Trains and "movies" were new things that emerged during the same period, and it's no wonder that many early films chose trains as subjects and gave them many classic symbolic meanings.
In the 2017 edition of Murder on the Orient Express, director Kenneth Branagh's many shots around the Orient Express are homage to the classics.
The characteristics of the train determine the symbolic meaning it can carry and its role in the film.
First of all, the train is composed of multiple carriages, and there are also closed compartments between each train; passengers have a private space on the train where they can move freely, and all kinds of people form a temporary community, staging a variety of social changes.
Clarence Brown's Possessed (1931) uses the window of the train slowly entering the station as a TV "box" through the perspective of a girl outside the train, showing the audience the various lives in the train.
Kenneth Branagh used a similar technique in Murder on the Orient Express. When the detective gets into the car, also shooting the car from the window, the camera follows the detective into the car, and encounters Mrs. Hubbard and Reichett and others, allowing the characters to establish their first contact.
Then it's the train leaving station. As early as 1897, Auguste Lumière, one of the lumière brothers, the father of cinema, made the first short film "Leaving Jerusalem by Train" Départde Jérusalemenchemindefer, the first train departure from the station. In just 45 seconds, people slowly gathered and waved their hands in salute as the train left Jerusalem until the train stopped when it was completely out of the station.
Similarly, when the "Orient Train" leaves Jerusalem in 1934 (just a coincidence of the plot in Agatha's novel, it has nothing to do with the director. But is it possible that Agatha was inspired by this short film? People waved from the buildings to the roaring train.
The train leaving the city is a temporary detachment from reality, with no crowds watching the trials on the train, no police chasing thieves, just a small society of 15 people.
Only on this train could the 12 people who could not lift the butcher knife alone raise the butcher knife together and retrieve the torn soul. On this train, "justice" has a different definition.
When the train arrives at the station, everything that happens on the train becomes a secret, everything returns to reality, but the passengers on the train have a different life.
In fact, the murder occurred when the train "derailed", which also implied a deep meaning, but this belonged to the ingenuity of the novel writer Agatha, not the director's credit.