John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau in this wartime thriller where a resistance saboteur must risk the lives of his men to save a train full of modern masterpieces as the Nazis retreat from Paris.

Exaggerated from a true story and all the better for it. One of the last big Black And White releases of the Hollywood era and it looks beautiful. Steam engines racing and crashing for reals. Lancaster, the bureaucrat of action, reluctantly pulling out every con and bunging every wrench into the works to stop a train whose cargo he does not care about. Scofield, superb as the blinkered Nazi whose mission becomes both personal and obsessive. A little bit of Moreau – for the ladies, for the sexiness, to let us all know how futile all this boy-ish fanaticism is. Even though most of this movie never travels more than 50 miles outside of the Parisian city limits it is exciting and expansive. One of those “they don’t make em like this anymore” marvels. The ending feels like the first time a main character walks away from their victory utterly disgusted by the cost of the action, dejected from their old way of life. It is a conclusion that would become a staple of manly character arcs through the Seventies.

9

Perfect Double Bill: Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962)

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