Cheap The Train (DVD) (Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield) (John Frankenheimer, Arthur Penn) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Train

La Bisch, the unwilling resistance man late in WWII (Lancaster) is pitted despite his objections against a cultured German general who is attempting to take every painted masterpiece out of Paris that can be found.

Knowing that delays to shipment in the face of the german retreat and allied advance, La Bisch uses both ingenuity and enormous physical effort to attempt to block the movement of a train laden with stolen art, eastbound from Paris.

The plot twists are the stuff of legend, and each twist provokes controversial positions regarding the importance of art and the brevity of human life.

The long shot action scenes in this film are brilliant, and Lancaster, who was injured during filming, performs much of the extraordinary scenes in the movie with a real (not feigned) limp.

Fine ensemble cast, including many of the best French character actors of the time, a serious script saved by brevity from the melodramatic and arguably the best camerawork and editing of any action film in history (you read right) make this film superior to Frankenheimer's other B&W films from the period (e.g., The Manchurian Candidate and even The Birdman of Alcatraz).

The Train belongs in any serious English language cine collection. This is one of the top 100 films of all time.

Lancaster's brilliant best
I have reviewed up too 50 war films and given only 3 five stars(the other two being 'Sahara' and 'the Longest Day') This is simply a superb war film which does not boast the star stutted casts of those movies mentioned above. This adds to the films authenticity. This dramatic WW2 story tells of a fanatic German Colonel who is intent on steeling famous French Art (commonly referred too as the 'glory of France) for what seems like his own personal gain rather than for the purposes of his army.

In the desperate attemps to save the train, Labiche (played by Burt Lancaster) and his comrades engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the enemy, which for the most part seems unjustified as lives are continually lost and others left in the balance. Set on location in several Paris railroads only days from the cities liberation, 'the train' relives the desperate struggle and waste of an occupied people but on the other hand clearly demonstrates the famous 'patriotic' and 'nationalist' values of the French people. If your wanting to see an action packed film then 'the train' is not for you. However it is a must for any serious war film enthusiast.

The Train
Is a work of art worth a human life?
We are near the end of World War II. It's August 2, 1944, the "1511th day of German occupation" of Paris. German Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) enters a dark museum and turns a spotlight on a painting. He stares at it with the eyes of a lover beholding his best beloved. He turns another spotlight on another painting. The Hun is humanized, and we sympathize with his quiet passion.
It comes as a bit of a shock when he announces that he is taking the paintings, hundreds of Miros and Picassos and Matisses and others, with him when the Germans evacuate Paris. A resistance group, led by railroad worker Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), is enlisted to stop them. Labiche initially refuses. It's one thing to blow up a train, dangerous enough - it's another to stop a train without damaging what's inside it. National heritage or not, men will die. There are more important targets than a train filled with art. Things change, though, and eventually Labiche and the remnants of his resistance group find themselves trying the impossible.
I've always been a little leery of Burt Lancaster. Maybe I was traumatized by viewing THE RAINMAKER or ELMER GANTRY at a young and impressionable age. He sometimes seems all horse teeth and braying charm and dis-tinct e-nunc-ee-a-shun. Not so here. In THE TRAIN he's restrained and natural and completely convincing. Scofield is equally strong as his brutal nemesis.
Sometimes the extras on a dvd aren't worth the bother, but I loved the director's commentary by the late John Frankenheimer. It was like taking a course in the art of film making.
Frankenheimer tells us he was trying to give the movie a realistic feel, which I understood before listening to the commentary track but didn't really understand how he went about it. One trick he used was to open the f-stop on the camera and keep everything in focus, something that would have been impossible if THE TRAIN wasn't shot in black and white. Everything is kept in focus and he keeps the background action busy and interesting.
Frankenheimer is an unabashed fan of Burt Lancaster, with whom he made five movies. Not only does Lancaster do all his own stunts in this one, including a dangerous backwards fall off of a moving train, he even fills in as a stunt double for another actor. The original stuntman made a fall off a roof look like an "olympic jump," and 'realism' was the keyword in this one. Lancaster did take a nice tumble off the tiles, but you've got to wonder about the wisdom of it all. Lancaster was injured during the filming of THE TRAIN; on his first day off in weeks he played a round of golf and twisted his knee when he stepped into a hole. His right knee swelled up 'like a basketball.' Frankenheimer shot Labiche in the leg halfway through the movie to explain the limp.
The only phony movie aspect to this movie is the dubbed voices of some of the French actors. You can't hide dubbing very well, and Frankenheimer doesn't have much to say about it. I wouldn't knock a star or even a half-star off because of it. This is a tremendously entertaining film.