There's nothing spectacularly brilliant about the film, except that the mystery is a pure pleasure to watch. The cast and technical aspects are great. And while the film is dedicated, for one, to Angela Lansbury (author of long-running Murder She Wrote) the detective here is clearly Dame Agatha Christie's. The closing credits also say that it's dedicated to Stephen Sondheim whose connection escapes me, other than he died just before the film was made, and perhaps too, that his music is typically complicated layers - like onions.