Product Description

Paris, August 1944. With the Allied army closing in, German commander and art fanatic Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) steals a vast collection of rare French paintings and loads them onto a train bound for Berlin. But when a beloved French patriot is murdered while trying to sabotage von Waldheim's scheme, Labiche (Burt Lancaster), a stalwart member of the Resistance, vows to stop the train at any cost. Calling upon his vast arsenal of skills, Labiche unleashes a torrent of devastation anddestructionloosened rails, shattered tracks and head-on collisionsin an impassioned, suspense-filled quest for justice, retribution and revenge. Inspired by an actual event and highlighted by spectacular stuntwork and visual effects, The Train is "an edge-of-your-seat, thrilling, suspenseful and superior film" (The Motion Picture Guide).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3819 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 1999-02-23
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 133 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This is one of John Frankenheimer's breathless gems--all marvelous action that never lets up. Burt Lancaster plays a French train engineer during the waning days of the German occupation who tries to prevent Nazi colonel Paul Scofield from transporting a precious art collection back to Germany. Utilizing sabotage and cunning deception, Lancaster and his Resistance colleagues stall for time with the Allies on their way. It's a brilliantly made film, showing off Lancaster's acrobatic skills (he performed all of his own stunts) and Frankenheimer's sense of pacing and brilliant use of space. It's choreographed with the utmost precision (those are real explosions during the pivotal strafing sequence) and extremely authentic in its details. Lancaster is in rare minimalist form, and Scofield manages to extract intelligence and sympathy. A firecracker action film shot in crisp black and white, with yet another telling audio commentary by the always instructive director. --Bill Desowitz

Additional features
At first, listening to a two-hour DVD commentary track by director John Frankenheimer on his 1965 film sounds like a dreadful time. His sparse commentary is the antithesis of the thrilling film, the last major black-and-white action picture. However, Frankenheimer warms up, filling us in on the problems in shooting the film, including bad luck (star Burt Lancaster injured his knee--playing golf), good luck (an old train yard was going to be mothballed--why not just blow it up for the film?), and his five-film relationship with the star ("Nobody moves like Lancaster," he insists). Also included are the long trailer and a music-only track highlighting Maurice Jarre's score. The result is a rewarding disc with a beautiful transfer of one of Hollywood's best and grittiest thrillers. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

Frankenheimer's Overlooked Classic: The Best Action Film
When Burt Lancaster called on director John Frankeheimer yet again to rescue another picture from another director who had left the project, the call took Frankenheimer to Paris to bring his brilliant black and white extreme depth of focus shots to bear on thought provoking subject matter.

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.

Perhaps Frankenheimer�s Best
Fankenheimer is a director's director - something of an icon in contemporary American Film. He has worked with the best, and has made some of the most innovative and intelligent movies of the last forty years. While always a director of "smart" films, he mastered the action-film early in his career and to a certain extent this has over-shadowed his deeper (and darker) side.

On a superficial level "The Train" is the last of the "full-scale" action films. They blow up everything in sight for real, they crash real steam-locomotives, and many of the actors are doing their own stunts. In fact Burt Lancaster not only does all his own stunts, he stands in for other actors too!

But unlike most action-flicks, "The Train" goes deeper. Lancaster plays the French resistance leader asked to stop Nazi Colonel Paul Schofeild from leaving Paris with a train load of paintings. "Let them have the paintings," Lancaster replies. He doesn't see the point in risking anyone's life for a work of art. "But they are the soul of France". And this is where the real interest (and the subtext) starts.

Imagine your house is on fire. You run inside and you can save your favorite pet, or the Van Gogh hanging on the wall. What do you choose? Well that's the thesis behind "The Train" - why are these paintings worth dying for? Why are they worth killing for? (Incidentally Lancaster took a similar position a few years later in "Castle Keep"). Lancaster could care less about the paintings. And Schofeild will kill anyone and anything that tries to stop him leaving with them. Not only is it a clash of cultures, it's a clash about culture. A Nazi kills to save the artwork his own ideology has called degenerate; a partisan kills to save the art he has never wanted to see.

The DVD has an excellent commentary by Frankenheimer. He describes the behind the scenes action, the difficulties and joys of this production, the demolishion of locomotives (and cameras), and the joys of working with Burt Lancaster. And he's very articulate about it. The DVD is also in the original wide-screen aspect, opening up the image considerably.

If you're a fan of the war film or the action genre, The Train is a must have. And if oyu just like good film making, then it's still a must see.

Renoir, Cezanne, Degas, Matisse, , ...
John Frankenheimer's "The Train" is an outstanding Black and White WWII ("action") film from the unforgettable 60's, when much emphasis was placed on good acting and characterization.

Close to the end of the war, while withdrawing, the Nazis attempted to lute famous French museums, and transport to Germany art treasures, hundreds of paintings of world fame - part of France's national identity. Among many popular French performers, such as Michel Simon ("Le diable et les dix commandements") and Jeanne Moreau ("Jules et Jim") - remember ? we've seen her in Beson's "La Femme Nikita") shine America's unforgettable Burt Lancaster as Labiche, the French "cheminot" who opposes England's Paul Scofield, perfectly cast as von Waldheim, the German colonel obsessed with "his mission" to "save" the painting by having them transported by train from Paris to Berlin.

Real life adventure with a believable plot, attention to details, image, dialogues, and ever growing tension until the final "denouement". It's the same director who gave us the more recent "Ronin" (filmed in France), and classics, such as "Seven Days in May" (also with Burt Lancaster) and "The Manchurian Candidate", and, if want to see more of Paul Scofield, consider watching one more time, Fred Zinneman's "A Man of All Seasons".

Very good DVD rendition of a truly great film from John Frankenheimer !