Friday | August 23, 2013 9:00 pm

The Train

Screening on Film

Directed by John Frankenheimer.
With Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau.
France/Italy/US, 1965, 35mm, black & white, 133 min.

Lancaster takes on the Third Reich and reshapes art history in this fascinating proto-action film about the French Resistance's efforts to rescue a train filled with artwork looted by the Nazis. John Frankenheimer maintains a brisk, at times furious, tempo to keep abreast with Lancaster's Sisyphean running man whose each obstacle is replaced with another even more extreme. Although Arthur Penn was summarily fired by Lancaster over "creative differences,” Penn's love of the nouvelle vague is apparent in his affectionate casting of Jeanne Moreau and Albert Rémy, Antoine Doinel’s father.