THE TRAIN

This 1964 World War II drama directed by John Frankenheimer is a beauty: lovely black-and-white photography including some great tracking shots, a gripping story (based very loosely on real events), a fine cast headed up by Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau, and, for those who like that sort of thing, lots and lots of 'steam engine porn'. 

The film covers similar ground to the more recent 'The Monuments Men', but is far superior in every way.  

The source is a book by Rose Valland, a French art curator, a member of the French Resistance, and one of the most decorated women in French history.  

Maybe she deserves a film in her own right?  Here she has to make do with a couple of scenes at the beginning.  (She fares even worse in 'The Monuments Men' where the screenplay makes her seem quite irrational in her behaviour.)

There's an interesting moral question at the heart of both films: is great art worth dying for?  In the case of this film, how big a deal is it that a huge number of paintings (by the likes of Renoir, Degas, Picasso, Van Gogh, etc) are going to be transported to Germany (on the eponymous train) days before the Allies recapture Paris?

Paul Scofield is von Waldheim, a German Colonel who appreciates fine art and is desperately keen to get the train to the homeland.

Burt Lancaster is Labiche, a French railway engineer/inspector secretly working for the Resistance who couldn't give a fig for fine art and doesn't see why men and women should risk their lives for it.

The argument that the paintings are representative of the glory of France and therefore must not be allowed to be taken away doesn't seem to cut much ice with him.

But against his better judgement he gets caught up in the Resistance's efforts to stop the train.  

Whilst blowing it up would be relatively straightforward, that's obviously out of the question so the Resistance have to come up with an ingenious if somewhat implausible plan involving fooling the Germans as to the stations the train is passing through, and returning it to its starting point, a station a few miles outside Paris, where they also manage to sabotage the railway line and several engines. 

This is all entertaining stuff even if it is not based on what actually happened (apparently the Resistance stopped the train using paperwork and red tape, which would not have been anywhere as exciting for sure.) 

But the Resistance haven't allowed for von Waldheim's manic determination to prevail, at which point the film becomes a battle of wills between him and Labiche, the latter ending up on his own as his Resistance colleagues get killed. 

Eventually Labiche does triumph - the train is derailed, the Allies are arriving and the Germans are in retreat.  

There is a final confrontation between the two men in which von Waldheim heaps scorn on Labiche for having no appreciation for the artwork he has been fighting for, and Labiche's silent response is simply to gun him down.

The film ends with alternating shots of the crates of artwork and of the dead bodies of hostages, leaving it to the viewer to decide which is the more important.  It's a surprisingly bleak and uncompromising ending for a war film made in 1964.

RATING: ✓✓ Catch It If You Can