Viele Filme haben Eisenbahnszenen - die einen sind realistischer gemacht, die anderen weniger. Das schlimmste Beispiel aus jüngster Zeit ist wahrscheinlichMission Impossible mit Tom Cruise. Dort fliegt ein Helikopter zusammen mit einem TGV durch den Kanaltunnel; von einer Fahrleitung hat der Regisseur wohl noch nie etwas gehört...
Die Filme sind nach Erscheinungsjahr aufgelistet und bewertet: Top, Flop oder einfach normal.
| Sleeping Car To Trieste | A spy double-crosses his colleagues, and then they all end up on the train together. Every time you think you know where this 1948 British thriller is going, it pulls the rug out from under you and its chesspiece-characters... all the way to a real jawdropper of an ending. | ||
| Our Hospitality | 1923 |
*** |
|
| The General | 1927 |
***** |
Buster Keaton with some great stunts. Filmed on an Oregon Logging Railroad. No special effects here: Keaton had no concern for his own life. |
| Danger Lights | 1930 | TOP | A tough-as-nails superintendent with a heart of gold realizes the love of his life is the Milwaukee Road, not his finance - as it should be... (RKO) |
| The Silver Streak | 1934 | TOP | A desperate race across the Great Plains by the flashiest land machine on earth, Burlington's Pioneer Zephyr. Airplanes? Mere toys! Real men go by train. (RKO) |
| Twentieth Century Limited | 1934 | TOP | Railroad comedy. (Columbia) |
| The Lady Vanishes | 1938 |
***** |
|
| Go West | 1940 |
*** |
|
| Broadway Limited | 1941 | TOP | Railroad Comedy, Pennsy Railroad. (United Artists) |
| The Narrow Margin | 1952 |
***
|
Cement-mixer-voiced Charles McGraw (above) is the cop escorting Mob witness Marie Windsor (one of those B movie actresses who looks like she’s in her lingerie even fully dressed)—but there’s a twist here that proves that people were using low-rent stars for their icon value decades before Quentin Tarantino discovered Pam Grier and Robert Forster. |
| Human Desire | 1954 | TOP | A pretty and twisted woman seduces men from their true mission: running the railroad. Footage from the Rock Island, B&O, Pennsy, SP. (Columbia) |
| North by Northwest | 1959 | TOP***** | Hitchcock goes trains! "What do you do besides luring men to their doom on the Twentieth Century Limited?" Cary Grant asks Eva Marie Saint. No other movie so perfectly captures the splendor of long-distance, first-class passenger train. (MGM) |
| The Train | 1964 | TOP | Burt Lancaster is the French Resistance leader trying to blow up a German train - which we know is full of looted Picassos and Van Goghs. Class actors like Paul Scofield and gritty black and white location filming make this 1965 thriller a James Bond movie that wants to be Schindler’s List. The coolest trains scenes on film ! (United Artists) |
| The Railrodder | 1965 |
** |
|
| Von Ryan's Express | 1965 | *** |
|
| The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery | 1966 |
*** |
|
| Emporer of the North Pole | 1973 | TOP | Sadist/conductor Ernest Borgnine gleefully throws hoboes off (and under) his freight train. Lee Marvin packs a mean punch. Logging railroad Oregon, Pacific & Eastern provides the stage. (Twentieth Century Fox) |
| Murder On the Orient Express | 1974 |
***** |
|
| The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three | 1974 | TOP | A rainbow coalition of New Yorkers has a really bad day when terrorists hijack their subway train. By turns chaotic, suspenseful, and hilarious - just like a typical day in New York! Who knew subways could be this cool? (Palladium Productions) |
| Breakheart Pass | 1975 |
*** |
|
| Silver Streak | 1976 | TOP**** | No train ride is more hilarious than Gene Wilder's tortured trip on "Amroad" from LA to Chicago. Amtrak wanted no part of that, so VIA's Canadian makes do. (Twentieth Century Fox) |
| The Lady Vanishes | 1979 |
*** |
|
| The (First) Great Train Robbery | 1979 |
**** |
|
| Octopussy | 1983 | TOP**** |
|
| Runaway Train | 1985 |
**** |
|
| Back To the Future, Part III | 1990 |
**** |
|
| Narrow Margin | 1990 |
*** |
|
| Death Train (aka: "Detonator") | 1993 | *** | |
| Mission: Impossible | 1996 | FLOP | Wie wäre es mit "Movie Impossible". Tom Cruise schauspielert schlecht, die Story hat Löcher, und ein Helikopter verfolgt einen TGV in den Tunnel unter dem Ärmelkanal. Damit das klappt, werden einfach die Fahrleitungen digital gelöscht. Häh? (Paramount) |
Und dann gibt es noch den Film über die Privatisierung der britischen Eisenbahnen, und wie es einigen Eisenbahnmitarbeitern dabei ergangen ist. Unbedingt sehenswert und etwas traurig: "The Navigators" von Ken Loach.
Quellen: Trains Magazine, 63/1, January 2003, S. 66ff.; diverse Internet-Websites.