Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
Some of you more dedicated AMAD followers must be scratching your heads right now. Our originally scheduled AMAD was the James Cagney classic WHITE HEAT. I was very much looking forward to it, but a strange thing happened… My Warner Bros Classic Gangsters v. 1 has run away from home.
I seriously spent 2 hours searching through my DVDs and could not find it, so I hit my list of AMADs to do an emergency reconstruction of the coming weeks.
It just so happened that I added a title to my AMAD stack about 2 months ago called THE TRAIN and it’s a perfect follow-up to yesterday’s BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ. It’s a reteaming of the director (John Frankenheimer) and star (Burt Lancaster), set in the waning days of WW2 as a Nazi colonel attempts to move France’s most valuable art, including originals from Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Cezanne, among others, out of Paris and into Germany before the Allies retake France.
I’m sure WHITE HEAT is amazing and I will make sure to get it back in the fold as soon as I can find the damned thing, but I have to say that THE TRAIN is a fucking phenomenal picture.
Let me take a moment to pause and brag a little bit. I promise not to prolong it, but I just got a new TV… it’s half-installed… My receiver is still pulled out, wires splayed out like an eviscerated corpse, but everything is hooked up, just not tidy.
It’s my first true 1080p HD experience and I’ve had the Wall-E Blu-Ray on a loop since it got here this morning, but I have to comment on the up-conversion, which looked mediocre on the last TV I had, but really blew me away with this film, which, by the way, isn’t even Animorphic Standard Def, but letterboxed. On my 61” Samsung Series 7 LED set it looked sharper than expected, not losing much, if any, definition in the process.
I am in loooooooovvveeeee.
And on a film like this, it was the cherry on the top. Two DPs are credited, one is Jean Tournier (THE DAY OF THE JACKAL) and the other is Walter Wottitz (THE LONGEST DAY), but I know this was a trouble production. Arthur Penn was fired after the first day, at Lancaster’s request, for wanting a film too intimate and without the action beats Lancaster thought the film needed.
Whichever DP is responsible deserves commendation for an excellently shot black and white film, which eccentuates the effortlessly brilliant direction by Frankenheimer. The are some brave, brave shots in this movie, long takes of mass mayhem, crazy stunts performed by the actors, again all in one take (including one with Lancaster where he slides down a ladder, throws a switch, then jump onto a moving train, ducking in just before that same ladder he slid down could rip him in two) and some of the most amazing train wreck sequences ever.
I won’t say it’s the train wreck mayhem that’s so fascinating, but how Frankenheimer shot it. There’s one shot in particular where a trail derails and I have no clue how the fuck he got this shot, but the camera is low, next to the tracks and the train sails off track about 10 feet in front of it, sliding just over the camera… I imagine it was a very, very long lens, but the shot took my breath away… and looking up some trivia on IMDB, there was a shot (perhaps this one) in which multiple cameras were set up, but the train was going much faster than anticipated, so when it flew off the rails it destroyed 3 of those cameras. Insanity.
I can’t praise Frankenheimer’s work here enough. Just watch his shot selection, framing and how fluidly he moves the camera here. It’s an incredible visual showcase.
Basically we have an espionage film where Lancaster is a working Frenchman (with an American accent, but whatever… it’s Burt Lancaster… he’s allowed to be the only American-sounding man in this picture), a railroad operator who is forced to work under Nazi supervision as France endures over 1500 days of German occupation. We come to find out rather quickly that Lancaster is part of a French resistance that is doing whatever it can to fuck the Germans, but it seems every single act of defiance has a price.
They don’t get away clean in this movie. By the time we meet Lancaster, playing a character called Labiche, we find out there are only 4 friends of his left that fight the powers that be. He started out with 18.
When he is first approached by a curator asking them to stop the Nazis from stealing France’s heritage, and causing shame to the country for not protecting the world’s collected work of art as was its charge, Lancaster declines. If there’s a price to pay for every overt act of opposition, why not focus on weapon trains or troop trains. Why risk life for art?
Lancaster comes around… I don’t know if he really takes to the cause as much as he gets into a competition with the main antagonist, a Col. in the Nazi party, Col. von Waldheim (played by Paul Scofield). It’s almost a contest of wills and definitely, by the end it becomes a series of one-upping one another and raising stakes.
I found myself a little conflicted… because as much I love Lancaster in the movie and he is undeniably the hero, Scofield is driven by his love and appreciation for this art. His motives aren’t pure by any means. He’s not trying to save the art and knows full goddamn well that trying to move a train-load of some of the most amazing example of human expression and creativity into Germany is a million times more dangerous than leaving it in Paris… There is a money factor, it’s what he uses to make the top brass give him the train as they’re struggling to keep the Americans from retaking France, but you know of the two main men fighting over this trainload of art, it’s the Nazi who actually appreciates it.
I love that about this movie and I also love seeing two opposing forces that are a match for each other. Once Lancaster’s cover is blown, he really has to stick to the shadows, stay out of sight. Scofield has all the power, but even he is losing it, in more ways than one. His time is running out. His superiors need the train as the allies push further and further into France, so even though he has his troops he can’t tip his hat to his superiors that he’s lied to them about the train.
Scofield gets more and more desperate as the movie goes on and it’s wonderful to see him play it for all it’s worth.
Lancaster’s work here isn’t as subtle as his BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ performance, but it’s strong stuff. He’s more of a typical hero type, but what sets him apart in this film is how he uses his intellect more than a gun. The impression I get from watching these two films back to back is that Lancaster really threw himself into his roles. He seems an expert at the physical labor of keeping trains going, even metalsmithing, just as in yesterday’s AMAD he was very convincing in his handling and treatment of birds.
Maurice Jarre (JACOB’S LADDER) deserves a quick mention as well for his excellent score. Especially keep an ear out during the opening credits for his incredibly peppy and fun score.
Final Thoughts: A thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining and thrilling movie. I could think of a few great pairings for a double feature with this flick… The first film that jumped to my mind was the Frank Sinatra WW2 train heist flick VON RYAN’S EXPRESS, which we’ve covered in the AMAD. That’s a given… but if you want to go a little more edgier with your second film, track down the awesome bum vs. murderous bull EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, starring Lee Marvin as the bum and Ernest Borgnine as the bull. But double feature or no, make sure to put this one on your queue. You won’t regret it.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Saturday, November 22nd: GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957)
Sunday, November 23rd: MYSTERY STREET (1948)
Monday, November 24th: BORDER INCIDENT (1949)
Tuesday, November 25th: THE TIN STAR (1957)
Wednesday, November 26th: ON THE BEACH (1959)
Thursday, November 27th: TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH (1949)
Friday, November 28th: GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947)
Since the detour hit, we’re taking a slightly different direction in the coming week, hitting some Gregory Peck films, spanning War films, a post-apocalyptic flick, westerns, dramas, noirs, oh my! See you tomorrow when we follow Burt Lancaster over to GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
