Trains and Hollywood
Before the wide use of airplanes made crossing long distances easy and quick, the predominant form of long-distance travel was the train. Automobiles (and wagons before them) were an option, but you always risked the finicky things breaking down and leaving you stranded, not to mention the cost of fuel and hotels. There was more certainty with a Greyhound, but buses lack the privacy and luxurious comfort of a train, not to mention a more questionable sort of character is more likely to travel by bus. (Though plenty seem to show up on trains too, if the movies are to be believed.)
No, if you could afford it, the train was the way to travel in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Film producers, screenwriters, and directors were the kind of people that could not only afford to travel by train but would be required to so often in their work; therefore, it is no surprise that the train was a frequent setting for movies during Hollywood’s golden period.
The frequency of train movies is also due to a number of unique advantages that a train has over any other type of setting. First of all, it is moving; it is going from point a to b. Movies almost always have some sort of countdown in place that raises the stakes and trains fit easily into this narrative device: “we only have until the train arrives to …solve this mystery! …fall in love! …avoid detection!” etc. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) offers a different kind of train countdown, as one side of the films central conflict must complete the bridge in time for the train to cross it, while the other seeks to destroy it.
However, unlike a plane, which is also going from point a to b, trains can go from a to b to c and so forth, picking up and dropping off characters at will. This adds suspense at every step: “Oh Ted! Did you see that man in the large coat get on the train at the last station? Could he be after us?” In the film noir The Narrow Margin (1952) there is a deadline set (get the witness to Los Angeles alive so she can testify) and one of the main threats boards the train halfway through the trip.
Because of their public nature, trains also serve as a plot convenience machine, able to bring together disparate characters from many walks of life without it seeming too unlikely an occurrence.
The entire love triangle plot of Design for Living (1933) comes about because of a completely chance meeting of people on a train. Just as fortuitous to the plot is the meeting of main characters in Strangers on a Train (1951), which features two men meeting and setting off the entire story. Shanghai Express (1932) offers romance, drama, and suspense by utilizing a wide cast of characters and their intersecting stories to provide a diversification of viewpoints.
Trains are public, but can also be private. Compartments and baggage cars provide unlimited options for hiding characters out. “We’re going to search this bus from tip to tail until we find him!” doesn’t quite work since you can obviously see everyone on the bus right off the bat. Trains give characters a place to hide, plot, and make love while also retaining a very open setting. We know that the lady that vanishes in The Lady Vanishes (1938) is somewhere on the train, but who knows where, she could be in a compartment, a baggage car, or even in a traveling magicians magic box.
There are other, more practical benefits to setting your movie on a train; mainly that it is easy and inexpensive. The interior of a train car is simple in design and set up, they require a minimum amount of work and produce a result that will never engender artistic criticism, because duh, it is a train. That’s what they look like. Train sets are eminently reusable: one compartment or train car can be refitted to be any other compartment, sometimes as simply as changing the characters sitting in it. Also, unlike old movie automobile rear projection, the effect of passing landscape outside a train window in a movie is not nearly as noticeable or fake looking.
Trains also represent a potential for disaster, they can derail and crash. Unlike a plane crash, however, it isn’t expected that there will be complete casualties, so characters can experience the train crash and still survive. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) gives us a fabulous example of this, as it isn’t just a regular old train wreck but a circus train, which means escaped lions and tigers in addition to vanilla twisted metal wreckage. In Seven Sinners (1936) train wrecks are used as a weapon for murdering a single individual on the train and disguising the motive among all the other casualties. Still, older movies avoid overdoing the train carnage, while many modern movies lean on the special effects crutch too often and involve wrecks as their only real train element.
Not surprisingly, given all the options for murder and subterfuge available on board, the genre most associated with trains is the thriller. The master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, frequently featured them in his movies and obviously knew the advantages. As previously mentioned, Strangers on a Train and The Lady Vanishes highlight some of these advantages, as does North by Northwest (1959), in which the main character not only is able to hide from his pursuers but also is able to meet and rendezvous with a seductive woman, seemingly by chance. (North by Northwest’s train setting also gives Hitchcock a chance for a not so subtle innuendo as a train enters a tunnel). Like many aspects of that movie, this is reused from his earlier The 39 Steps (1935); while in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) a train is used as a tool, first for attempted murder, then for execution. So many of Hitchcock’s films are about the sinister in everyday life: anyone could be taking a routine train ride and find their world turned upside down by a chance encounter or unfortunate happenstance.
The same writers (Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder) that used a train to such advantage in The Lady Vanishes, both for subterfuge and comedy, rehashed many of the same principles in Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940) even bringing back some of the same characters from their previous movie. Berlin Express (1948) takes a similar approach, filling a train with heroes and antagonists searching for a key character. Like The Narrow Margin, b-movie Sleepers West (1941) has private detective Michael Shayne protecting a key witness on a train full of potential killers. “Potential killers” is taken to the next level with Agatha Christie’s iconic train-board mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express (1934) in which a man is murdered and the occupants of the train make up a diverse cast of suspects which Hercule Poirot must sift through to find the killer among the passengers. Poirot’s presence on this particular train at this particular time takes the prize for biggest plot convenience coincidence, but the train aspect makes it at least a little more believable.
