Post by Cartman on Jul 14, 2018 8:27:30 GMT
This is one of my all time favourite films and I’ve just rewatched it on Film 4, to remind myself of how good it is. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and starred Burt Lancaster, who was excellent in it. It was about a German officer towards the end of the war who was an art enthusiast and wanted to take a large number of French paintings from a museum in Paris back to Germany and virtually steals a train in order to do this. The action concerns the efforts of the resistance to stop him.
It is superbly filmed in black and white, using authentic locations and it really captures the atmosphere of a run down, war weary part of France, and it’s railway system fantastically well. It also shows the dilapidated looking loco depots and, having worked in one on a heritage railway myself, that is just how they are. It is a character study too, the German starts off as a semi sympathetic character, who obviously loves and appreciates art, but becomes more and more desperate and loses it. Lancaster is an everyday working man pushed into an extreme situation, as thousands of people were at the time.
I can strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
It is superbly filmed in black and white, using authentic locations and it really captures the atmosphere of a run down, war weary part of France, and it’s railway system fantastically well. It also shows the dilapidated looking loco depots and, having worked in one on a heritage railway myself, that is just how they are. It is a character study too, the German starts off as a semi sympathetic character, who obviously loves and appreciates art, but becomes more and more desperate and loses it. Lancaster is an everyday working man pushed into an extreme situation, as thousands of people were at the time.
I can strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
