Review of The Train (1964) by Brad S — 22 Jan 2016

Directed by John Frankenheimer, and based on the non fiction book Le front de l'art by Rose Valland. This is a war film which showed a different side to World War 2. While there were battlefields across Europe and the Far East, one side of the war showed works of priceless art that could have been destroyed had it not been for the brave attempts of a few, who wanted to keep people's heritages alive.

Set in France in August 1944, Nazi German Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is attempting to move thousands of works of priceless art from France to Germany, Waldheim is an art lover and has to get the art to Germany at any cost.

However, French train inspector Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), who is also a member of the French Resistance, has an agenda all of his own. Labiche plans to stop the train and get the art back, but it's a race against time as Paris is about to be liberated by the Allied Forces.

The plan involves tricking the Nazi forces driving the train by relabeling train station names, but it's only a matter of time before Waldheim finds out. It's a very good war film, and the same story inspired The Monuments Men (2014), but this one is better, as it has Lancaster a lot of his own stunts, and it's a heavy going and down and dirty story.

Shot in a stark black and white, it's a brilliant depiction of the true cost of war, and also whether art is worth a human life.