Director:
Walter Forde
Year: 1932
Rating: 7.5
I just picked this one up to watch strictly on the title. I love films that
take place on trains back in the 1930's and 40's when traveling was civilized
with sleeper cars, attendants and a dining car where you could get good hot
meals from the chef in the kitchen. What the hell happened - why has traveling
become such a chore. As soon as the film started and announced that it was
a Gaumont-British production I knew I was in good hands. They were a mark
of quality back then and were behind both The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps
- both also having lengthy train scenes in them and both being scripted by
Sidney Gilliat, who is behind this one. It is directed by Walter Forde who
isn't that well known - the same with most of the cast here - because he
and they were very British film oriented. Forde was behind The Ghost Train
and Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday - popular English films at the time.
This is sort of Grand Hotel on a train (and I am tempted to add with a dash
of Hitchcock thrown in except this was before Hitchcock really found his
stride with The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1934 and The 39 Steps in 1935))
which is likely no coincidence as Grand Hotel also came out in 1932. Filled
with a varied group of characters all going to Rome - a husband and a wife
but not to each other sneaking off for a liaison, your basic British boor
who can't stop talking, a Hollywood starlet (Esther Ralston) who has had
enough of that life, a wealthy financier (Cedrick Hardwicke) and his valet,
a man who looks to live in a nervous sweat, two men who are looking for a
third with bad intentions, the head of the French Suerte who is going on
holiday to look for beetles and assorted others who flit through the film.
All these stories slowly coalesce and find drama especially when one of them
turns up dead and a stolen painting seems to be behind it. All very nicely
done with a good fleshing out of the characters.
Most impressive is Conrad Veidt as one of the two men. Menacing, towering
and still charming in that Germanic creepy way - every time he is in a scene
he steals it like a cat burglar. 1932 was rather an important time in his
life - he had been a huge star in German silent films - The Cabinet of Dr,
Caligari being his most famous - he had a Jewish wife though he was not and
once Hitler came to power like so many others in the film business he fled
Germany first to England and later to the USA where he often had to play
Nazi's as in Casablanca. But all the actors are fine - British films back
then had all these great actors who learned their craft in the theater in
their films.
The film is pre-code and of course British but I was still surprised when
they are at the train station and one of them goes to pick up a newspaper
and the camera pans a bunch of French girlie magazines with nudity on the
covers! You would not be seeing anything like that for another 40 years or
so!
