Film: "The Train" (1964).
Set in France in the closing stages of the war, The Train is a thriller
that turns on a challenging philosophical question - what price art if human
lives are lost in its defence? With the Third Reich crumbling, a German officer
(Paul Scofield) is ordered to strip the Jeu de Paume Museum of its masterpieces
and transport them to the Fatherland, where they might prove valuable bargaining
counters in the eventual peace settlement. But the Resistance gets wind of the
plan and persuades an initially reluctant railway inspector (Burt Lancaster)
to try to frustrate it by re-routing the train.
The film was originally to have been made by Arthur Penn, the future director
of Bonnie and Clyde, but he fell out with Lancaster after only two weeks
and quit the production. John Frankenheimer was invited to fill the gap and no
better substitute could have been found. In The Manchurian Candidate and
Seven Days in May, he had won his spurs as a brilliant director of thrillers
geared to contemporary technology; here he used trains, tracks and signals almost
like chess pieces, in a sophisticated and exciting battle of wits.
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