The current issue of the French cinema magazine Studio has a picture of Romy Schneider on the cover and the lead article marks the 25th anniversary of her death calling her somewhat erroneously (she was born in Vienna in 1938) France's favourite German. This film alone is sufficient to see why though she did, of course, make many fine films in France and won the very first Best Actress Cesar back in 1975. The Schneider Trophy was awarded between 1912 and 1931 to the European country and pilot of the fastest seaplane over a nominated distance but a Schneider Trophy for the finest actress over a distance of years and named after the luminescent Romy would not be a bad idea at all. When two mature people - both married but one partner has been missing for two years in Hitler's Germany - meet and fall in love on a train it's not a million miles away from two similar people who met on a train STATION (Milford Junction) in Noel Coward's Brief Encounter and any movie addict is going to make the connection but though all four share similar sensitivities and get across the reluctant inevitability of falling in love Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard never got to consummate their love least of all in the station buffet so when Romy Schneider and Jean-Louis Trintignant actually 'do it' in a crowded freight car whilst their travelling companions are sleeping (with the exception of the whore who catches Schneider's eye and winks) we realize that this is Brief Encounter in spades.
Pierre Graniere-Deferre successfully blends actual black and white newsreel footage with the colour in which he shot Le Train which adds to the authenticity. The storyline has Julien Maroyeur (Jean-Louis Trintignant)fleeing from the Nazis in 1940 with pregnant wife Anna (Anne Wiazemsky, who played Marie in Au Hasard, Balthazar) and their daughter. At the station they are separated, wife and child in first class, husband in a freight car where one of the other 'passengers' is Anna Kupfer (Romy Schneider) although we learn her name only much later. There's a wonderful irony at work here inasmuch as the people in the freight car are actually travelling to Freedom and Away from the Nazis whilst in most cases at that period the freight cars were taking people to extermination camps. There's a wonderful eclectic mix in the car and all the actors who are virtually unknown outside France acquit themselves well. Trintignant has always been a cerebral rather than passionate actor; he doesn't do overt intensity and it's fascinating to watch him fall in love against all the odds and with a pregnant wife on the same train - at least until the first-class carriages are uncoupled en route. There is, of course, a twist, and it takes the form of Schneider telling Trintignant that she is not only German but also Jewish so that when they arrive at the comparative safety of La Rochelle where Trintignant is almost certain to find employment he passes Schneider off as his wife before going to see his real wife at the hospital where she has given birth to a son. This leaves Schneider to do the noble thing and disappear but three years later the lovers meet again for yet another scene that tells us that this is a Brief Encounter for Adults. Graniere-Deferre made some excellent post Nouvelle Vague movies that owe nothing to that hiccup in French Cinema; Le Chat, La Veuve Coudrec, Etoile du Nord and this one, perhaps the finest of them all.
Pierre Graniere-Deferre successfully blends actual black and white newsreel footage with the colour in which he shot Le Train which adds to the authenticity. The storyline has Julien Maroyeur (Jean-Louis Trintignant)fleeing from the Nazis in 1940 with pregnant wife Anna (Anne Wiazemsky, who played Marie in Au Hasard, Balthazar) and their daughter. At the station they are separated, wife and child in first class, husband in a freight car where one of the other 'passengers' is Anna Kupfer (Romy Schneider) although we learn her name only much later. There's a wonderful irony at work here inasmuch as the people in the freight car are actually travelling to Freedom and Away from the Nazis whilst in most cases at that period the freight cars were taking people to extermination camps. There's a wonderful eclectic mix in the car and all the actors who are virtually unknown outside France acquit themselves well. Trintignant has always been a cerebral rather than passionate actor; he doesn't do overt intensity and it's fascinating to watch him fall in love against all the odds and with a pregnant wife on the same train - at least until the first-class carriages are uncoupled en route. There is, of course, a twist, and it takes the form of Schneider telling Trintignant that she is not only German but also Jewish so that when they arrive at the comparative safety of La Rochelle where Trintignant is almost certain to find employment he passes Schneider off as his wife before going to see his real wife at the hospital where she has given birth to a son. This leaves Schneider to do the noble thing and disappear but three years later the lovers meet again for yet another scene that tells us that this is a Brief Encounter for Adults. Graniere-Deferre made some excellent post Nouvelle Vague movies that owe nothing to that hiccup in French Cinema; Le Chat, La Veuve Coudrec, Etoile du Nord and this one, perhaps the finest of them all.