John Frankenheimer's "The Train" stars Burt Lancaster as Paul Labiche, a French Resistance member. It is the 1511th day of the German occupation, and Paul is attempting to prevent Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) from transporting French art collections out of France and into Germany.
Throughout the 1960s, Franhenheimer made a series of films which flaunted their audacious cutting and kinetic camera work. "The Train" is no different. Virtually every shot is special, the film packed with logistically complex sequences, fine location photography and beautiful, now-extinct steam engines, ink-black monsters which lend the film an air of techno-romance.
"Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it!" Waldheim yells, his words speaking to the misguided exceptionalism of whole nations. Labiche shoots him and walks away. This simple moment of revenge is complicated throughout the picture. No painting is worth a life, Labiche tells us, yet strewn around him are the consequences of his very plan to thwart Waldheim; hundreds dead, all for art which Labiche personally has no interest in. Beauty belongs to the man who appreciates, Labiche perhaps wonders as the film fades to black, so long as he's French?
8/10 - One of Frankenheimer's finest. See "Decision Before Dawn" and "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold".
Throughout the 1960s, Franhenheimer made a series of films which flaunted their audacious cutting and kinetic camera work. "The Train" is no different. Virtually every shot is special, the film packed with logistically complex sequences, fine location photography and beautiful, now-extinct steam engines, ink-black monsters which lend the film an air of techno-romance.
"Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it!" Waldheim yells, his words speaking to the misguided exceptionalism of whole nations. Labiche shoots him and walks away. This simple moment of revenge is complicated throughout the picture. No painting is worth a life, Labiche tells us, yet strewn around him are the consequences of his very plan to thwart Waldheim; hundreds dead, all for art which Labiche personally has no interest in. Beauty belongs to the man who appreciates, Labiche perhaps wonders as the film fades to black, so long as he's French?
8/10 - One of Frankenheimer's finest. See "Decision Before Dawn" and "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold".