Hollywood often lures talented European directors to America, but once in a while, the current flows retrograde. John Frankenheimer, for example, had firmly established his reputation as a filmmaker working in Hollywood and then took his talent to Europe for about seven years. One product of that relocation was The Train, shot entirely on location in France, with talented French actors and one all-American star.

Historical Background: John Frankenheimer was born in 1930 in Malba, N.Y. His father was a German Jew and his mother an Irish Catholic. He attended Williams College where he performed in the theater and excelled at tennis. In the Air Force, from 1951-3, he took an assignment with the newly formed film squadron that was involved in making documentary shorts. After his military tour of duty, he joined CBS television as an assistant director. He got a chance to direct for the You Are There television series when the former director resigned. From there he moved on to the Playhouse 90 series. Frankenheimer directed his debut film for the big screen, The Young Stranger, in 1956. It was reasonably well received but Frankenheimer was not thrilled with the experience and decided to stick with television for another five years.

Frankenheimer returned to filmmaking in 1961 and had a rapid series of major successes. The Young Savages (1961) was significant as the beginning of a successful working relationship between Frankenheimer and actor Burt Lancaster. All Fall Down (1962) won critical approval and was followed by two blockbuster successes, Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), also starring Lancaster, and the exquisitely crafted The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Frankenheimer completed the first Hollywood phase of his career with Seven Days in May (1964), also with Lancaster.

The Train (1964) opened a new phase in Frankenheimer's career, during which he resided in Europe for about seven years. The Train was the best of his European works, which, for the most part, were disappointing in comparison to his earlier films in America. He returned to center stage (and to Hollywood) for The Iceman Cometh (1973) and, especially, The French Connection II (1975) and Black Sunday (1977). He has made roughly another dozen-and-a-half films since 1977, but none up to the standards of his earlier triumphs.

The Story: A plot summary really doesn't do enough justice to this film because its quality lies most especially in its action sequences and the well-constructed dialog. The story opens on August 2nd, 1944, in Paris, where the Nazis are beating a hasty retreat, as the Allies are moving ever closer to liberating the French capital. A German officer, Colonel Von Waldheim (Paul Schofield), an avid (one might say obsessive) art lover, has decided to loot the modern art collection housed at the Jeu de Paume Art Museum in Paris and ship the works to Berlin by train. Von Waldheim's difficulty is that General Von Libitz has commandeered all of the trains for the pullback of military equipment and troops from the western front. Von Libitz has no interest in art, especially the "decadent" French variety, but Von Waldheim skillfully asserts the irrefutable argument that art is as negotiable as gold and the works that he proposes to steal, valued at a billion Reich marks, will equip three panzer divisions. He gets his train with the proviso that the order may be rescinded if the situation on the front becomes more urgent.

At the freight yard of Vaires, the curator of the Jeu de Paume, Mademoiselle Vallard (Suzanne Flon), meets secretly with the only three surviving members of the French resistance at that marshalling station. One is the yard's superintendent, Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), and the others are Didont (Albert Rémy), a fireman, and Pesquet (Charles Millot), an engineer. Mlle. Vallard pleads eloquently on behalf of the paintings, describing them as the "pride of France" and "our national heritage." Labiche and his colleagues are simple working class men with neither knowledge of nor appreciation for art. Labiche's only concerns are hindering the Nazis and keeping himself and his compatriots alive. Every act of sabotage by the resistance is met by reprisals that cost the lives of innocent French civilians. Labiche refuses to risk lives for mere "pictures." Besides, he's got a more pressing concern. There's an armament train getting ready to ship out, scheduled to leave at 9:50 A.M. The Allies will conduct a bombing raid on the yard at exactly 10:00 A.M., so if Labiche can delay the departure of the armament train by just ten minutes, it will be duly destroyed.

The film's first crescendo comes as the clock approaches ten. On the one track, there's the armament train that needs to be delayed and, on another track, is the train loaded up with priceless masterpieces by the likes of Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne. An old maverick engineer by the name of Papa Boule (Michel Simon) has been assigned to engineer the art train. Labiche is in the signal box under the close scrutiny of a Nazi officer. Labiche orders his assistant to throw one switch and then another in the sequence required to move the armament train out of the yard, but when they get to switch ten, it jams, and the ugly, armor-plated armament train is unable to leave the yard. The Nazi officer starts to accuse Labiche of sabotage, but Labiche deftly yanks the officer's own pipe, which he had left on a nearby table, out from underneath the switch housing, making it appear that the officer's own negligence had caused the switch to jam. The air raid sirens begin to wail as the Allied bombers appear. Labiche is unconcerned that the train packed with paintings will likely be destroyed as well, but Papa Boule has a stronger feeling for his nation's cultural heritage. On his own initiative, Papa Boule courageously engineers the train with the art through the yard in the midst of the air raid and manages to save it from being hit.

Von Waldheim gets a call from the General rescinding his authorization for the train, but the determined Colonel simply lies to his superior officer, telling him the train has already left. He then orders Papa Boule to get underway with the precious cargo. Papa Boule uses a coin to block off an oil line so that the engine overheats and is unable to leave the yard. His ruse is discovered, however, and he is executed on the spot. Von Waldheim suspects that Labiche is behind the sabotage as well. Labiche actually had no interest in stopping the train loaded with the art works but now that his old friend and mentor Papa Boule has been killed, he and his colleagues become resolved to thwart Von Waldheim's attempted larceny, at all cost.

Von Waldheim orders Labiche to personally engineer the train, under the watchful eye of a Nazi officer. Labiche organizes an elaborate ruse to outwit Von Waldheim and his Nazi cohort. They dispatch the art train in a giant circular itinerary. To deceive the Nazis on board, they arrange for false names to be posted at each successive station. When they circle around back to Vitry, for example, a makeshift sign reads "Zweibrucken" instead. Around the time that the Nazis are gloating that they've at last arrived in Germany, they're really arriving back in Paris, where the trip culminates with the art train trapped by the prearranged wreckage of two trains. These strategic successes on the part of the resistance come at a price, however, since each act of sabotage leads to murderous reprisals by the Nazis.

There's a bit of low-key romantic subplot when Labiche gets some much needed rest at a trackside hotel, operated by a widow, Christine (Jeanne Moreau), who had lost her husband to an earlier reprisal and has little use for combative men, regardless of what they happen to be fighting for. Nevertheless, she covers for Labiche when the Nazis come checking on his whereabouts immediately after a sabotage event. Later, the routing circularity brings the train back to the same locale, and Christine gives Labiche a place to hide, at risk to her own life. There's a nice bit of humor during the first hotel scene when a Nazi officer is stuck with the bill for Labiche's room.

SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP TO THEMES TO AVOID.

Even after the circularity gambit, Von Waldheim is determined to get his train back in operation and on its way to Germany. Labiche, who is now fully exposed as a saboteur, can no longer play the game furtively. He's reduced to the more standard tactics used by the French railway resistance – placing explosives along the track and loosening rail sections to cause derailment. Inevitably, the contest has to end in a showdown, mano à mano, between the principle antagonists. In his utter exasperation, Von Waldheim lashes out at Labiche, when they meet face to face, asserting his cultural superiority:

Here's your prize, Labiche . . . some of the greatest paintings in the world. Does it excite you, Labiche? A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls means to an ape. You won by sheer luck. You are nothing, Labiche, a lump of mere flesh. The paintings are mine. Beauty belongs to the man who appreciates it. Now, this minute, you couldn't tell me why you did what you did.

Labiche says nothing, but he turns his head and glances for a moment at a pile of bodies of Frenchmen killed during the last Nazi reprisal when the train was finally and irrevocably halted. He turns back to Von Waldheim and opens fire with his machine gun, riddling Von Waldheim with holes.

END SPOILERS.

Themes: There's almost always drama and action enough in war films and few of them pay much attention to themes deeper than simply winning and surviving. The themes of this film include one of that type: the valor of the French rail workers and resistance fighters in disrupting the operation of the railways by the Germans during occupation. The looting of the art works, however, is a nifty plot device because it adds a whole other level of thematic depth to the film. It raises a profound question. What is art worth in relation to human lives? It's not just the monetary value of the art works at issue in this film, but the cultural and spiritual identity of the French people. If you asked me how many lives it is worth to save a valuable piece of art that is the property of a wealthy private collector, I'd say, "Not a single one." If instead, you ask me how many lives it is worth to save a country's pride and heritage, I'd answer, "As many as it takes." One reviewer for a major newspaper stated, "The need [to preserve] the paintings is not . . . so imperative and profound that it emotionally balances and justifies the staggering expense of life and effort that goes into saving . . . the train." I disagree. Nations have gone to war and risked much more for far baser motivations. Countries go to war, for example, to subjugate and exploit other peoples for economic benefit. Countries have gone to war for territorial expansion or plunder or just plain hatred and revenge. Surely, endangering lives to preserve a nation's cultural heritage is a nobler than average reason for violent exertion.

