The Train (1964)

The Train / John Frankenheimer (1964). United Artists. It’s saying something when Train Magazine picks “The Train” as the best train movie ever. But what a decade of the 1960s John Frankenheimer had! In addition to “The Train” he helmed The Fixer, Seconds, Seven Days In May, The Manchurian Candidate, and Birdman Of Alcatraz. Arthur Penn was the first director but his script was more of a pensive philosophical study of the madness and contradictions of war. Star and executive producer Burt Lancaster, however, wanted action and more action. So a week after filming began, Penn was out and Burt’s old friend John Frankenheimer was in – and Frankenheimer delivered on the promised action. It is France near the end of World War II. The Allied forces are mere days away so the occupying Nazis are preparing a hasty retreat. Colonel Franz Von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) has raided Paris museums of hundreds of art treasures that he hopes to transport to Berlin to help finance the war. He becomes obsessed will getting the art on a train and will bully and threaten any and all – even disobey his own orders – to get this done. A museum curator contacts an underground resistance group led by railway station supervisor Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster) to ask help in thwarting Von Waldheim’s plan. At first reluctant to risk lives for paintings, Labiche himself finally becomes as obsessed with stopping the shipment as Von Waldheim is with succeeding. But the question remains: how many lives are worth trading for art, however irreplaceable and culturally important they may be? “The Train” is an important film as well as being an exciting action adventure.