LE TRAIN is one of the most intensive and distressing films ever made about the occupation of France during WWII. It contains one of Jean Louis Trintignant's most sublime performances and one of Romy Schneider's most hypnotic. The director's greatest achievement is that he conveyed a familiar, almost homey atmosphere in the midst of large-scale mass-scenes.



The story is simple: Frenchmen flee the Nazis by train. Trintignant's pregnant wife travels first-class, he takes the stock-car. His fellow-passengers who huddle together on a space sufficient for two horses are a nursing mother, a full-blooded wench and her paramour, a deserter and a roughneck who start soon enough to molest the provocatively passive Romy Schneider. Trintignant is so mesmerized by Schneider that he shares his water adn his bread rather with her than with his wife! The Nazi's throw down pamphlets and protest their peaceful intentions. They also shoot passengers who "follow the call of nature" on a field. When they arrive in La Rochelle Trintignant is told that, as an electrician, he's welcome. But the Jewish Schneider is not. In a sudden impulse he passes her off as his wife. It goes without saying that his good deed does not go unpunished...



When I think that the recent flood of anti-Nazi-films nearly kept me from watching this one! It is touching, involving, simply unforgettable. Romy Schneider has my vote as best actress of the seventies! Between 1969 and 1979 she made more quality films than any other actress, many of them masterpieces: TRIO INFERNAL, LA BANQUIERE...Her painfully intensive performances were of course energy-consuming efforts that ultimately went beyond her strength. She died young...