Tomorrow is Burt Lancaster's birthday. Sadly, he died in 1994 at 80 years of age.
One of my favorite of his films is The Train (1964). Paul Scofield co-stars.
In August 1944, the German army is preparing to retreat from Paris. Colonel von Waldheim (Scofield), an art connoisseur, is in charge of removing selected French works of art from French museums and shipping them by train to Germany.
The French Resistance is asked to stop the train from reaching Germany. At first, train station inspector Labiche (Lancaster) refuses to help, saying "I won't waste lives on paintings."
However, Labiche changes his mind when one of his colleagues is executed for sabotaging a train.
For the rest of the film, von Waldheim struggles to get the works of art to Germany, while Labiche fights to stop the paintings from leaving France.
At the climax when the two are face to face, von Waldheim states that no matter what happens then, the works of art will always belong to those who can appreciate them. Labiche responds, but not with words.
It is amazing that Lancaster performed all of his physical and extremely difficult stunts in the film by himself, not using a double.
Happy birthday, Burt.
No comments:
Post a Comment