely on a train travelling between Paris and Trieste.

Albert Lieven and Jean Kent play two somewhat mysterious agents, at ease in sophisticated society. On Valya's behalf, Zurta steals a diary from an unnamed embassy in Paris, but in doing so, is forced to kill an embassy guard. Allan Wheatley, as Poole, an accomplice of theirs, is passed the diary, but he double-crosses the two and attempts to escape with it on the Orient Express. Just in time, Valya and Zurta also board the train; they must now track down Poole and recover the diary.

However, they are soon involved with not only tracking down Poole (who is hiding in a train compartment and desperately tryng to avoid being moved by the train staff) but with several other travellers, including a a US Army sergeant, an adulterous couple, an idiot stockbroker, a wealthy, autocratic writer and his brow-beaten secretary/valet, a bird watcher, a French police inspector, and the train's chef who is forced to listen to a self-styled cooking 'expert' from England.

The diary is discovered by accident and passes through the hands of several people on the train, but when Zurta kills Poole, he is eventually confronted by the police inspector. In an attempt to escape, he leaps from the train, but is hit (and presumably killed) by a train travelling in the opposite direction. The diary is presumed to be lost with him.

Details of the 'back story' of the film are few, including the contents of the diary, who wrote it and why it has such value. Valya and Zurta are asummed to be from an unspecified country - possibly Yugoslavia - and Zurta cannot get into the country as he is a wanted man there, probably on account of his wartime activities. The diary, if published, would probably hurt the current regime.

MacBain, supposedly a world peace advocate but actually a self-promoting blow-hard, has been insulted by being denied entrance to Yugoslavia.

• Sleeping Car to Trieste at the Internet Movie Database