One clever twist in this film is that the "bad guy," Von Waldheim, is clearly far more culturally sophisticated than the brutish "good guy." Though Von Waldheim's closing comments to Labiche are certainly elitist and mean-spirited, the fact is that he had a point. Labiche truly had no more appreciation for the great art that he ended up saving than an ape has for a string of pearls. Labiche was never motivated by the ideal of preserving heritage or art, but simply by the determination to thwart his enemy, just as he had done throughout the war as a resistance fighter putting obstacles in the way of the Nazi occupiers.

Production Values: Frankenheimer was not the original choice to direct the film. Producer Jules Bricken had begun with Arthur Penn, but Penn was fired after disagreements and replaced by Frankenheimer. The script, written by Rose Valland, Franklin Coen, and Frank Davis, was based on a book by Valland. When Frankenheimer first saw the script, he was unhappy with it and demanded that it be reworked. The final version provided a plausible storyline with strong, acerbic dialog and was justifiably nominated for an Oscar in the Best Screenplay category. The plot was based on a true story, although the true story was much less dramatic than the events of the movie. The real train loaded with the priceless paintings was simply routed onto a ring railway and circled around Paris until the liberators arrived. Frankenheimer had the circularity element built into the script for a much more practical reason. He only had one rail station with which to work!

The cinematography by Jean Tournier and Walter Wottitz is somber but lucid black-and-white. The camerawork and the choreography (of both the men and the trains) in the action scenes is exceptionally high quality. There are lots of long takes and fluid tracking shots. Most of the film is shot with deep focus lenses, so that foreground and background are simultaneously sharp. There's a documentary feel to the film, both because of the gritty cinematography and the fact that all of the crashes and explosions were real. There were no model trains used or, obviously, computer generated graphics. Some of the shots are highly creative, such as when a long shot is provided as though it were Labiche's view through his binoculars, and another as though it were the view of the bombardier of an Allied B-26 bomber overhead. Frankenheimer destroyed several cameras during the crash scenes, not knowing precisely where to place them.

The soundtrack deserves some special mention as well. The music by Maurice Jarre was largely of the unobtrusive variety, suitable to this action-oriented film. Equally important to the film is the rich variety of sound effects, from air raid sirens and train whistles to the rolling railcars, squealing brakes, explosions, and gunfire.

Burt Lancaster was an exceptionally athletic actor, even at age fifty-one, when The Train was made. He had been a trapeze artist and sportsman and moved with a grace and agility that few other actors could manage. Lancaster performed all of his own stunts in the film and even some of those of the other, less agile, actors, in the capacity of a stunt double. Talk about earning your paycheck! Lancaster injured his knee in one scene, so it was simply written into the script. They had to wait until he had recovered to do the scenes that came earlier in the film. Lancaster had a long and brilliant career, including roles in such films as Jim Thorpe – All American (1951), Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Vera Cruz (1954), Apache (1954), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Rainmaker (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), Elmer Gantry (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Leopard (1963), Airport (1970), 1900 (1976), and Field of Dreams (1989).

Although the film clearly belongs to Lancaster, Paul Scofield is utterly brilliant, dressed to the nines in his spiffy Nazi uniform, as the stiff and effete Colonel von Waldheim, a perfect foil for Lancaster's Labiche. He struts and seethes so convincingly that you sometimes expect to see smoke emanate from his ears and nostrils. Scofield's other credits include A Man for All Seasons (1966), Quiz Show (1994), and The Crucible (1996). He appeared a second time in a film with Lancaster, called Scorpio, in 1973. There's an abundance of talent scattered among the secondary roles. The great Michel Simon is magnificent as the elderly engineer, Papa Boule. He was the great French comic actor who appeared in such films as Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) and L’Atalante (1934), and Le Quai des Brumes (1938). Jean Moreau, who played Christine, is no slouch either. She had major roles in such films as The Lovers (1959), A Woman is a Woman (1960), La Notte (1961), Jules and Jim (1962), The Trial (1963), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Chimes at Midnight (1966), La Femme Nikita (1990), and Until the End of the World (1994). Albert Rémy, who played Didont, appeared previously in The 400 Blows (1959) and Shoot the Piano Player (1960).

Bottom-Line: The Train is a splendid action film and one of the best war films of my recollection. It's involving, fast-paced, with great special effects and strong performances. Add in the theme about the relative worth of artistic treasures in relation to human lives and you've got a high quality movie. This film is in English with subtitles options in French and English and has a running time of 133 minutes. It's every bit of a thrilling ride!

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older