Wherever a wide variety of people are gathered together, there is potential for humorous hijinks, which makes train settings a natural for comedies. In The Major and the Minor (1942), Ginger Rogers disguises herself as a small girl (she can only afford a child priced ticket) on a train back to her hometown, only to be taken under the wing of a kindly man who thinks she is a small child. Awkwardness obviously ensues when he allows her to share his compartment (different times). Some Like it Hot (1958) spins this around with two men disguising themselves as women and hiding out on a train with an all-girl band in order to escape the mob and the close quarters of the train again produce humorous situations.
Trains can serve other purposes in comedy as well: the main character, a famous stage actress, in Twentieth Century (1934) is trapped on the train by her ex-director and ex-lover, she is unable to escape while he plots and persuades her to return to him. The mad millionaires of the “Ale and Quail Club” completely destroy their train car in The Palm Beach Story (1942) and in the king of all train comedies, silent star Buster Keaton goes on a wild ride attempting to steal his train back in The General (1926). Keaton is replaced by escaped Allied POW’s who hijack a train and ride it through Axis territories to freedom in Von Ryan’s Express (1965), though it is far from a comedy.
Musicals are usually comedies as well and there are a couple of notable train-centric songs to be found, including the honeymoon-themed “Shuffle off to Buffalo” in 42nd Street (1933) and the big opener of The Harvey Girls (1946) features “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” an ode to the train bringing adventurous individuals west to frontier towns.
Trains are frequently used as a sign of civilization reaching the wilds of the west, in Dodge City (1939), Errol Flynn cleans up the wild city in cohesion with the arriving railroad while Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) positions the railroad’s arrival as the end of the road for old-school gunfighters and bandits and the beginning of a civilized west. The train is also used in westerns as a much simpler way: the train robbery. Long a staple of the genre, train robberies can be found in classic westerns The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Rage at Dawn (1955), and Man of the West (1958). This can be seen as another clashing of the wild and the civilized, outlaws fighting back against the machines that will eventually spell their doom.
Modern movies have mostly moved away from trains as a setting, replacing them with planes and cars, though they still appear here and there and reuse benefits of the train that you see in film previously. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) uses trains along with other public transits in order to bring together disparate characters into close contact, with humorous outcomes. Thrillers like The Commuter (2018) and Source Code (2011) use the restricted setting, imposed time limits, and disaster potential of a train while Super 8 (2011) produces an on-screen train wreck similar to The Greatest Show on Earth, but instead of circus animals, an alien life-form is released by the crash. Snowpiercer (2013) has its characters fighting from one end of the train to the other, ala The General and Von Ryan’s Express. Likewise, 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sees a young Indiana Jones fleeing from his pursuers from one end of a circus train to the other.
Trains were a part of everyday life during the golden age of Hollywood and so they appeared often in movies. Nowadays, trains aren’t as common and therefore, they aren’t in movies that often. However, the lessons that filmmakers have learned from the train setting continue to influence how movies are made today.
No, if you could afford it, the train was the way to travel in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Film producers, screenwriters, and directors were the kind of people that could not only afford to travel by train but would be required to so often in their work; therefore, it is no surprise that the train was a frequent setting for movies during Hollywood’s golden period.
The frequency of train movies is also due to a number of unique advantages that a train has over any other type of setting. First of all, it is moving; it is going from point a to b. Movies almost always have some sort of countdown in place that raises the stakes and trains fit easily into this narrative device: “we only have until the train arrives to …solve this mystery! …fall in love! …avoid detection!” etc. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) offers a different kind of train countdown, as one side of the films central conflict must complete the bridge in time for the train to cross it, while the other seeks to destroy it.
However, unlike a plane, which is also going from point a to b, trains can go from a to b to c and so forth, picking up and dropping off characters at will. This adds suspense at every step: “Oh Ted! Did you see that man in the large coat get on the train at the last station? Could he be after us?” In the film noir The Narrow Margin (1952) there is a deadline set (get the witness to Los Angeles alive so she can testify) and one of the main threats boards the train halfway through the trip.
