Train, The (1964)
Thriller | War | Action

Paris, August 1944. With the Allied army closing in German commander and art fanatic Colonel Von Waldheim steals a vast collection of rare French paintings and loads them onto a train bound for Berlin. But when a beloved French patriot is murdered while trying to sabotage Von Waldheim's scheme, Labiche, a stalwart member of the Resistance, vows to stop the train at any cost. Calling upon his vast arsenal of skills, Labiche unleashes a torrent of devastation and destruction - loosened rails, shattered tracks and head-on collisions - in an impassioned, suspense-filled quest for justice, retribution and revenge.

User Comment: goldfish-9 from Washington DC, 8 November 1999 • The movie is about the Nazis taking 'degenerate' modern paintings out of Paris as the allies are approaching. The officer in charge of the spoils, Colonel Von Waldheim, is secretly in love with the art he is supposed to hate; his official motivation is based on "cash value." The French train workers, led by Labiche, have no appreciation for the art and are unaware of its cultural importance, but nevertheless fight the Germans out of patriotism, against their better instincts.

Frantic, weary tension comes from the closeness of end of the war, a desperate time that drives the characters well past sane restraint. The Germans can no longer deny their impending doom. Grit comes from massive steam locomotives shot in black and white. The mortal struggle plays out on a personal level. The action is relentless.

The director, John Frankenheimer, relies on the intelligence and empathy of the audience to convey his story. Much of the movie is concerned with the mechanicals of how a railroad works. It shows the dignity and solidarity of the workers, and their huge effort.

The theme is the waste, the cost of war -- what is worth fighting for, what you actually do fight for even though it does not seem to be worth it, and the capricious outcome. The tally comes at the final scene.

"The Train" is a perfect action-adventure war drama.

Summary: Peerless war movie.

User Comment: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico, 30 March 2008 • The big star of Frankenheimer's film is the train itself... And the plot is based on the characteristic of railroads—engines and cars all over the tracks, cabs and steam—all shown on enough detail to keep the viewer in great suspense… The aerial strike shots are also wonderfully taken…

The film begins in Paris, August 2, 1944…

It's 1511th day of German occupation… The liberation of Paris seems very close…

Nazi Colonel Von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) decides suddenly to remove by train to Germany the best of Impressionist masterpieces… His objective is clear: "Money is a weapon. The contents are as negotiable as gold and more valuable."

Mademoiselle Villard (Suzanne Flon) informs the Resistance of the shipment…The Resistance reaction is to stop the train without damaging the national heritage… "They are part of France." But stopping the train is not a simple task… You can get killed especially if you are French and the train is German…

Labiche (Burt Lancaster), the Chief Inspector of the French Railway System, is not impressed… However, he never communicates his political, ideological, or nationalistic convictions, "For certain things, we take the risk," he said; "but I won't waste lives on paintings."

When an aged engineer, Papa Boule (Michel Simon), is accused of sabotage in spite of saving the train through the Allied's bombs at the risk of his own life, Labiche is forced into combat…

It begins with a long sequence where an armament train and the art train are both trying to leave the yard in the morning… As they are being moved back and forth across the tracks, the viewer knows that British planes will hit the yard in that moment at exactly 10:00 o'clock…

New complications are introduced, but the central conflict always returns to an obsessive art lover against a man with no appreciation for art… Labiche's only concerns is to slow down the Nazis keeping himself and his compatriots alive…

Now, two forces control the film… The first is Frankenheimer's cleverness to choreograph the real trains… Frankenheimer and his cinematographers capture the heat of the engines, the noise and sound of the cars in motion, the fault in the oil line, the crushing strength implicated when the machines come into collision and the derailment… The second force is Lancaster, the "headache" of the fanatical obsessed Colonel whose desire is to see the priceless paintings in Nazi Germany...

Summary: An intense suspense War drama from the beginning to the end…

Trivia:
• Burt Lancaster took a day off during shooting to play golf when the shooting was about half completed. On the links he stepped in a hole and re-aggravated an old knee injury. In order to compensate for the injury, John Frankenheimer had Lancaster's character shot in the leg, thus enabling him to limp through the rest of the shooting.
• Burt Lancaster performs all of his own stunts in this movie. Albert Rémy also gets into the act by performing the stunt of uncoupling the engine from the art train on a real moving train.
• John Frankenheimer said of this film, "I wanted all the realism possible. There are no tricks in this film. When trains crash together, they are real trains. There is no substitute for that kind of reality."
• Ranked No. 1 in Trains Magazine's special issue, "The 100 Greatest Train Movies."
• The engine that crashes into a derailed engine was moving at nearly 60 mph. The crash was staged in the town of Acquigny, with extensive safety precautions and special insurance. Only one take was possible, and seven cameras were used.
• The engine that we see from track level as it's derailed was moving faster than intended. Three of the five cameras filming the derailment were smashed.

[CSW] -4.1- A super black and white WWII story which draws on the real heroic tricks played by the French Resistance during the occupation. The director used real trains throughout - even for the accident scenes! The story is not true but individual events occurred during different scenarios, e.g. renaming stations to confuse the Germans and shunting trains onto the wrong tracks. No make up, no fluff, no luxuries, no die hard heroes or explosions but riveting just the same. An absolute must for train buffs and war movie fans alike. It is hard to think of Burt Lancaster as a French train master but you will get over that. A real classic that should also not be missed by film buffs either.
No D-Box.

º º