"Toccata for Toy Trains" (1959) by Ray and Charles Eames is what happens when brilliantly talented individuals take an often overlooked facet of our life and glorify it through the use of film. Using fully operational toy trains, the film loosely follows a train ride from a toy city filled with toy people, to a toy country-side, hopping onto many different toy trains along the way and being introduced to many different toy characters. Each train, location, and character in the film is unique and have their own personality, and appear to have originated from an actual personality. Most boggling of all is that the camera's motions exhibit a large scale setting when in reality they occur on a model train sized scale. That means seemingly long, sweeping shots of entire towns are really done in a space the size of a few meters. When following a toy person walking along a train platform, the camera appears to be moving a sizable distance, but in fact is moving less than a meter. This illusion can be attributed to the remarkably accurate scale of the towns, trains, and people that are used in the movie. Three cheers for "Toccata for Toy Trains!"
An honorable mention goes out to the score of Elmer Bernstein whose playful and energetic music accompanies the feverish train rides the audience member is taken along. Check out some of Elmer Bernstein's other film compositions, as well as the music he wrote for other Eames movies here at his IMDb listing:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0000930/
An honorable mention goes out to the score of Elmer Bernstein whose playful and energetic music accompanies the feverish train rides the audience member is taken along. Check out some of Elmer Bernstein's other film compositions, as well as the music he wrote for other Eames movies here at his IMDb listing:
http://imdb.com/name/nm0000930/
