geezer cinema: the train (john frankenheimer, 1964)

John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, but also The Island of Dr. Moreau) had a long and varied career, with a few real highlights. The Train, like Seven Days in May, is very entertaining, with enough subtext to add depth without distracting too much from the basic intention to offer an intelligent action picture. I looked forward to seeing this movie, which seemed to have a decent reputation but which isn't talked about as much as Seven Days in May (much less Manchurian Candidate). And that reputation is deserved .... The Train isn't special, yet that gives it a retrograde enjoyment, as in the cliche of "they don't make them like that any more". Of course, they do still make big action movies, but in line with the retrograde feel, The Train is in black-and-white (reputedly the last big B&W movie), and Burt Lancaster is always good for the nostalgic angle.

Frankenheimer makes excellent use of Lancaster, who does all of his own stunts (on an off-day, Lancaster injured a leg playing golf, so Frankenheimer wrote a scene where Burt's character gets shot in the leg to explain his limp). They also used real trains throughout, no models ... when you see big trains crashing, often into each other, it's the real thing. It's perhaps especially impressive in the CGI era, when such extravagances are unnecessary.

The plot, based on a true story, is about French art treasures the Nazis have stolen. They are trying to get the masterpieces to Germany. Lancaster is a French railway inspector and Resistance fighter (as evidence of his star status, Lancaster does not use a French accent ... he's pretty much the only person in the movie who sounds like an American). The film is a combination of clever manipulations by the French to forestall the transfer of the art works and occasional action set pieces that usually involve one or more trains blowing up. The entire film is a bit long, but it holds its entertainment value throughout. The brutality of the Nazis is there but as a supplement, not the core of the film, and the general question of whether art matters more than the lives of humans is at least deep enough to make The Train a bit better than the standard war picture. Lancaster is at his action best, Paul Scofield as the main Nazi antagonist has a German accent, and Jeanne Moreau is wasted (her part is apparently Woman with a Few Scenes So We Can Say There's a Woman in the Film). #9 on my Letterboxd list of the best movies of 1964.