Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1965

The Contenders:

Casanova 70
Darling (winner)
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
The Train
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Casey Jones

Film: The Train
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

The Train is the third war film I’ve watched in as many days. It occurred to me halfway through the film that in addition to watching three war films, I’ve hit three of the main branches of military service. Where The Sand Pebbles was a Navy film and Twelve O’Clock High concerned the Air Force, The Train is firmly rooted on the ground. It’s a film that is firmly involved with the French Resistance rather than any Army. It’s an unusual film in a lot of ways. It’s other difference from the two I’ve watched recently is that it focuses almost exclusively on action, giving us chases, air attacks, and explosions at a solid clip.

The plot is almost high concept in its simplicity. Allied troops are rapidly approaching Paris in 1944. As the Allies advance, Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) concerns himself not with his troops or the retreat of materiel, but of the many art treasures looted from French museums. It is his intent to smuggle as many of these back to Berlin as he can, both for cultural reasons and because such paintings can effectively be used as currency in the waning days of the war. A museum curator learns of this plan and tells a local Resistance group headed by train engineer Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster). This particular group has been ground down over the course of the war and has only three members left. They decide that despite the monetary and cultural value of the artwork, they don’t have the manpower to stop it.