The Train [1964]

 Watching The Sorrow and the Pity and The Train within a few days of each other was rather ironic, given how the former demythologized the idea of widespread French resistance during the German occupation while the latter emphatically celebrated it. John Frankenheimer, who took charge after Burt Lancaster got Arthur Penn fired, dramatically altered Penn’s script – which was more character-driven and primarily focussed on the value of art – into a kinetic, action-packed movie foregrounded on the titular locomotives. Along the lines of John Sturges’ The Great Escape from a year back, this too was fiction spun around facts – or “faction”, as one might call it – set during WW2, and was a similarly rip-roaring war film that nevertheless retained tangible character developments and political stances. It’s August 1944 and Colonel Waldheim (Paul Scofield), an “aesthete Nazi” who loves “degenerate” modern art, decides to take the crème de la crème of artworks housed in Jeu de Paume to Berlin – at any costs necessary – upon sensing Paris’ imminent liberation by the Allies. The museum’s desperate curator appeals to the French Resistance to prevent this given their incalculable cultural significance. Labiche (Lancaster), a railway inspector at the station from which this prized cargo will depart and leader of the local Resistance cell down to its last three men, reluctantly agrees to sabotage Waldheim’s plans despite not caring much for art. Stunningly photographed in B/W – deploying a mix of wide-angles, deep focus, and ingenious single takes – the battle of wits between the two men, manically driven by contrasting objectives, was matched by thrilling set-pieces involving authentic trains. The fine support cast included the striking Jeanne Moreau as a brusque inn-keeper forced into chooses sides.

Director: John Frankenheimer

Genre: Action/Thriller/War

Language: English

Country: US