Le train, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre, is one of the most unknown WWII films ever made, even though it is based on a somewhat famous novel by Georges Simenon. However, Deferre wasn't interested in making a loyal adaption and especially the end differs from the original story a lot. Therefore, Deferre faced criticism and his film has sunk into oblivion, or at least in most cases, for it still has an honorable cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant (who has worked with Krzysztof Kieslowski, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Bernardo Bertolucci), Romy Schneider (who had worked with Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles), in the leading roles; and one name worth mentioning is, as a supporting actress: Anne Wiazemsky (who has worked with Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard, just to name a few).

The story starts from the summer of 1940 when a French man, Julien must leave his hometown, by train, with his wife and daughter because of the forthcoming Nazi army. In the train, Julien's wife and daughter are put to a carriage which is reserved for women, children and the elderly. In the result of this, Julien must go alone to the last carriage where he meets a group of people and notes a mysterious, Jewish German woman, Anna -- wonderfully interpreted by Romy Schneider. The film mainly focuses on their relationship and the journey to the unknown from the perspective of the last carriage.

It is a certain road-movie about a train travel during which people steal food, wash up and go to picnics. To observe war, from the perspective of a train and its people, is extremely intriguing, to say the least. For isn't train truly the milieu of our subconsciousness? In the train, our heroes are traveling to their indeterminate tragic destination, characterized by a wistful musical score. The essential idiocy of war is most clearly seen in a scene, where a group of soldiers come rampaging to the train and only succeed to, accidentally, shoot their own soldier's foot.

Le train depicts an escape from occupied France where, in turn, Francois Truffaut's The Last Metro depicts the survival and life in the occupied France. However, the connection between these two titles is entirely unintentional. The biggest flaws of Le train are in its conventional dramaturgy but it still manages to be an original film. The detailed cinematography is almost documentary-like with close-ups of train tracks; scenes of sexual intercourse, eating and washing up. Furthermore, the strength of the film is in the director's luminous idealism and faith in the force of love.

The film uses both newsreel footage and dramatizations; combines fact and fiction, like all historical films and throws the reality of war in front of our eyes. This combination means strong signal of memory; and the eternal relation between past and presence. History has always been an inexhaustible source of political rhetoric and Le train is, in fact, a leftist war film but, what is more, it achieves to relay a timeless and universal emotion of a time when man must lose his humanity, in order to survive. During times like this, moments of child-like joy are brief and transient. During times like this, it is important to love -- which might just be the thesis of this bittersweet film.

The current issue of the French cinema magazine Studio has a picture of Romy Schneider on the cover and the lead article marks the 25th anniversary of her death calling her somewhat erroneously (she was born in Vienna in 1938) France's favourite German. This film alone is sufficient to see why though she did, of course, make many fine films in France and won the very first Best Actress Cesar back in 1975. The Schneider Trophy was awarded between 1912 and 1931 to the European country and pilot of the fastest seaplane over a nominated distance but a Schneider Trophy for the finest actress over a distance of years and named after the luminescent Romy would not be a bad idea at all. When two mature people - both married but one partner has been missing for two years in Hitler's Germany - meet and fall in love on a train it's not a million miles away from two similar people who met on a train STATION (Milford Junction) in Noel Coward's Brief Encounter and any movie addict is going to make the connection but though all four share similar sensitivities and get across the reluctant inevitability of falling in love Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard never got to consummate their love least of all in the station buffet so when Romy Schneider and Jean-Louis Trintignant actually 'do it' in a crowded freight car whilst their travelling companions are sleeping (with the exception of the whore who catches Schneider's eye and winks) we realize that this is Brief Encounter in spades.

Pierre Graniere-Deferre successfully blends actual black and white newsreel footage with the colour in which he shot Le Train which adds to the authenticity. The storyline has Julien Maroyeur (Jean-Louis Trintignant)fleeing from the Nazis in 1940 with pregnant wife Anna (Anne Wiazemsky, who played Marie in Au Hasard, Balthazar) and their daughter. At the station they are separated, wife and child in first class, husband in a freight car where one of the other 'passengers' is Anna Kupfer (Romy Schneider) although we learn her name only much later. There's a wonderful irony at work here inasmuch as the people in the freight car are actually travelling to Freedom and Away from the Nazis whilst in most cases at that period the freight cars were taking people to extermination camps. There's a wonderful eclectic mix in the car and all the actors who are virtually unknown outside France acquit themselves well. Trintignant has always been a cerebral rather than passionate actor; he doesn't do overt intensity and it's fascinating to watch him fall in love against all the odds and with a pregnant wife on the same train - at least until the first-class carriages are uncoupled en route. There is, of course, a twist, and it takes the form of Schneider telling Trintignant that she is not only German but also Jewish so that when they arrive at the comparative safety of La Rochelle where Trintignant is almost certain to find employment he passes Schneider off as his wife before going to see his real wife at the hospital where she has given birth to a son. This leaves Schneider to do the noble thing and disappear but three years later the lovers meet again for yet another scene that tells us that this is a Brief Encounter for Adults. Graniere-Deferre made some excellent post Nouvelle Vague movies that owe nothing to that hiccup in French Cinema; Le Chat, La Veuve Coudrec, Etoile du Nord and this one, perhaps the finest of them all.

And also the most known French film about the 1940 French exodus, trying to escape from the Nazi invasion. You had EN MAI FAIS CE QU'IL TE PLAIT, back in 2015, also a very good movie, with the same settings. The other strength of this movie, besides the gripping story, is that the director Granier Deferre was only 13 years old at this time and actually lived this tragic period. So, he was the best placed to provide many of accurate details, that would probably not have been shown in another feature. For instance, those women who took advantage of the train stop, in the middle of the country side, to take a pee, in a field. Then a nazi plane arrives and bombards the area. Three seconds later after the smoke has left, we see the two cadavers of the poor women. Or the scene of a man, also taking a pee, standing between wagons, during a train stop ( of course;;;) Some folks have said that you have some lengths in the film, I agree, but in this kind of feature, lengths are sometimes unavoidable. If you had filled this film with plenty of action sequences, would that had been credible? Hell no. A memorable ending that would have made, even a Waffen SS trooper weep. Believe me.