Because of their public nature, trains also serve as a plot convenience machine, able to bring together disparate characters from many walks of life without it seeming too unlikely an occurrence.
 |
| In Hollywood productions like The Narrow Margin, danger lurks... |
 |
| ...but so does to the potential for romance, such as in Design for Living. |
Trains are public, but can also be private. Compartments and baggage cars provide unlimited options for hiding characters out. “We’re going to search this bus from tip to tail until we find him!” doesn’t quite work since you can obviously see everyone on the bus right off the bat. Trains give characters a place to hide, plot, and make love while also retaining a very open setting. We know that the lady that vanishes in The Lady Vanishes (1938) is somewhere on the train, but who knows where, she could be in a compartment, a baggage car, or even in a traveling magicians magic box.
 |
| Trains are public enough to allow for chance encounters... |
 |
| ...but also private enough for private, intimate moments. (North by Northwest) |
Trains also represent a potential for disaster, they can derail and crash. Unlike a plane crash, however, it isn’t expected that there will be complete casualties, so characters can experience the train crash and still survive. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) gives us a fabulous example of this, as it isn’t just a regular old train wreck but a circus train, which means escaped lions and tigers in addition to vanilla twisted metal wreckage. In Seven Sinners (1936) train wrecks are used as a weapon for murdering a single individual on the train and disguising the motive among all the other casualties. Still, older movies avoid overdoing the train carnage, while many modern movies lean on the special effects crutch too often and involve wrecks as their only real train element.
Not surprisingly, given all the options for murder and subterfuge available on board, the genre most associated with trains is the thriller. The master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, frequently featured them in his movies and obviously knew the advantages. As previously mentioned, Strangers on a Train and The Lady Vanishes highlight some of these advantages, as does North by Northwest (1959), in which the main character not only is able to hide from his pursuers but also is able to meet and rendezvous with a seductive woman, seemingly by chance. (North by Northwest’s train setting also gives Hitchcock a chance for a not so subtle innuendo as a train enters a tunnel). Like many aspects of that movie, this is reused from his earlier The 39 Steps (1935); while in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) a train is used as a tool, first for attempted murder, then for execution. So many of Hitchcock’s films are about the sinister in everyday life: anyone could be taking a routine train ride and find their world turned upside down by a chance encounter or unfortunate happenstance.
The same writers (Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder) that used a train to such advantage in The Lady Vanishes, both for subterfuge and comedy, rehashed many of the same principles in Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940) even bringing back some of the same characters from their previous movie. Berlin Express (1948) takes a similar approach, filling a train with heroes and antagonists searching for a key character. Like The Narrow Margin, b-movie Sleepers West (1941) has private detective Michael Shayne protecting a key witness on a train full of potential killers. “Potential killers” is taken to the next level with Agatha Christie’s iconic train-board mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express (1934) in which a man is murdered and the occupants of the train make up a diverse cast of suspects which Hercule Poirot must sift through to find the killer among the passengers. Poirot’s presence on this particular train at this particular time takes the prize for biggest plot convenience coincidence, but the train aspect makes it at least a little more believable.
Wherever a wide variety of people are gathered together, there is potential for humorous hijinks, which makes train settings a natural for comedies. In The Major and the Minor (1942), Ginger Rogers disguises herself as a small girl (she can only afford a child priced ticket) on a train back to her hometown, only to be taken under the wing of a kindly man who thinks she is a small child. Awkwardness obviously ensues when he allows her to share his compartment (different times). Some Like it Hot (1958) spins this around with two men disguising themselves as women and hiding out on a train with an all-girl band in order to escape the mob and the close quarters of the train again produce humorous situations.
 |
| Jack Lemmon, disguised as a woman, enjoys the close quarters of a train with Marilyn Monroe (Some Like it Hot) |
Musicals are usually comedies as well and there are a couple of notable train-centric songs to be found, including the honeymoon-themed “Shuffle off to Buffalo” in 42nd Street (1933) and the big opener of The Harvey Girls (1946) features “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” an ode to the train bringing adventurous individuals west to frontier towns.
Trains are frequently used as a sign of civilization reaching the wilds of the west, in Dodge City (1939), Errol Flynn cleans up the wild city in cohesion with the arriving railroad while Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) positions the railroad’s arrival as the end of the road for old-school gunfighters and bandits and the beginning of a civilized west. The train is also used in westerns as a much simpler way: the train robbery. Long a staple of the genre, train robberies can be found in classic westerns The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Rage at Dawn (1955), and Man of the West (1958). This can be seen as another clashing of the wild and the civilized, outlaws fighting back against the machines that will eventually spell their doom.
Modern movies have mostly moved away from trains as a setting, replacing them with planes and cars, though they still appear here and there and reuse benefits of the train that you see in film previously. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) uses trains along with other public transits in order to bring together disparate characters into close contact, with humorous outcomes. Thrillers like The Commuter (2018) and Source Code (2011) use the restricted setting, imposed time limits, and disaster potential of a train while Super 8 (2011) produces an on-screen train wreck similar to The Greatest Show on Earth, but instead of circus animals, an alien life-form is released by the crash. Snowpiercer (2013) has its characters fighting from one end of the train to the other, ala The General and Von Ryan’s Express. Likewise, 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sees a young Indiana Jones fleeing from his pursuers from one end of a circus train to the other.
Trains were a part of everyday life during the golden age of Hollywood and so they appeared often in movies. Nowadays, trains aren’t as common and therefore, they aren’t in movies that often. However, the lessons that filmmakers have learned from the train setting continue to influence how movies are made today.
Comments
Post a Comment