The Train

The act of travel is inherently cinematic. That moving pictures can capture such that act so thoroughly is part of what separates them from literature or music or photography; what those forms can only describe, the movies can actually show.

To speak more generally, physicality itself is what the cinema captures best: Fight scenes, love scenes, foot chases, tentative embraces, massive gatherings, car races, and -- perhaps most especially -- the movement of trains. Some of the cinema's seminal works have seen trains play host to robberies and generals; one might also note that trains share with movies a sense for rigorous scheduling and complex workmanship. In the best movies about trains, the forms cross over, and the dense nature of a train's operations is matched by the film language used to represent it. All this recalls that famous Orson Welles quote about directing movies: "This is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had."

Few deployed that train set more expertly than director John Frankenheimer, one of the great formalists working within American genre cinema during the mid-20th century. He spiked his yarns and parables with skewed blocking and exaggerated treatments of bodies and space, and true to the connection being sold in the previous paragraph Frankenheimer's finest orchestration of movement might well have been "The Train." The 1964 film is set during the last days of the German occupation of France -- the 1,511th day, to be exact -- when Nazi colonel Von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is attempting to smuggle an extensive selection of French paintings (Degas, Renoir, Picasso, among others) back to Germany before the allies arrive. The plot of the film, ostensibly, is the ever-shifting power dynamic between him and station manager-slash-French resistance fighter Labiche (Burt Lancaster), who himself is constantly shifting his own decisions on whether or not rescuing these paintings is worth risking the lives of his last remaining collaborators.

Frankenheimer recognizes that the true force of his movie does not come from either of these grand performers. He knows that it comes from the train itself. With startling precision, his compositions and edits seem to comprehensively document the mechanical workings of the train, from its first preparations to its final derailment. (At least, it does so to a degree that plays convincingly towards this layman.) The machinery becomes its own character in the film (sorry for the cliche), constantly failing and buckling (occasionally by the resistance's design), demanding further repairs and alterations (all documented just as comprehensively). Throughout the course of the film, no person or object receives more closeups than the train itself.

Twilight Time's limited edition Blu-ray release of Frankenheimer's masterwork allows us to hear comments from the director himself. One of the extra features is an audio commentary recorded by the late Frankenheimer, originally included on home video releases in the 1990s. It is not the most thorough commentary -- not even the most thorough one recorded by Frankenheimer -- but he does offer some technical details on the aforementioned camera setups, speaking often about the texture of the cinematography and the techniques used to actually capture the shots. Also included with the Blu-ray release is a theatrical trailer, a second audio commentary (with Paul Seydor, Julie Kirgo, and Nick Redman), a booklet (featuring an essay by Kirgo), and an isolated score track (the music is by Maurice Jarre).

Jarre's score seems to pace the movements of the people around the train, like a drum leading the march to war. It's one more element of craftsmanship piling up, all working to convert the craft of the characters themselves into something like a workman's ballet. "The Train" is often cited for its philosophical angle -- for its unanswered questions about whether the value of an artwork can be worth more than the value of a human -- but its the movements made in service of those philosophies that the frame cherishes most. Whether Lebiche needs to paint white stripes on the top of train cars (to signal its contents to bombers above) or deploy weapons of sabotage beneath it (once he's grown tired of sparing it himself), the camera follows his process with complete dedication. Frankenheimer shapes his movie's rhythm with shots of tracks, engines, puffs of steam, rolling wheels, rushing feet, and, of course, runaway trains. This is the rare film less interested in dramatic results than in the path -- the railway -- utilized to reach them.

The movie doesn't stop moving until the train does, too.

"The Train"
Blu-ray
$29.95
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