The Train (1964 Film) - Production

Production

This film was taken over from another director, Arthur Penn. The Train had already begun shooting in France when star Burt Lancaster had the original director fired and called in Frankenheimer to take over the film. Penn envisioned a more intimate film that would muse on the role art played in Lancaster's character, and why he would risk his life to save the country's great art from the Nazis. He did not intend to give much focus to the mechanics of the train operation itself. But Lancaster wanted more emphasis on action to ensure that the film would be a hit, after the failure of his film The Leopard. The production was shut down briefly while the script was rewritten, and the budget doubled under Frankenheimer's direction. As he recounts in the Champlin book, Frankenheimer used the production's desperation to his advantage in negotiations. He demanded and got the following: his name was made part of the title, "John Frankenheimer's The Train"; the French co-director, demanded by French tax laws, was not allowed to ever set foot on set; he was given total final cut; and a Ferrari.

The film contains multiple real train wrecks. The Allied bombing of a rail yard was accomplished with real dynamite, as the French rail authority needed to enlarge the track gauge. This can be observed by the shockwaves traveling through the ground during the action sequence. Producers realized after filming that the story needed another action scene, and reassembled some of the cast for a Spitfire attack scene that was inserted into the first third of the film. French Armée de l'Air Douglas A-26 Invaders are also seen later in the film.

The film includes a number of sequences involving long tracking shots and real locations, a style of filmmaking rarely seen today. Much of the film was photographed using wide-angle lenses, with both foreground and background action in focus.

Noteworthy tracking shots include:

• Labiche attempting to flag down a train, then sliding down a ladder, running along the tracks and jumping onto a moving locomotive, performed by Lancaster himself, not a stunt double;
• A scene in which the camera wanders around Nazi offices that are hastily being cleared, eventually focusing on von Waldheim and following him back through the office;
• A long dolly shot of von Waldheim travelling through a marshalling yard at high speed on a motorbike;
• Labiche rolling down a mountain, across a road and staggering down to the track. Frankenheimer noted on his DVD commentary that Lancaster performed the entire roll down the mountain himself, filmed by cameras at points along the hillside.

During an interview with the History Channel, Frankenheimer revealed:

• The marshalling yard attacked during the Allied bombing raid sequence was demolished by special arrangement with the French railway, which had been looking to do it but had lacked funding.
• The sequence in which Labiche is shot and wounded by German soldiers while fleeing across a pedestrian bridge was necessitated by a knee injury Lancaster suffered during filming. Lancaster stepped in a hole while playing golf, spraining his knee so severely that he could not walk without limping.
• When told that Michel Simon would be unable to complete scenes scripted for his character as a result of prior contractual obligations, Frankenheimer devised the sequence wherein Papa Boule is executed by the Germans. Jacques Marin's character was killed for similar reasons.
• Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is told, at the scene of the last major train wreck, by Major Herren (Wolfgang Preiss), "This is a hell of a mess you've got here, Colonel." This line became a metaphor for complicating disasters on Frankenheimer films thereafter.
• Colonel von Waldheim was originally to engage Labiche in a shootout at the film's climax, but after Paul Scofield was cast in the role, at Lancaster's suggestion Frankenheimer re-wrote the scene to provide Scofield a more suitable end — taunting Labiche into killing him.

Frankenheimer remarked on the DVD commentary, "Incidentally, I think this is the last big action picture ever made in black and white, and personally I am so grateful that it is in black and white. I think the black and white adds tremendously to the movie."

Throughout the film, Frankenheimer often juxtaposed the value of art (or money) with the value of life. This may also be read as an allegorical commentary on patriotism and war in general. A brief montage ends the film, intercutting the crates full of paintings with the bloodied bodies of the hostages, before a final shot shows Labiche walking away.